All workFaraz Khan
FinVista

Enterprise Fintech · Native Android · Assisted Lending · Design System · Field Operations

FinVista: Architecting anAssisted Lending Operating System at Scale

Loan applications used to take days and ran on paper. I rebuilt the whole thing as an eleven-step Android journey for one of India's largest NBFCs.

FinVista
Case study
RoleSenior UX Lead (Product Architecture, Dual-Persona Workflows, Design System)
ScaleRs 30,000+ Cr loan portfolio · 25M+ customer accounts · 500+ Indian cities

The Challenge

The same Android phone has to work for two different people. A field agent gets through fifteen to twenty applications a day on a cheap handset, usually standing in a stockyard on a 4G signal that keeps dropping. Then they hand that same phone to the borrower for the photo, the consents, the OTP and the signature. There are over forty fields to fill in for one application, and the whole thing had to work for six lending products without building six separate apps.

Our Solution

The app has two states and switches between them. When the agent is using it, it is dense and quick to fill in. When they hand the phone over, the type gets bigger, the language gets plainer, and the internal notes come off the screen. The journey is eleven steps with one job on each screen, and every field is saved to the phone as you go, so a dropped signal does not cost you anything. Underneath is a design system of over a hundred components that the other five loan products reused as it was.

The first two screens are what the agent sees. The third is what the borrower sees once the phone has been handed over.
60%
faster loan processing
11
steps, one job per screen
6
verticals on one system
86
SUS, up from 58

01Operating Context and Enterprise Constraints

This was never going to be used in an office. The people using it are standing in vehicle stockyards and dealership lots, on company phones that cost about ten thousand rupees. Three things shaped the architecture:

Device and network diversityThe phones were budget Android handsets with very little memory, and the 4G signal dropped constantly in outdoor stockyards and busy dealerships.
Information overloadA single loan application needs more than forty separate pieces of information.
The multi-vertical mandateWe built it for two-wheeler loans first, but consumer durables, personal loans, used cars, tractors and three-wheelers all had to run on the same system.

The journey, screen by screen

These are the eleven steps in the order the agent works through them. On two of them the phone gets turned around: the credit bureau consent, and the key facts statement where the borrower signs.

  1. 01

    Sign in

    Sales and call centre staff

  2. 02

    Applications

    The queue, by stage

  3. 03

    Portfolio

    Store manager view

  4. 04

    Personal details

    Live photo, pre-filled KYC

  5. 05

    Address

    Current and correspondence

  6. 06

    Employment

    Income profiling

  7. 07

    Vehicle

    Asset selection

  8. 08HANDOFF

    Bureau consent

    Borrower checks the box

  9. 09HANDOFF

    Key facts

    Borrower signs with OTP

  10. 10

    Loan summary

    Amount, EMI, tenure

  11. 11

    Disbursed

    Funds released

Scroll sideways, and tap any screen to open it.

02The Core Innovation: Two Readers, One Screen

The thing that unlocked it was realising two completely different people were sharing one device. The app switches between two states, and three rules govern how it behaves:

A · High-throughput agent modeThe agent is doing fifteen to twenty of these a day, so this state is built for speed. The fields are packed in tight and the number pads are dedicated.
B · Sandboxed borrower handoffThe agent taps to hand over and the screen changes. Type goes up to 18 point, the dealership notes and risk scores are hidden, the wording gets simpler, and there is one decision to make.
C · Fail-safe state preservationEvery field is written to the phone as soon as it is filled in, so losing signal halfway round a showroom does not lose any of the work.
On the left the agent is entering data. On the right the phone has been handed over for consent.

03Architecture: Why the 11‑Step Modular Stepper Won

We tried long scrolling forms and we tried accordions, and both fell over on the cheap phones. The viewport jumped around unpredictably, and forty fields on one screen was more than anyone could hold in their head. So the journey became eleven separate steps with one job on each screen. It takes more taps that way, but nobody has to work out what to do next, and people finish faster.

The eleven steps

  1. 01Basic Details
  2. 02PAN Check
  3. 03HANDOFFAssisted KYC
  4. 04Income Profiling
  5. 05Asset Selection
  6. 06Loan Configurator
  7. 07Bank Validate
  8. 08HANDOFFE-Mandate Setup
  9. 09Down Payment
  10. 10Delivery Order
  11. 11Disbursement
The layout options we tried: the long scroll, the accordion, and the stepped wizard that shipped.

04Usability Testing and Iteration

I ran five rounds of moderated testing before we committed to the architecture, using high-fidelity Figma prototypes mirrored onto the same budget Android phones people would be using.

5
rounds
24
participants
Agents · store managers · borrowers
Figma on budget Android

Results

58→86
System Usability Scale
+28 pts
62%→94%
Task success rate
+32 pts

Two friction points resolved before launch

The long-scroll fatigue

Found. Scrolling through forty fields on one screen wore people out. They made more mistakes, and the viewport kept jumping on the cheaper phones.

Fixed. We split it into the eleven-step flow, so there is one task on the screen at a time.

Spatial disorientation

Found. Once it was split into steps, agents lost track of where they were, and the longer compliance checks made people anxious.

Fixed. We added two progress indicators side by side, one for how far through the whole journey you are and one for which step you are on.

The progress options we looked at on the left. On the right, what shipped: the journey percentage and the step count together, on every screen.

05Scaling Across the Business

The architecture also had to handle tractors, used cars and consumer durables. A design system of more than a hundred native Android components carried the same eleven-step logic across five more loan products.

100+ componentsBuilt on tokenised Material 3 foundations, covering colour, type, spacing, form controls, cards and sheets.
Same steps, different proofTractor loans replaced the salary fields with land revenue records. The steps themselves stayed exactly the same.
Express 4-step checkoutExisting customers taking a durables or personal loan get a pre-approved journey, which brings the eleven steps down to four.
The design system, covering colour roles, the type scale, spacing, controls, status and the handoff screens.

06Strategic Retrospective

Field learnings

  1. What looks good in Figma can be unreadable outdoors The 1px light-grey dividers looked refined on my screen and disappeared completely under midday sun in a stockyard. I changed the tokens to higher contrast, heavier borders, and a 16sp minimum on every field.
  2. Plan for the network being slow Credit bureau and bank checks regularly took four to eight seconds. Agents assumed nothing had happened and tapped submit again, which fired duplicate calls. Loading skeletons and debounced buttons stopped that.

Thank you

Thanks for reading.

Happy to walk through any part of this in more detail, including the decisions that did not make it.

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