Before/after: redesigning a fintech loan flow that cut application time from 14 to 7 minutes

Design · 6 min read

Lendly, an early-stage lending startup, had high intent but low conversion: many users abandoned loan applications midway through a 14-minute process that asked for granular financial details up front. The product team used form analytics to map exact abandonment points and ran 30 in-depth usability sessions to understand friction. The main problems were perceived time cost, unclear eligibility, and repeated data-entry across steps.

Design changes focused on reducing perceived cost and eliminating redundant inputs. The team introduced an eligibility guardrail on the landing screen that used three simple inputs (income range, employment status, and credit band) to give an instant pre-qualification percentage. They shifted identity and bank verification to the end, and used single-sign OAuth for bank connections to replace manual entry. Microcopy explained why each piece of sensitive information was needed, with inline security reassurances.

After deployment, completion time dropped from a median 14 minutes to 7 minutes, and conversion improved by 38% on the primary funnel. Drop-offs that used to cluster around the income verification step almost vanished. Engineering investments included a short-term mapping layer to reconcile legacy back-end DTOs with the new front-end flow; product leadership accepted the technical debt to prioritize UX wins.

Lessons: show eligibility early, move costly operations later, and remove duplicate data entry. Lendly also found that minor microcopy changes — clarifying the purpose of a Social Security field and adding a small trust badge for bank OAuth — materially influenced trust and completion rates.