Case Study: Designing Entity Onboarding Workflows for DRC – Equity Bank Group

Objective:

To design a streamlined, scalable digital onboarding workflow within the Branch Service Hub (BSH) dashboard that empowers internal staff in DRC (and other subsidiaries) to:

Onboard entities faster and with fewer errors

Comply with localized regulatory requirements

Improve visibility, task ownership, and approval timelines

My Role:

Lead Product Designer for the internal tools vertical

Owned the end-to-end design process: discovery → wireframing → testing → handoff

Collaborated with PMs, engineers, compliance officers, and front-office staff in DRC and HQ

Discovery & Research:

I conducted contextual inquiries and stakeholder interviews with:

Relationship Managers at Equity BCDC (Kinshasa & Lubumbashi branches)

Compliance officers and business bankers

IT support teams handling back-office automation

Key findings:

Entity onboarding involved over 25 entry points, with duplications between AML/KYC and CRM systems

Users were unsure of who owns what stage of the onboarding process

Lack of digital audit trails led to compliance delays

Turnaround time (TAT) ranged from 3 to 7 days

Process Mapping 

The onboarding flow was broken into clear functional stages:

1. Initiate Request – Customer visits the branch, RM collects initial data

2. Entity Profiling – Business type, ownership structure, location (e.g., Gombe, Kinshasa)

3. KYC Document Upload – Scanned IDs, registration forms (e.g., RCCM extract, CNSS), tax docs

4. Risk & Compliance Checks – AML scoring, blacklist screening

5. Approval Flow – Multi-level approvals by back-office & compliance

6. Account Creation & Activation – Final notification sent to RM

Each step had role-based access, and required handling edge cases like politically exposed persons (PEPs) or high-risk industries.

Design Approach:

1. Modular Stepper Workflow

Introduced a progressive form wizard that separated the process into manageable steps

Visually displayed progress and pending actions to reduce ambiguity

2. Smart Field Groupings

Grouped fields by sections (e.g., Basic Info, Regulatory Info, Contacts, Shareholders)

Used pre-fill logic where possible for returning clients or linked individuals

3. Role-Based Task Visibility

Each actor (e.g., RM, Risk Analyst, Compliance Officer) saw only what was relevant to them

Added status indicators like “Pending Risk Review” or “Awaiting Docs”

4. Inline Validation & Document Tracking

Added real-time field validation to reduce errors (e.g., invalid tax codes or missing RCCM)

Document uploads included previews, expiry checks, and comments

5. Audit Trail & Approvals

Designed an audit trail sidebar for transparency (who did what, when)

Included approval buttons, comment logs, and flagging mechanisms for edge cases