SoFi Relay Credit Score Tracking

SoFi Relay is a product that makes it easy to know where you stand, what you spend, and how to hit your financial goals—all in one app. The initial suite of features included account aggregation, spend tracking, and cash flow—and in December 2019 we launched a new feature so that users could track their credit scores at no cost, with weekly updates to stay on top of score changes. The feature took off almost immediately with little-to-no marketing spend, and we surpassed 100,000 sign-ups by March 2020. With weekly score updates, insights, and educational content, this feature proved to have meaningful business impact on new driving new loan customers, increasing cross-product adoption, and most of all, increased app engagement for existing customers.

My role: Lead product designer, UX research, partnered with content strategy on lifecycle messaging

Scope: Web and native mobile app designs

Significant Business Impact

Design Goal

SoFi’s mission is help our members reach financial independence, and while we already offered low-rate loans, investment accounts, cash management, and spending insights—credit score tracking was not something we had offered until now. A person’s credit score is a key piece of their overall financial health, as it has a large impact on what accounts, credit cards, and loan terms they’re eligible for, but many people don’t fully understand what impacts their score or how to improve. With this credit score tracking feature, we set out to build a fully transparent, educational, empowering, and free tool that would be accessible to absolutely anyone, existing SoFi customer or not.

Defining Key User Flows and Pages 

For this project, my design process started by working closely with my engineering partners to understanding the data available and the technical aspects of the credit check process. We received credit report data through a credit bureau API, but the raw data was complex and inconsistent. Through an iterative analysis and sketching process, we were able to define an overarching framework to display the credit factors and report data in a more intuitive and user-friendly way. From there we defined the steps of the sign-up flow and the how the key feature pages would fit into the overall app.

Visualizing Credit Health 

As the main visual element on credit score dashboard, I wanted the data visualization to provide users with a simple and intuitive framework to understand their credit score. I explored two basic shapes for the meter shape (crescent and bar) and ultimately chose the bar since it yielded a cleaner, more consistent layout across various screen and device sizes.

Color Usability Tests

At the start of this project, our design system’s color palette was extremely limited, with only dark red, green, and various shades of ocean (our primary UI color). During my initial explorations, I wasn’t satisfied with the available color options, as I felt they were either too harsh looking (dark health) or too bland (monochrome). I proposed adding a new spectrum of health colors to our design systems team and volunteered to lead the exploration process. To understand the emotional and functional impact of colors in the user experience, I conducted usability testing to gather feedback on 4 different possible color palette directions. The study clearly showed that users preferred the softer, more modern version of the “rainbow” health spectrum, describing it as the most friendly and easiest to understand, something that wouldn’t make them feel as alarmed or judged if they were “in the red.” In the end, we not only identified a set of colors perfected suited to our product needs, but as a secondary win we added a new secondary color palette to our design system that could be leveraged for other use cases across all products.

Sign Up Flow

The steps of the sign-up were mostly pre-determined on the credit bureau API and the requirement information to generate the credit report data. However we employed a few key principles to make the flow feel as quick, easy, and trustworthy as possible. Even though it meant adding an “extra” step to the flow, we started off with an educational page to set expectations with users and reinforce the value props. Then we ask the users a series of personal questions, starting with the lower stakes questions to build trust, and waiting until the last step to ask for Social Security number. At each step where we ask for personal data, we explain exactly why we need it and what value the user will get in return. Finally we end the flow with a preview of their score for immediate gratification, before sending them into the full feature or giving them the option to return to the home screen.

Credit Factor Pages

Branching off the main credit score dashboard, we added a detail page for each of the primary credit factors that make up the user’s score: Payment history, credit utilization, age of credit, total accounts, credit inquiries, and derogatory marks. Each detail page gave a full breakdown of how the user was doing in that category, with a focus on education on the impact of that factor and how to improve.

Communicating the Meaning of Credit Tiers

In the Vantage 3.0 credit model, score range between 300-850, with a total of 5 tiers. The model describes the 5 tiers as Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, and Very poor. Since our target demographic were people trying to improve their scores, I felt strongly about hitting the right balance between informing and motivating. Similar to how I was too avoid shades of red that users perceive as “judgmental,” I wanted to avoid critical or potentially demeaning language. In the end, the key information is the score itself, and the accompanying description that tells users how their score impacts their access to financial products. We decided to exclude the original tier labels for “Poor” and “Very poor” and instead opted for a more encouraging “Your credit has room for improvement.

Messaging & Engagement Strategy

Working with the product manager and a content strategist, we created a messaging framework to send users ongoing credit score insights. Based on a weekly credit pull cadence, we not only alert users if there score increases or decreases, but also give updates on credit utilization, missed payments, new accounts opened in their name, credit inquires, and derogatory marks. The alerts span across 3 channels (in-app, push, and email) and are friendly and educational. For example, in our credit utilization messaging, we coach users to pay down balances to get their credit utilization under 25%, which in turn provide immediate score improvements. The increased engagement that resulted from this feature was in large part due to these regular, friendly nudges that encourage users to regularly check into the app.