Helping lenders get started faster on Lendsqr's Admin Console

Lendsqr gives lenders the infrastructure they need to launch and manage digital lending products. As the platform grew, the back office became one of the most important touchpoints for new lenders. It was where they created an account, configured their lending business, explored the product, and took their first steps toward issuing loans.

But the experience had become harder to use over time. New features had been added, user flows had become more complex, and first-time lenders needed too much support to understand what to do next. The sign-up flow was also attracting the wrong audience: many people looking for loans were mistakenly signing up for the lender back office instead of going to Lendsqr’s lender directory.

I redesigned the back office experience to make onboarding clearer, guide users based on intent, reduce setup friction, and introduce a more consistent design system for the product team to build on.

The problem

1. The wrong users were entering the product

A large portion of sign-up traffic came from borrowers who were looking for loans, not lenders who wanted to use Lendsqr’s infrastructure. About 80% of sign-up traffic was coming from borrowers, even though the back office was built for lenders.

The team had tried to solve this with a disclaimer on the sign-up page stating that Lendsqr did not give out loans. But this did not work well enough. Borrowers still entered the flow, and the warning created a poor first impression.

2. Lenders were taking too long to get started

The onboarding flow asked users to complete too many steps before they could access the product. Some of these steps were important eventually, but not all of them were necessary before a lender could begin exploring the back office.

This increased time-to-access and made the product feel heavier than it needed to be.

3. New users did not know what to do after sign-up

Even after completing onboarding, for a product like this, lenders still needed guidance. The existing “Getting Started” experience relied heavily on guides and information links. It gave users resources, but not enough direction, leaving users unsure of what action to actually take first and see value early on.

4. The interface had become inconsistent

As new features were added, UI patterns became less consistent. This made the experience feel fragmented and created extra work for design and engineering whenever new features needed to be shipped.

My role

I led the product design work across the redesign, from problem framing and UX audit to interface design, prototyping, design QA, and design system creation.

I was the sole designer on the project and worked closely with 2 engineers, 1 product manager, and the founder, who was actively involved throughout the process. The redesign took about 3 months across design and development.

My work covered:

• Auditing the existing onboarding and back office experience
• Reviewing findings from an external UX audit
• Identifying gaps in the sign-up, onboarding, and early activation flows
• Redesigning the sign-up journey to segment lenders and borrowers earlier
• Streamlining onboarding by moving non-critical setup tasks into the product
• Redesigning the Getting Started experience to make it more action-oriented
• Introducing default loan products to help users experience value faster
• Creating the foundations for the Pecunia Design System
• Supporting implementation through design QA
• Validating the experience through usability testing before and after the redesign

Goals

The redesign focused on five product and business goals within a tight 3-month design and development timeline:

1. Help the right users enter the right journey
2. Reduce the time it took lenders to complete onboarding
3. Help new users understand what to do after sign-up
4. Reduce support requests caused by basic onboarding and navigation issues
5. Create a more consistent design foundation for future product development

Constraints

The redesign had to happen within a tight delivery timeline, which meant I could not redesign the entire back office at once.

We prioritised the highest-impact parts of the platform, especially onboarding and early setup, because those were the areas creating the most friction for users and the business. This constraint also shaped the decision to introduce a design system. Even when a screen was outside the immediate redesign scope, engineers could still use the new component patterns to refactor and improve parts of the product more consistently.

The broader redesign and UX improvements across the rest of the platform continued later when I joined the company full time.

The solution

1. Segmenting users before sign-up

To reduce misaligned sign-ups, I redesigned the start of the onboarding flow to capture user intent before the rest of the onboarding flow.

Instead of relying on a passive disclaimer, users were now asked to choose whether they were a lender trying to use Lendsqr or a borrower looking for a loan. Lenders continued into the back office onboarding flow, while borrowers were directed to the lender directory.

This added one extra screen, but it solved a more expensive problem: the wrong users entering the product. The tradeoff was worth it because it improved lead quality, reduced confusion, and helped the team focus support on actual lenders.

2. Reducing onboarding from seven steps to three

I simplified the onboarding flow by separating what users needed before entering the product from what they could complete later.

The original flow had seven setup steps, but not all of them were necessary upfront.

Old Onboarding Flow
Profile Creation → Basic Information → Email Verification → Business Information → Address Information → Documents Upload → Link a Bank Account

I kept the essential steps in onboarding and moved the rest into the product, where lenders had more context and could complete setup at the right time.

New Onboarding Flow
Profile Creation → Basic Information (Improved) → Email Verification

This reduced onboarding time from over 10 minutes to about 3–5 minutes without removing important configuration work.

3. Turning “Getting Started” into an action-oriented experience

I redesigned the Getting Started experience to help users act, not just read.

Instead of presenting users with a list of guides, the new experience focused on clear setup actions. Users could see what they needed to do next, such as booking their first loan, sharing their customer web app, setting up 2FA, or inviting team members.

This made the experience more practical and helped new lenders move from onboarding into meaningful product use.

Guides and resources were still available, but they became supporting material rather than the main onboarding experience.

4. Introducing default loan products to help lenders reach value faster

One of the most important moments for a new lender is understanding how the loan booking experience works. But setting up loan products from scratch could be time-consuming, especially for users who were still exploring the platform.

This delayed the moment when users could experience the value Lendsqr had to offer.

I worked with stakeholders to introduce default loan products for new users. These were pre-configured around common use cases, allowing lenders to test and understand the loan booking experience without first building everything from scratch.

Defaults reduced setup effort and helped users experience value earlier. Instead of starting with a blank configuration process, users had something functional to explore, test, and build on.

5. Creating a foundation the team could build on (Pecunia Design System)

Alongside the onboarding redesign, I created the foundation for Pecunia, Lendsqr’s back-office design system.

I conducted an audit of the existing interface and grouped repeated patterns across cards, buttons, inputs, actions, modals, popovers, navigation, empty states, and tables.

This audit became the foundation for Lendsqr’s design system for the back office.

The system standardised core UI elements, typography, colours, and reusable patterns as well as incorporating design tokens, so the product could scale with more consistency.

This helped engineers refactor faster and apply improvements to parts of the product that were outside the immediate redesign scope.

Pecunia Design System made the redesign more scalable because the team could continue improving the product with a shared visual and interaction language.

Results

The redesign improved the quality of users entering the product, reduced onboarding friction, and gave the team a stronger foundation to keep improving the back office.

60% fewer misaligned borrower sign-ups
The new intent-selection screen helped borrowers take the right path before entering the lender back office.

Onboarding time reduced to 3–5 minutes
By reducing the upfront flow from seven steps to three, lenders could access the product faster and complete additional setup later.

Less post-onboarding confusion
The redesigned Getting Started experience gave users clearer next steps after account setup.

Faster product refactoring
Pecunia gave engineers reusable patterns they could apply beyond the screens redesigned within the initial timeline.

What shipped

The first release focused on the full onboarding journey, from a user entering the product to completing lender account setup. The Pecunia Design System was also introduced alongside this work so the team could implement the redesign consistently and extend improvements across the product.

Further UX improvements to the rest of the application continued later as the product evolved.

What this project taught me

This project showed me that onboarding is not just about reducing steps. It is about helping the right users reach the right value at the right time.

The biggest shift was moving from a setup-heavy experience to one that helped lenders enter the product faster, understand what to do next, and continue configuring their workspace with more context.

It also reinforced the value of design systems in product work. Pecunia did not just improve UI consistency; it helped the team move faster, refactor more confidently, and extend improvements beyond the original redesign scope.