Fixed Income
Problem
Advisors favor fixed income for stability and predictable returns, especially in volatile markets. It helps manage risk, making it an essential asset class for building balanced portfolios for their clients. The issue with trading fixed income is that it is very complex. Each product has distinct characteristics and pricing can fluctuate based on trade size. How might we provide a seamless digital trading experience to allow advisors to both research and trade fixed income products on our platform? How can we make it consistent so that it does not deviate from our current trading experience for equities?
Solution
My role was to lead the 0-1 design of trading this new asset class on the platform. The design strategy was to reduce the noise of researching and trading fixed income by surfacing the most important, essential pieces of data in a clean interface. After extensive user research and testing, I focused on designing robust filtering capabilities and the ability to trade and take action from the table, which were elements that stood out as most important to advisors when thinking about fixed income. This established the pattern for a bond's details page which will be scalable for our equities experience.
Impact
Beta launch in August. GA Lauch in September 2024. Designed and built within 7 months. Within the first week of beta launch we received $2.5 million in fixed income trades. The average trade size for fixed income is $190k, compared to $26k in equities. We increased our trading fee collection, directly impacting our company's revenue goals for the year. Furthermore, offering this feature will unlock firms who were waiting for this feature to move over their book of business.
