Shanshan Liu

About

Shanshan graduate from Nottingham as industrial deisgner and study
in RCA service design. She wants to bring the co-creation and eco-system
thinking into product design area.  

She designed an inhaler for a medical company. She
worked with Llodys Banking Group, Punlic Health of England and Fintech company
BUD for student projects in RCA. Her work with Britsh Airways won the prize of
BA Future Flight Design Competition and been exhibited in London Saatchi Gallery
and also Shanghai West Bund Artistic Center. It’s reported by media including
BBC, Sky News and Forbes. She is passionate about stratgy design, she wants
to bring the design thinking into businss world.  

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Degree Details

Statement

Purchase Power

Purchase Power
Purchase Power — PurchasePower is an intelligent assistant that utilises open banking data to help young professionals to manage their purchase power. It also helps young professionals to nudge their financial behaviours in order to get better loan deals.
3 types of User
3 types of User — There are 3 main types of user. Micheal is planning to buy a car. But due to his bad spending behaviour, his credit score is low and his credit profile is thin, which leads to a higher car loan interest rate than his actual affordability. Sharel just gets her second job in London. She can not stop shopping. She says "I always want to buy new cloth when I’m in the high street, and I keep buying dresses, bags as I think I deserve it ”. Eason is thinking about applying for a mortgage, he doesn’t know how much he could afford, and what is the best rate he could get. He is hesitating to find a mortgage adviser for help.
Car loan affordability calculation
Car loan affordability calculation — Using the affordability calculation function, our app will recommend him the maximum loan limit that he can comfortably afford. Therefore, he can understand his maximum budget and can make the decision based on that.
Loan deal package compare
Loan deal package compare — Purchase Power will recommend the best loan package for the user. If he can not receive a good loan deal now he could potentially receive a better deal in the future by shaping his financial behaviour during in 3 months time.
Nudging financial behaviour
Nudging financial behaviour — The app also provides advice to help him build up his credit profile and increase his disposable income to get a better loan. On the right, customise advice is given to him. For example, Michael should spend money on a credit card instead of a debit card. And he should spend 300 pounds less monthly to increase his disposable income. We also have other functions to help him save money and increase credit score.
Progress Tracking
Progress Tracking — By following the advice, he manages to get a mini-cooper that was suitable for his financial profile with a great loan deal. He can repay the car loan without high financial pressure. Finally, he has a happy life with his mini cooper.
Maximum budget
Maximum budget — Sheral is a shopaholic. Therefore, “Purchase Power” helps her calculate exactly the maximum budget she can afford, with her transaction data. Using the function, she understands better about her budget now. And she knows that she really needs to spend within that budget.
mortgage calculation
mortgage calculation — Eason needs to prepare for a mortgage and build his credit score. Purchase power helps him realise how much mortgage he could apply currently. Then, the in-app functions will help him to improve his credit score to apply for a target amount of mortgage.
Build up credit profile
Build up credit profile — There is an alert setting function to avoid an overdraft. That function will send him notification before he runs out of his money. By doing that, Eason will recognise how he can improve his credit score and the consequence of his bad financial behaviour.
Change of user financial behaviour
Change of user financial behaviour — Apart from helping Micheal get the ideal car loan, our service helps Sheral understand better the maximum she can spend each month, helps Eason start preparing for mortgage and build up his credit score.
Value network
Value network — Partnering with some customer-finance Fintech, our database will get enriched. A deeper understanding of the day-by-day spending patterns and the current liabilities of customers can be obtained. Our service provides a budget insight and spending management to customers like overspending users. For borrowers, our service could determine what is the amount the person can repay comfortably without financial pressure. We provide the onboarding application service that links those borrowers and production offices. Analysing the applicant’s enriched financial data in document format or via API, the insight will be sent to the production office. So their officers can better process the loan application with the external lender, or their own product team. The credit decision can be made and presented to the borrower in no time.
Expert feedback
Expert feedback — Purchase Power reviews some great feedback from the experts. As our client BUD is also working on a similar project, they find the functions for this app useful and may continue work on this in the future.

PurchasePower is an intelligent assistant that utilises open banking data to help young professionals to manage their purchase power. It also helps young professionals to nudge their financial behaviours in order to get better loan deals.

Open banking is a new regulation allowing users to integrate the data of their bank accounts in one APP. Therefore, with open banking tech, the transaction dataset is more informative than ever before.

And researches have shown lots of young employees in the UK encounter financial management issues. 29% of employees in the UK run out of money before payday. And, 2/3 of loan applications get rejected or receive higher rates than advertised rates.

Therefore, Purchase Power is created to raise users’ financial self-awareness as well as to nudge them to improve their financial wellbeing using open banking data.

The main function of this app is to help young professionals understand their affordability and improve their purchasing power by building up their credit scores and saving money. There are 3 groups of users: people who need a personal loan or car loans, people who often overspend and people who want to build up their credit score to get a mortgage.

The main target group is people who are looking for car loans, our app helps them receive the best loan deal in the future by nudging their financial behaviour.

Medium: Bank transection data

Size: 3 months project

In Collaboration with:

  • service designer
    I was the leader of this project, which lasted for 3 months. My duty includes user research, ideation of the application function with users, collecting bank transaction data from users and analysing it to find insight. I also have built connections with different stakeholders: retail banking designer, financial advisor and the project client: Bud. Not only building connections but also doing the user prototype and iterating the App function.

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