Kiwi Wealth was New Zealand’s government-backed managed fund and KiwiSaver provider, managing over $6 billion in assets. But investing still felt like it was built for people who already understood finance. Entry points were high, interfaces were complex, and the language assumed financial literacy.
Medium-income earners — the people who would benefit most from investing — were the ones least served by existing tools. Kiwi Wealth wanted to change that. The brief: build a new investment app from scratch that made investing feel accessible, personal, and obvious — even for someone who’d never invested before.
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Embedded with the product team to understand the real problem. Investing apps at the time were portfolio-first: show the user their balance, their fund allocations, their performance charts. For experienced investors, this makes sense. For someone investing their first $100, it’s overwhelming and meaningless.
The core problem: investing apps were built for people who already invest. The people Kiwi Wealth wanted to reach needed a completely different mental model.
Worked with the product manager, product owner, and scrum master to define the approach across a ~10-person team, I was the sole designer for 90% of the engagement.
The key strategic decision: intent-based investing, not portfolio-based. Instead of showing users a dashboard of funds and balances, design around what they actually want: I’m saving for my wedding. I’m saving for my retirement. I’m saving for my kids.
Designed the full product from concept to production:
Collaborated with the development team to ship v1 as a web application. Working as the sole designer on a 10-person team meant owning every design decision, from research and strategy through to production-ready design. Successfully launched v1 on time.
The app launched with the intent-based model that made investing personal rather than technical. Kiwi Wealth added 14,493 new KiwiSaver members and over $500 million in funds in the year ending March 2019.
In 2022, Kiwi Wealth was acquired by Fisher Funds, New Zealand’s most trusted KiwiSaver provider, a testament to the value built in the platform.
The design principles from this engagement, intent-first UX, removing financial jargon, goal-based framing, informed how I approach every complex product since. When you make a $6B investment platform feel obvious to a first-time investor with $100, you can make anything obvious.
