Launching a savings product to stabilise growth at Sharesies
Snapshot
Role: Product Design Lead — Investing & Saving
Product: Save (web & mobile)
Timeline: 6 months (MVP)
Impact: $146M deposited, 46k accounts opened in first quarter
I led the design strategy and delivery of Sharesies’ first interest-bearing Savings product, expanding the platform beyond investing to create a more stable customer and revenue model.
Context & Problem
Sharesies is an investment platform operating across New Zealand and Australia, with a mission to give someone with $5 the same money opportunities as someone with $5 million.
While the platform was growing steadily through new investment features, customer activity — and business performance — was tightly coupled to market conditions. When markets dipped, engagement and balances followed.
The question we needed to answer was:
“Could Sharesies introduce a new product that aligned with our mission while making the business more resilient to market volatility?”
A board paper proposed expanding into savings — a product that could provide customers with stability and the business with a more consistent revenue stream.
The Challenge
Design and launch an interest-bearing Savings product that:
Aligned with Sharesies’ mission
Earned customer trust
Integrated cleanly into an investment-first platform
Ships an MVP within 6 months
My Role & Team
As Product Design Lead for the Investing team, I partnered closely with Product and Engineering leads to define strategy, scope the MVP, and lead design delivery across web and mobile.
Core team: Product Manager, Product Lead, Engineering Lead, Product Design Lead (me), Business Analyst, Tax Specialist, Marketing Lead, and 3 engineers
Wider contributors: UX Researcher, Content Writer, Legal Counsel
I owned:
Experience strategy and information architecture
End-to-end product design for Savings
Usability testing and iteration
Design delivery through to launch
Research & Key Insights
I combined competitor analysis with qualitative interviews (8 customers and non-customers) to understand attitudes toward saving vs investing.
Key insights that shaped the product:
People often use saving strategies like separating money from their main account
Even confident investors want quick access to savings
Trust matters more for savings — bank backing increases confidence
Fees, rules, and restrictions are strong deterrents
Rather than leaning into complex features, the opportunity was clear:
simple, flexible, trustworthy saving — without friction.
Strategic Decisions
1. Partnering with a Major Bank
Based on research and feasibility constraints, Sharesies partnered with a major New Zealand bank to hold savings funds.
This allowed us to:
Offer bank-level trust without needing a banking licence
Provide a competitive interest rate
Remove account rules, fees, and withdrawal penalties
This decision fundamentally shaped the product experience.
2. Reworking the Platform Architecture
Savings was the second product on a previously single-product investment platform.
Early testing showed:
Most users expected to find Save in Explore
Users wanted to see the interest rate immediately
Some confusion between investing and saving needed to be addressed
I redesigned the platform information architecture to introduce:
A new Overview screen showing a customer’s full financial position
Nested product navigation that clearly separated Save and Invest
A structure designed to scale as new products were added
This was one of the highest-risk areas technically and required close collaboration across web, mobile, and engineering domains.
MVP Scope & Trade-offs
To meet the 6-month deadline, we deliberately focussed the MVP on core value:
Included
Open and close a Save account
Add and withdraw money
View balance and transactions
Deferred
Advanced account management
Multiple Save accounts
Automation and reporting features
I worked closely with Engineering to prioritise what not to build, ensuring the MVP shipped cleanly while leaving clear runway for iteration.
Delivery & Launch
I led design delivery through to release, working closely with engineers to manage the complexity introduced by platform-level IA changes.
To de-risk delivery:
I collaborated with engineering leads to slice the build across teams
Established shared ownership and sequencing
Maintained alignment across product, brand, and marketing
The Save product launched in April 2023 across web and mobile, alongside the new platform Overview experience.
Iteration & Growth
Post-launch, we used customer feedback and data to prioritise the next wave of improvements, including:
Running interest totals
Recurring transfers
Downloadable account reports
Multiple savings accounts
Interest payment notifications
Results
Measured after the first quarter post-launch:
46,000
Save accounts opened
$146M
deposited into Save
$1.5M
recurring transfers set up
The product significantly exceeded initial targets and became a core pillar of the platform.
Reflections
Designing for scale
Early focus on platform architecture ensured Save could grow without redesigning foundations.
Collaboration as leverage
Bringing Engineering and stakeholders into discovery and decision-making early built trust and accelerated delivery.
Customer clarity wins
Removing rules, fees, and friction — and clearly communicating trust — proved more valuable than complex feature sets.