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Grad shape
Case Study

Insight Investment

part of BNY


Position Explorer Application

Managing Portfolio Positions & Risk

2023—2024

At a glance

About the company

Insight Investment is a prominent British asset management firm, renowned for its expertise in fixed income, liability-driven investment (LDI), and multi-asset strategies. As of March 31, 2025, the firm manages £619 billion in assets and operates as a subsidiary of BNY, a global financial services corporation. Insight Investment operates globally, with offices in major financial centres including London, New York, Boston, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Tokyo.
https://www.insightinvestment.com/

At a glance

Project Overview

Role

Lead Senior Product / UX Designer

Team

1x Product Owner
1x Principal Business Analyst
1x Business Analyst
1x Development Lead
4x Developers
1x QA Engineer

Year

2023 — 2024

Duration

~18 months

Tools

Axure RP
Adobe XD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Mural
Microsoft Excel

Project

Key Outcomes

Operational, Reputational & Financial Loss Mitigation

The new system reduces operational, reputational, and financial risk by improving data accuracy and timeliness, streamlining workflows across interdependent apps and services, and accelerating customer fulfillment — all of which help mitigate portfolio risk from deleverage events triggered by sudden market volatility.

Prevented Financial Losses for the Business & its Clients

Reduced potential financial losses for the business and its clients in the range of £ millions due to reduced risk exposure and operational efficiency.

Faster Employee Workflows & Customer Fulfillment

Reduced time it takes for portfolio managers to model trades and perform unwinds on behalf of clients from up-to 10 days down to 1-2 hours (up-to 99% reduction)

High User Satisfaction Ratings

Usability, workflow efficiency and user satisfaction ratings significantly improved over legacy workflow and systems

Project Details

Coming soon

Recent Feedback

from users & stakeholders

at Insight Investment (part of BNY) — June 2024

"... is more comprehensive and user-friendly"

"... is more flexible, covers more use-cases, has a lot more detail, and easy to drill down."

"I'm finding this application better than the systems we had to use previously."

"This application will be a game-changer."

"Thank you for your hard work on this. You're making our lives easier."

" [This application] is a massive improvement... and tasks that often took [ up to 10 ] days to sort out in previous environments now only take maybe 1-2 hours.

I can honestly say that without [this application] we would have a more unhappy clients, as we simply would not have been able to carry out legacy book compressions over the last year at the pace and cost effectiveness required.

Some of these clients are large discretionary accounts with performance fees, so any £ saved for the client directly impacts Insight's bottom line. And a failure to complete certain expected activities in a timely manner means that the client is more more likely to withdraw discretion in the future, thus significantly hurting projected revenue.

For me at least (and I think many of my colleagues will agree), [this application] was a game changer in that respect. A huge step in the right direction with respect to higher productivity and lower [financial, operational and reputational] risk."

— Robert K, Portfolio Manager — December 2024

Measuring Impact

Success Metrics & Scores

Reducing Risk

Benefits of building a new business-critical system to improve usability, workflow efficiency and prevent / reduce errors.

Risk Category Risk Level —
Legacy Application		 Risk Level —
New Application (Dec 2024)		 Benefit
Operational Medium / High Low Moderate reduction; improved efficiency and controls
Reputational Extremely High Low Significant reduction; Enhanced trust and brand protection
Financial Extremely High Low Significant reduction; Decreased exposure; better financial oversight
Overall Financial Benefit — — Estimated £ millions in avoided losses due to reduced risk exposure for the company and its clients

Tracking Usability Improvements over time

Metrics showing improvements for users in the new redesigned application versus the legacy application and workflow.

Legacy Application New Application (June 2024) Improvement %
Usefulness 3 2.3 -23%
Trustworthiness 2.3 4 +74%
Usability 2.7 3 +11%
Findability 2.7 4.3 - 4.7 +59 - 74%
Accessibility 3.3 3.7 +12%
Readability 3.7 3.7 0%
Filtering & Sorting 1.3 4 +208%
Value 3 2.7 -10%
Notes

Lower scores for Usefulness and Value intrinsically related - at the time of launch, not all of the instrument types were supported in the new application. User feedback explicitly stated these scores would be higher once data for the missing instrument types were made available.
Trustworthiness is a reflection of more reliable data.
Findability score reflects improved visual hierarchy, information architecture, content / data design, coupled with much improved and more flexible Filtering & Sorting capabilities with the introduction of utilising AG-Grid, of which I championed the adoption of.

Improvement of metrics over six months (June - December 2024)

with continuous software development addressing pain-points uncovered with new application upon launch and delivering new features requested by users.

New Application (Jun 2024) New Application (Dec 2024) Improvement %
Usefulness 2.3 3.7 +60.9%
Trustworthiness 4 4.5 +12.5%
Usability 3 3.8 +26.6%
Findability 4.3 - 4.7 5 +6.4 - 16.3%
Accessibility 3.7 4.2 +13.5%
Readability 3.7 3.5 -5.4%
Filtering & Sorting 4 4.2 +5%
Value 2.7 4.4 +63%
Notes

Steady improvements made across all metrics with more instruments suppported and resulting in higher Usefulness and Value scores than at product launch and also beating scores given for the original legacy application.
The only anomaly is the Readability score - only a 0.2 difference but equates to a -5.4% decline. This could be explained by the fact that there is more data available on display than the previous application. Also worth noting, only one Portfolio Manager gave readability a lower score.

