Challenge

Multiply needed to build a complete mortgage business and product offering from scratch in a matter of months.

The Multiply team was well versed in building pure software solutions for consumer fintech, but this shift required building a complete product offering and brand awareness with software, domain area experts, partner integrations and physical presence in a highly competitive and regulated field.

Discovery

Multiply’s first product offering was a line of credit for tech employees at pre-IPO companies to access their liquidity. Given the narrow audience, a niche financial offering that was difficult to explain and overall market conditions post-pandemic, that product struggled to find sustainable growth.

However, in analyzing product usage and user interviews, our team discovered an interesting opportunity for the next product offering. Of the users utilizing our existing line of credit product, the vast majority of them were borrowing for a home purchase. This insight changed the course of our company, with an ambitious pivot to a completely new product offering and ultimately, a new company identity…

Design

Testing the concept

To move quickly and validate the product offering, I designed the first version of our mortgage offering to deploy in our existing product framework, available only to our existing company partners. We handled the upper funnel and routed customers to a third party partner for mortgage services.

We monitored usage and conducted user interviews with users to iterate and build the full product.

Key findings:

• Users were intrigued by preferred mortgage pricing as an employee benefit
• Although users had trust in the employer, they wanted more content from Multiply Mortgage or a dedicated website or contact to learn more

Designing the brand

As we began to service our first mortgage customers and started recruiting mortgage industry experts, I explored repositioning the brand to launch the product publicly. Instead of a radical rebrand, I chose to expand and deepen the original brand elements to create a new identity that could support the original product, our new mortgage offering and any future products in a cohesive presentation.

After testing a few treatments in interviews, advertising, and onsite placements at open houses, we arrived at a final direction that resonated well with our target homebuyers and realtors in the launch locales.

Key findings:

• The existing Multiply brand elements were unique in the mortgage space and offered a strong baseline for differentiation
• Home buying is aspirational - potential homebuyers wanted to see evocative home imagery and refined presentation
• Simplicity and sophistication were important in building trust and aligning with high end property favored by the target market

Updating the full experience

With the basic functionality built in our existing framework, I worked with eng behind the scenes to iterate and extend our templates and features while updating the presentation to complement the updated visual branding.

We built a flexible, responsive system to build and deploy components quickly across a range of sizes from desktop to mobile, with the ability to adjust styles and presentation as needed.

Using the system components and styles, we iterated quickly on the primary touchpoints of the consumer experience. The website introduced the new brand and provided multiple entry points to a comprehensive but easy-to-use loan application, with a supporting dashboard to track loan progress and successfully complete a home purchase or refinance.

Key features:

• Meeting users where they are - Unlike our first financial product, many users and agents wanted access to mortgage services at home and on the go
• Guidance at every step - Users had a clear dedicated agent to contact at every step as well as in-context help to explain each task
• Refined simplicity - A clean, modern look builds trust and affinity for the experience

Delivery

The final launch was a seamless customer journey from application to closing.

At the end of our first year, we had connected an evolving series of proprietary and external systems within a newly rebranded and unified front-end customer experience servicing a growing customer base.

Results

Additionally, our company nearly doubled in size over the year, expanding to multiple offices across the US to provide full coverage to customers in 47 states.