About Shriram finance

Shriram Housing Finance Limited (SHFL), a part of a 40-year-old Chennai-based Shriram Group, focuses on helping people own their dream homes.

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How it started

Sriram, Veterans in the home loan industry wanted to shift from agent-led to self-service for home loan applications. Increasing smartphone and smart device usage, increased connectivity, and high-end customer experience drive the digital transformation trend, bringing banking solutions to customers' homes. This ever-changing market requires traditional banks to keep up with new technologies and operating models that keep them focused on the customer throughout the entire process.

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Sriram's Chief Digital Officer approached us to design an app that would help them transform their offline loan application procedure into an automated online process.

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Defining The Problem

We had in-depth discussions with the Stakeholders and we realized that while the company and executives have been in this business for years, the users are first-time borrowers who know little about loans. Hence, in this project, it became clear that we had to rely heavily on user testing to make the right design decisions.

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Design Challenge

Many of the users were first-time loan applicants and knew nothing about it.

How do we help users from T-2 & T-3 towns navigate the complexity of taking a home loan, without an agent?

• The digital experience is as good as -- if not better :) -- meeting and working with a friendly sales agent. 
• Design an experience that naturally works in multiple languages.
• Address the emotional nuances of homebuyers.
• A 5-star rating by the majority of the users after completing their journey.

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Our Approach

Our team carried out a competitive analysis of the other players in the market to identify the loan timelines, and documentation asked, and identify both the pros and cons of such portals. All insights generated through these activities fed into creating the design directions and deciding on the UI benchmarks for SHF.
After completing thorough competitive research and drawing inspiration from the best, we established our component diagram and structured UI elements to align with the app's ultimate objective. With the components solidified, we advanced to the wireframing stage, which served as the basis for user testing.

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User Testing

User testing is one of the crucial stages of the design process. It helps us

• Redefine the problems
• Understand the user's needs better
• The conditions of use
• How people think, behave, and feel.

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And we only just begun

The app is now rolling out into 7 regional languages and is poised to make a dent in the lending sector.

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Benefits

This transition enabled the organization to shift from a physical to a digital presence.

Users can conveniently apply for home lone from the comfort of their own. No longer requires to visit the office

Users can apply for the loan in their preferred language as the platform supports multiple languages.

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