Final comparison of metrics between legacy application and new application as of December 2024.

Legacy Application New Application (Dec 2024) Improvement %
Usefulness 3 3.7 +23%
Trustworthiness 2.3 4.5 +95.7%
Usability 2.7 3.8 +40.7%
Findability 2.7 5 +85.2%
Accessibility 3.3 4.2 +27.3%
Readability 3.7 3.5 -5.4%
Filtering & Sorting 1.3 4.2 +223.1%
Performance 3.3 3.7 +12.1%
Value 3 4 +33.3%
Time Savings 0 (Baseline) Moderate to Significant (3-5) +60 - 99%
Notes

Usefulness and Value scores still highly correlated.
Moderate to significant improvements all-round, except for Readability score, most likely due to so much more data available with more data columns and nested data rows.
After six months of real use, Time savings are quantifiable, ranging from a quoted 60% to 99% reduction in time-on-task (from 10 days down to 1-2 hours = 99% reduction).
Work is ongoing throughout 2025 to enhance the product further, deliver more value to users, and hopefully improve that annoying Readability score!

Summary

Coming soon

A Small Selection

Testimonials

I had a very good experience working with Yooch. He is passionate about producing best in class UX at the same time is very reasonable about what can and can't be achieved by a team of developers during each of the iterations.

He also has a good grasp of modern product and software development methodologies and understands UX role in both very well.

The system that Yooch was in charge of UX for was received very well, adoption experience for users was smooth, which I believe is due to a well thought through user experience.

— Sergey C. Product Owner.

Sergey worked with Yooch on the same team at Insight Investment

Since Yooch joined my team as the Senior UX designer in late 2021, I have been working very closely with him on building the end to end user journey for Insight Investment's new trading application.

His depth of experience in UX design and understanding of users' real needs are phenomenal. He was a valuable contributor to the team and project from the very beginning.

He has an easiness to building excellent interpersonal relationships with team members as well as FO business users, such as traders and fund managers.

He really values the user centric design approach and actively promotes the key design principles during the project and through an inspiring workshop hosted by him.

It is rare to find a highly experienced creative talent like Yooch, who has the perfect combination of expertise in UX, great understanding of digital technologies, as well as in-depth knowledge of the financial industry.

Yooch is a real joy to work with, I will recommend him highly without reservation.

— Qiong L. Principal Quant Business Analyst

Qiong worked with Yooch on the same team at Insight Investment

Yooch and I started at Insight around the same time, and I have the pleasure of working with him building a new platform called Order Modelling and Dealing. The platform is being developed to allow Dealers and Portfolio Managers to create multi-asset order packages, view pre-trade prices using quotes from Bloomberg and view various risk metrics all in real time.

From early in the project, it was evident that Yooch is a highly skilled and creative designer with a deep understanding of user-centered design principles. He has great ability to deconstruct complex problems and turn them into intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that are visually pleasing, easy to use, modern, and effective.

Yooch has strong background in finance and has good technical knowledge in the current web technologies. This helps him see the implementation challenges and he goes the extra mile and provides working version of his designs using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Yooch is a real pleasure to work with, he is always cheerful, very collaborative, has time to hear others' opinion and takes any comments from team members positively.

I strongly recommend Yooch for any UX design project, he will be a great addition to the team.

— Venugopal M. Senior Developer

Venugopal worked with Yooch on the same team at Insight Investment

I have worked alongside Yooch on two different front office product teams, working on Portfolio Management tools.

He has a great ability to break down very complex requirements when building financial tools, and turning them into precise, detailed, and clear designs. He actively promotes a user focused approach to building software, with a great balance between creative design and technical feasibility.

It is also great to have his help as an intermediary when working with front office users - analysts, traders, portfolio managers, etc. As well as his experience in UX design, he has an in depth knowledge of the financial industry, which makes working on complex projects with tight deadlines a lot smoother with him on board!

He often goes the extra mile when providing designs, such as providing HTML prototypes, and is extremely open to feedback.

His overall attitude, depth of experience, and collaborative approach makes him a pleasure to work with!

— Katie M. Business Analyst

Katie worked with Yooch on the same teams at Insight Investment

Yooch is a highly valued UX designer. At Insight, he regularly demonstrates an exceptional ability to transform complex business processes into intuitive, engaging user experiences.

He stays ahead of industry trends, ensuring our designs align with the latest best practices while encouraging the team to uphold high UI/UX standards.

Beyond his technical expertise, Yooch is a strong communicator and a dedicated team player who consistently goes the extra mile to drive our development efforts forward.

— Matthew G. Software Developer

Matthew worked with Yooch on the same team at Insight Investment

Yooch has been such a supportive and impactful colleague, always making an effort to create a great team culture — or maybe it's just his natural talent. He's definitely one of the key figures holding the team together.

He's super active in sharing knowledge, whether about work or his life experiences, and that makes a big difference for everyone around him. Regarding his area — UX — he's incredibly reliable, always producing practical and thoughtful solutions. Everything he delivers is backed by his years of experience and solid professional expertise.

Working with him has been a genuine pleasure. Working alongside someone so passionate and dependable has not only been inspiring but also a highlight of my time on the team.

— Lai W. Developer

Lai worked with Yooch on the same team at Insight Investment

More testimonials

You can find 3 more testimonials from colleagues at Insight Investment in the testimonials section.

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