Moneyboat
A 5-month embedded design engagement at a regulated UK fintech - shipped across loan application UX, portal redesign and home page optimization inside a data-driven, A/B testing product team.
At a Glance
Embedded part-time designer at Evergreen Finance (Moneyboat.co.uk), covering a maternity leave. Operated across the full product team - working with product managers, developers, copywriter, compliance, marketing and data - presenting outcomes to stakeholders throughout.
User journey map, competitive research, UX and UI for homepage redesign, new application form, loan calculator, approved page, account creation, marketing opt-in for external leads, portal redesign.
Shipped 10+ features and design improvements within a regulated FCA environment, contributing to A/B tests with measurable conversion impact across the application funnel.
The Engagement
Found through LinkedIn, recruited by HR and hired after two professional interviews with the Product Manager, Head of Product and CTO. The contract was freelance but the role was anything but external - I was embedded in the team's daily rhythm, working every Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday for 5 months. I attended online team meetings, presented design outcomes in front of stakeholders across product, dev, compliance, marketing and data, and operated as the go-to designer for whatever the product needed. Towards the end of the engagement, I worked directly with the returning designer on a smooth handoff.
Inside The Team
Moneyboat is a short-term lending brand under Evergreen Finance; a 100+ person company authorized and regulated by the FCA. The product team I joined included 2 product managers (1 for portal, 1 for the website), a head of product and a product strategist. Every design decision operated within compliance constraints - legal sign-off was part of the process, not a formality. The team ran structured A/B tests tracked via Mixpanel and the PM I worked closest with was expert-level at data analysis. This wasn't a team that shipped on instinct - everything was measured.
UX Foundation
Before touching UI, I built the strategic groundwork. A full user journey map documented the loan application flow end-to-end - from home page entry to funded loan - surfacing friction points across the funnel and giving the team a shared reference across product, design, dev and compliance. Alongside this, competitive research analyzed how other UK lenders handled CTA copy, application flows and trust signals, directly feeding into home page and form decisions. UX work for both the home page redesign and the application form followed: restructuring information hierarchy, reducing cognitive load at critical decision points, ensuring every step stayed within FCA compliance requirements and raise the conversion rate is a must.
What I Shipped
Designed a pre-application loan calculator step that showed users their repayment plan before filling in the full form - tested as a transparency-first conversion lever.
Redesigned the post-approval CTA experience - A/B tested a new CTA that let approved users jump directly into the approval widget, with main KPI tracking Application Approved → Open Approval Widget conversion.
Redesigned the customer portal for returning borrowers - cleaner account experience with improved clarity across loan status, repayment and account management.
Restructured the loan application flow to reduce friction at the highest drop-off points - clearer steps, better hierarchy and compliance-safe language that didn't compromise usability.
Full UX and UI redesign of the home page - including CTA copy testing ("Apply Now" vs "Get Your Quote") and layout optimization to improve home page-to-form conversion.
Designed account creation flow and a marketing opt-in experience for external leads entering the funnel from paid channels.
A/B Testing
Operated within a fully instrumented A/B testing culture - every significant design change was validated through structured experiments tracked via Mixpanel before being considered for full rollout. Three tests ran during the engagement: a home page CTA copy test, a loan calculator pre-application step and an approved page CTA redesign. Each test had clearly defined hypotheses, controlled traffic splits and measurable conversion KPIs monitored across the full application funnel.
Core Tasks:
Home page → Form Submission conversion rate
Apply Now vs Get Your Quote CTA click-through rate
Application Approved → Open Approval Widget conversion
Approved → Funded rate
Time-to-sign and sign completion rate
Impact
Results
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