Mandate Access

Problem

A customer who needed to grant or manage mandate access on the access bond of a joint home loan had two options: go into a branch, or call the service centre. Both depended on staff availability, branch hours and queue times, for an administrative action on their own account.

Outcome

The Challenge

Granting mandate access on the access bond of a joint home loan is an administrative action a customer takes on their own account. It required going into a branch or waiting on a phone line.

Beyond the time cost, the process gave customers no visibility. Once paperwork was submitted, there was no way to check whether a mandate was active, pending, or had been actioned at all.

Objectives

• Move the full process into the app — request, grant, revoke and track.
• Meet every legal and regulatory requirement — consent that holds up under scrutiny.
• Give customers status visibility — which the paper process never provided.
• Reduce operational cost and call volume — in line with the bank's digital strategy.

Mapping what the process actually cost

I mapped the branch and call centre process in full and put it in front of the stakeholders who had stopped noticing it. Branch delays, paperwork confusion, and no visibility into mandate status once submitted.

Seeing it laid out as a journey created the alignment to push for a genuinely different solution, rather than a digitised version of the same friction.

Mapping both sides

The journey had to work for two people: the participant requesting the mandate, and the second participant granting access.

Mapping both showed where a digital solution could deliver the most value.

Designing the flows

Once stakeholders aligned on the journey maps, I designed multiple flow options covering the full range of mandate scenarios.

Feasibility in parallel, not after

I worked directly with the solution architect to run an impact assessment early — which parts of the mandate process could be digitised on the existing stack, and what needed backend development or legal adaptation.

That shaped the design scope instead of becoming a checkpoint after the design was finished.

Designing inside the constraints

Using the app design system, I produced wireframes covering the core flows, consent mechanisms, error states and success messaging. Working sessions with legal and compliance at each stage kept the interface compliant without making it unusable.

The core design

A self-service mandate management system inside the mobile app. Joint account holders can request, grant and revoke access bond mandates without calling the service centre or going into a branch.

For anyone registered for digital banking, that is full ownership of a process that used to need a trip to the bank.

Results

The journey is live on iOS and Android. Requests that used to mean a branch queue or a call centre hold are now completed in the app.

The customer can see the status at every step — the one thing the paper process never gave anyone.

Lessons

Good solutions come out of teams, not handovers. As the designer on a regulated project, legal, compliance and technical were in the room throughout. Working in cohesion with them is what made a viable solution possible.

Good design is iterative. The first solution is rarely the right one. Testing and refining until it actually works is the part that matters.