Certificate of Deposit

Overview

Redesigned the end-to-end Certificate of Deposit (CD) experience on Techcombank Mobile (TCBM), balancing user needs with business objectives. Championed design thinking to transform a traditionally complex financial product, successfully navigating legal and technical constraints.
Result: CD balance on Techcombank Mobile channel grew 24x by end of 2023, with a 3x increase in EOP customers compared to 2022.

Role: Product designer
Timeline: January to March, 2023

Introduction

In early 2023, our team at Techcombank was tasked with improving the experience of acquiring and trading Certificates of Deposit (CD) on the Techcombank Mobile (TCBM) app.
Traditionally a financial product aimed at affluent customers, CD came with a complex trading mechanism and large ticket sizes, making it challenging for retail users to adopt. This project offered an opportunity to apply enterprise design thinking to simplify a traditional banking product while balancing legal, technical, and business constraints.
The business goals were clear: by increasing CD balance, the bank would improve the capital adequacy ratio, reduce liquidity risk, and increase profitability by optimizing costs for medium- and long-term deposits. However, the user experience needed a significant overhaul to make CD accessible to a broader retail audience.

CD experience redesign project sharing at Digital Office Town Hall, May 2023

Initial problem

The existing CD experience on the TCBM was designed for affluent customers—self-directed, tech-savvy individuals with a risk-taking attitude and strong financial literacy. However, this narrow focus resulted in a product that was intimidating and confusing for mass retail users. Key challenges included:

1. Big ticket size
The minimum investment (initially 100M VND) deterred retail customers with smaller cash flows.

2. Complex trading mechanism
The ability to trade CDs between individuals and organizations for liquidity added layers of complexity, with unfamiliar terminology and processes.

3. Low comprehension
Even affluent customers with personal banker (RM) support struggled to understand CD’s value proposition compared to simpler alternatives.

User research

To understand the as-is experience, I collaborated with our User Experience Researcher (UXR) to conduct usability testing (UT) and concept testing. We focused on comprehension and the product’s value proposition, targeting both existing affluent customers and potential retail users.

Key findings:

1. Existing customers confused
Even affluent customers with trading experience found CD ’s value proposition unclear, frequently asking questions and expressing frustration.

2. Low motivation, high effort
The unclear beneift of stepped-interest rates, and the complicated transfer mechanism and jargon-heavy descriptions made users prefer simpler term deposits (TD).

Opportunity

1. People plan short term
According to our prior research on Vietnamese Financial Wellbeing, 56.8% of participants planned short-term with their horizons being less than 3 months. During the investment opportunity exploration, customers only have two choices: one is to leave money in a regular account without receiving interest, two is to deposit short-term savings and accept the possibility of losing interest when withdrawing before maturity. Both of these options are not optimal in terms of finance and psychology for customers.

2. Customers with high volume idle cash
Household merchants and micro business owners are customers who regularly use the TCBM as a channel to receive payments from customers. Therefore, their accounts often have a large amount of idle money that needs to be optimized for interest.

3. The need to optimize daily money
With the above insights, term savings products have not met the need to optimize profits for idle money. Meanwhile, CD allow customers to enjoy interest according to the number of days held.

Usability Testing, Jan 2023
Focused on comprehension attribute and CD’s value proposition

With these insights, I reframed the challenge: instead of just simplifying interactions, we aimed to support customers’ decision-making by filling experience gaps. The product team—comprising 1 UX Designer (UXD), 1 UXR, 1 UX Writer (UXW), a Product Owner (PO), Business Analyst (BA), and a development team (1 SA, 1 BE, 2 FE iOS, 2 FE Android)—worked collaboratively to design solutions.

Reframing the challenge

With the research results, before starting to propose solutions, I reframed the challenge: Instead of simply simplifying user interactions on the TCBM app, the design goal is to support the customer's decision-making process.

As-is experience map

We mapped the current journey, identifying pain points (e.g., confusion over trading mechanisms) and motivations (e.g., optimizing idle cash). This artifact acted as the blueprint to guide our design solutions.

Solutions

Our redesign focused on three key phases of the user journey: triggering interest, evaluating options, and completing the purchase.

A. Design for decision making

In the comparison step, to reduce the effort made to understand by customers, the value proposition for the savings products was re-designed, highlighting the differences in (1) interest rate, (2) time, (3) starting amount, with specific scenario examples.
Along with that, we adopted a content strategy of progressive disclosure for CD product page, from concise key benefits and illustrative example for the standard users to detailed and complex product specs, trading mechanism and more for the discerning ones.

B. Interest calculator: Don’t make me math

Instead of explaining complex mechanism of a CD transferring transaction, I offered a ‘test drive' as an opportunity for learning by doing, to alleviate anxiety that naturally occurs when deciding on a big ticket - high complexity purchase.
At first, the Interest Calculator’s “test drive” feature confused some users about whether it was a demo or live tool. Switching to dark mode clarified its purpose, boosting usability.

C. Buy on your own pace

For big ticket size product like CD, confidence level will increase if customers have extra time to review the transaction before hitting confirm. Faster isn't always better. That's why I use the ux tweak - loading, giving the feeling of the system processing and returning the transaction results, increasing the buyer's confidence.

D. Start with 50M VND

One of the obstacles of CD is the large ticket size. With the goal of bringing the product to the mass users, the project team has persuaded the business to reduce the ticket size by a half to 50M VND (later to 10M VND).

Result

The redesigned CD experience launched in 2023, yielding impressive outcomes by year-end:

Customer growth¹: The number of CD holders tripled, from 20,701 (Dec 2022) to 60,045 (Dec 2023).

EOP balance surge²: The TCBM channel’s CD balance grew from 1.5T VND to 36.8T VND, accounting for 88% of the bank’s individual CD book.

Conversion rate increase: The average conversion rate jumped from 7% in 2022 to 40% in 2023, reflecting stronger user adoption.

Techcombank Annual Report 2023,
p.11, CEO’s letter
View full report

Techcombank Annual Report 2023,
p.69, Digital office highlights
View full report

Key takeaway

User-centered framing: Placing users at the center of the process—understanding their pain points and motivations—was as critical as the solutions themselves.

Mindset shift: Simplifying a complex product requires balancing ease and transparency, not just reducing steps.

Iterative validation: Playbacks and usability testing ensured our designs evolved with user insight and feedback.

By rethinking CD for retail customers, we transformed a niche financial product into a mass-market success, proving that thoughtful UX design can bridge complexity and accessibility.

Thank you for reading.

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