Choices Wealth App
Choices Wealth eApp – Empowering Seamless Asset Transfers
Choices Wealth eApp – Empowering Seamless Asset Transfers
Our goal was to grow our business by supporting members transitioning from their employer plan into Sun Life Choices. By delivering a seamless, intuitive, and secure digital experience that empowers members to confidently transfer and manage their assets, we aimed to increase both engagement and revenue. Through this work, we achieved the following business results:
Average deposits
+26%
Revenue growth
68%
Exceeded 2024 sales target
+$45M
Organization: Sun Life
My role: UX Director
Led the design strategy and oversight across the end-to-end member experience
Team members:
UX Leads: Sneka Sampath
UX Designers: Jennifer Chenosky/Omar Ragheeb
UX Writers: James Hrivnak
Design Coach: Samanthi Jayetileke
As workforce mobility continues to rise, employees are changing jobs more frequently than ever before. Ensuring a seamless transition of retirement and investment assets has therefore become a critical business priority.
The Choices Wealth eApp was developed to address this need — an omni-channel digital solution that empowers members to self-serve the movement of their assets with ease and confidence. Accessible through both mobile and web platforms, the tool delivers a consistent and intuitive experience for members.
Launched in October 2020, Choices represents a key step in modernizing the wealth transition experience and strengthening the organization’s digital service ecosystem.
Analysis of usage data and testing of the current state revealed several key challenges:
Mobile adoption since Q2 2023 has been lower than expected.
High drop-off on landing pages and at critical decision points on both web and mobile.
FSCs lacked clarity on what Choices offers, limiting their ability to guide members effectively.
Members experienced confusion around moving pensions and navigating complex product offerings.
The overall product complexity created friction in decision-making and reduced user confidence.
Addressing these challenges was essential to improving engagement, simplifying workflows, and delivering a clear, user-centred experience across channels.
The Choices Wealth eApp presented a significant opportunity to enhance the member experience by leveraging new capabilities and insights:
New Data Availability: Vesting and unlocking breakdowns for pensions, previously unavailable, could now be exposed to members in the platform, providing greater transparency and clarity.
Design Sprint Insights: During a six-day design sprint, the team identified several enhancement opportunities:
Leverage new data where and when it makes the most sense for members.
Communicate complex terms, such as vesting and unlocking, in clear, easy-to-understand language.
Ensure critical information is available to members at the right time in their decision-making journey.
Simplify the overall experience by reducing the number of pages and condensing workflows.
These opportunities provided a clear roadmap to make the Choices Wealth eApp more intuitive, transparent, and member-centric.
To address the identified challenges and capitalize on emerging opportunities, we took a structured, user-centered approach combining research, strategy, and iterative design:
Feature Alignment & Lean Strategy: Applied a lean value proposition canvas to prioritize features that addressed the most critical member and business needs.
Design Research & Workshops: Conducted multiple workshops and stakeholder discussions to align on goals, clarify requirements, and ensure the solution was positioned around the needs of our largest clients.
Holistic Journey Ideation: Mapped end-to-end member journeys to identify pain points, opportunities, and touchpoints for improvement.
Design Sprint & Iteration: Ran a six-day design sprint to rapidly prototype concepts, followed by four full design iterations and five rounds of user testing to validate and refine solutions.
Journey Refinement & Focus: Optimized the experience by simplifying workflows, condensing pages, and delivering key information at the right decision points.
Data-Driven Improvements: Leveraged newly available vesting and unlocking breakdowns to provide members with timely, actionable insights.
Results: These efforts led to measurable improvements in user experience, including a significant increase in the SUM (Single Usability Metric) score from 85.4% to 95.7%, demonstrating enhanced clarity, usability, and overall satisfaction.
The design enhancements and strategic improvements implemented in the Choices Wealth eApp have delivered significant business and user experience results:
Revenue Growth: Average sales per week increased by 68%, rising from $5.24M to $8.87M since launch.
Higher Member Engagement: Average enrolments per day grew by 34%, from 14.9 to 19.9.
Improved Conversion Rates: Conversion on enrolment steps increased from 23.5% to 29.9% (+27%), meaning more users who click through from the landing page are completing the process.
Larger Self-Serve Deposits: The average deposit for self-serve enrolments rose 26%, from $50.5K to $63.8K, reflecting increased member confidence and engagement.
Ongoing Iteration: While initial click-through rates rose post-launch and have since stabilized, continued refinements throughout 2024 and 2025 have driven steady improvement.
Exceeding Targets: The platform was $45M ahead of its incremental sales target for 2024, demonstrating strong business impact.
Data-Driven Design Matters: Leveraging new data points allowed informed design decisions that directly improved member understanding and confidence.
Iterative, User-Centered Process Delivers Results: Multiple design iterations, user testing rounds, and workshops ensured the solution met real user needs while aligning with business goals.
Simplification Drives Engagement: Condensing workflows, clarifying terminology, and delivering critical information at the right moments significantly increased conversion and enrolment metrics.
Cross-Functional Collaboration is Critical: Close collaboration with FSCs, internal operations, and stakeholders helped ensure the solution addressed both member and organizational needs.
Continuous Improvement Pays Off: Even after launch, ongoing iteration and refinement have sustained and extended gains in engagement, conversion, and revenue.
There’s more to me than what you see here. If you’d like to know more, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss how my experience can help you continue to elevate your company’s digital presence and overall brand.