Redesigning Financial Data Investigation for Institutional Clients
Project
Enterprise Analytics Platform
Year
2026
Northern Trust's Investment Accounting & Analytics platform supports institutional insurance clients responsible for complex financial reporting and reconciliation. As lead designer and researcher, I partnered with clients, accounting leaders, and engineers to redesign the investigative workflow. As a result, we brought critical financial analysis back into the platform while establishing a scalable foundation for future modernization.
Scope of Work
The Opportunity.
Northern Trust set out to modernize an aging analytics platform that had seen little evolution since its original release. Beyond refreshing the interface, the initiative aimed to align the experience with the company's competitive landscape, design system, and long-term product strategy.
What began as a modernization effort quickly became an opportunity to rethink how professionals investigated financial data.
Original Portal
Research & Key Insights.
Research at a Glance
5 institutional insurance organizations
Executive stakeholders & insurance accountants
Stakeholder workshops
Competitive analysis
Concept validation
Key Insights
Users investigated in Excel, not the platform.
Accountants consistently exported Quick View Reports before beginning their investigation. Rather than refreshing dashboards, we redesigned the investigative workflow itself.
Different users needed different levels of information.
Executives looked for portfolio health at a glance, while accountants required progressively deeper analysis to understand financial variance.
Context mattered as much as the data itself.
Historical trends, drill-downs, and security-level investigation were essential to explaining financial change with confidence.
Client Feedback
The Solution.
Recognize Financial Change
Research revealed that accountants relied on exported reports to establish historical context before beginning any investigation.
We introduced Trend Analysis within Report Card, giving users a rolling 13-month view of Holdings, Income, and Amortized Cost so they could recognize meaningful changes without leaving the platform.
New Portal Landing Page
Report Card Holdings Full Page View
Trend Analysis Full Page View
Explain Financial Change.
Understanding that something changed was only the beginning.
We redesigned Change Analysis into a progressive investigative workflow, helping users move naturally from portfolio-level summaries to the individual securities driving financial variance.
Change Analysis Small Card
Change Analysis Full Page View
Change Analysis Security Level Drill-down & Controls
Return Faster.
Experienced users rebuilt the same workspace every time they logged in.
Personalized workspaces preserved filters, layouts, and portfolios so executives and accountants could begin working immediately from views tailored to their responsibilities.
Asset Scope Filtering
Workspace Dropdown Menu & Controls
Saving a New Workspace
Designing for What's Next.
Rather than treating modernization as a one-time redesign, we established a scalable foundation for future capabilities.
Future concepts included:
Cash Flow Forecasting
Benchmarking integration
AI-assisted investigation
Global expansion
Cross-platform integration
Net New Capabilities
Cashflow Forecasting Full Page View
Reflection.
This project reinforced an important lesson for me:
The most valuable design opportunities aren't always found in the interface, they're often found in the assumptions surrounding it.
What began as a modernization effort ultimately became an exercise in understanding why users had left the platform in the first place. That shift in perspective transformed the direction of the project and continues to shape how I approach enterprise design today.
