Citizens Bank: HELOC FastLine

Transforming Home Equity Lending at Citizens Bank

Executive Summary

Created Citizens Bank's flagship HELOC product with a strong UX-centric leadership and design approach that resulted in a new experience and #1 market position.

+$10.1B

in Originations (+26.3%)

+50%

Faster application time

80+

NPS score (+20 points)

My Role as UX Director

  • Crisis Leadership: Inherited a struggling project and reset the foundation. Brought in a new design team (Principal Designer and Senior UX Designer) and facilitated ways-of-working sessions that transformed collaboration from waterfall to iterative partnership, earning stakeholder trust.

  • Strategic Reframing: Shifted team mindset from "replicate vendor solution" to "design something better,” unlocking innovation and securing buy-in for a superior approach that achieved #1 market position.

  • Research & Discovery: Directed comprehensive discovery process including research audit, behavioral personas (new vs. existing customers), gap analysis of vendor solution, and iterative usability testing that de-risked delivery and informed design decisions.

  • Product Strategy: Directed design of multiple post-MVP releases, including Multi-Offer, Debt Consolidation, Save & Return, GoalBuilder, and UX Improvements. Introduced feasibility matrices to prioritize optimization opportunities identified through heuristic benchmark analysis.

  • Organizational Impact: Created templates and standards for cross-functional collaboration, now used bank-wide. Shifted the UX team from a reactive service model to a strategic partnership.

Project Overview

Timeline: 6-month MVP, with iterative releases over the first year

Team: Principal Designer, Senior UX Designer, Product Lead, Scrum Master, Tech Lead, Development Team

My Team: Managed two designers (Principal Designer + Senior UX Designer)

The Challenge

Strategic Context: Home equity lending was a critical revenue driver for Citizens, but the bank was losing market share to digital-first competitors. Research revealed a massive untapped opportunity: 36% of prospective HELOC applicants cited "origination hassle" as their primary reason for not applying, with 44% of those specifically mentioning paperwork complexity.

Meanwhile, many large banks had retrenched from the HELOC space after the financial crisis, resulting in little innovation in streamlining or digitizing the application process. We saw a first-mover advantage for whoever could crack the experience problem.

The legacy vendor solution was more than just expensive (fixed costs plus per-application fees). It prevented us from capturing this market opportunity with its poor, data-repetitive experience. Worse still, the project was in crisis: misaligned expectations had eroded trust between design and product teams, putting timeline, budget, and business outcomes at risk.

My Challenge: Turn around a struggling project while delivering a product that could achieve market leadership. I needed to rebuild trust with cross-functional partners, reframe the product vision, and provide UX that could drive measurable business results.

The Problems:

  • Business Problem: Expensive vendor solution with both fixed costs and per-application fees. Bringing functionality in-house would represent significant savings.

  • User Problem: Even existing customers had to re-enter all information because the vendor platform couldn't access saved data. The application was unnecessarily lengthy and frustrating.

The Solution

I rebuilt the design team and facilitated ways-of-working sessions to reset collaboration. While the business goal was to replace the vendor, I set a different UX goal: to use research to improve upon it. I coached designers on formulating strong recommendations and presenting them confidently, moving from waterfall handoffs to evidence-based partnership.

HELOC FastLine became a streamlined, intelligent application that:

  • Cut origination time by 50%

  • Reduced fields by half

  • Pre-filled data for existing customers

  • Provided a mobile-first, accessible experience

Post-MVP Enhancements

After the successful MVP launch, we delivered five major releases that expanded functionality and improved the experience:

  1. Multi-Offer: Enabled customers to view multiple offers when qualified, balancing transparency with simplicity

  2. Debt Consolidation: Added conditional offers for customers who could qualify through consolidation, expanding market reach

  3. Save & Return: Allowed users to save progress and complete applications across sessions

  4. GoalBuilder: Adapted platform to support HELOC as a credit card alternative

  5. UX Improvements: Used heuristic benchmark analysis and feasibility matrix to identify and prioritize experience optimizations

These releases transformed HELOC FastLine into a comprehensive financial wellness platform, solidifying our #1 market position.

Before and after UX Design

Design collaboration sessions in Figjam

The Citizens Bank UX team

Prioritizing improvements using a feasibility matrix

Iterative design using rapid testing techniques

New ceremonies for kicking off successful partnerships

Impact

Business Results:

  • Achieved #1 market position

  • $6.78B in funded credit (+31.4%)

  • $10.1B in originations (+26.3%)

  • $120M+ NPV

  • Eliminated expensive vendor fees

Customer Results:

  • Mid-80s Net Promoter Score (+20 points)

  • 50% faster application process

  • 50% fewer fields to complete

Industry Recognition:

  • Won 2023 Elevate Award for CX Excellence

Organizational Impact:

  • Transformed UX-Product-Tech collaboration at Citizens Bank

  • Created reusable templates and standards for cross-functional partnerships, now used across the organization

  • Shifted the UX team from a reactive service model to a strategic partnership

Key Takeaway

Process reset unlocked strategic thinking.

When I inherited this struggling project, stakeholders were skeptical. Resetting the team and process took time, and we had to rebuild trust incrementally. But by establishing research-driven practices and focusing on customer outcomes, we shifted from "copy the vendor" to creating something better and achieving the #1 market position.

This project proved that investing in a solid UX process and cross-functional relationships isn't overhead. It's what truly delivers strategic outcomes.

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