Vanguard - Nonqualified Service Redesign
Work
Product designer
Role
Product Design
/
UX Strategy
/
Service Design
What is Nonqualified?
Nonqualified in this context refers to types of retirement plans offered by a company that do not fit the typical, qualified, 401K model. This can include pension style retirement plans, but it can also include other forms of retirement or investment opportunities, frequently offered to those in the company who are C-suite or considered “high earners”.
Who does it serve?
Our target audience consisted of those users who utilize vanguard’s Vanguard’s record keeping software, My Plan Manager(MPM) and the Newport site (Vanguards partnering orginization for NQP plans) This user base consists of plan sponsors with non-qualified plans as well as Newport CSM’s (customer service managers) who utilize the platform to service participants of the non-qualified plans.
/ Current state
Plan sponsor users struggle to navigate across multiple platforms to access information, often describing the experience as unintuitive.
Switching between systems feels misaligned with sponsors’ mental models, increasing cognitive load and friction.
Sponsors do not consistently perceive Vanguard and Newport as operating as a single, cohesive service experience.
Due to the high-stakes nature of the participants they serve, sponsors demonstrate heightened sensitivity to errors and inconsistencies.
/ Constraints
Design an experience that clearly signals when users transition between MPM and Newport, reducing confusion and reinforcing context.
Establish a clear, scalable service identity that defines the distinct roles Vanguard and Newport play in supporting plan sponsors.
Modernize the MPM Non-Qualified Plan (NQP) digital experience to improve usability, clarity, and confidence.
Develop flexible frameworks and design methodologies that support future growth, evolution, and partnership expansion.
/ Setting the new foundation
The first step was getting clear on the roles each institution played in servicing the NQP experience. Sponsors were struggling to understand who did what — and we quickly realized this confusion mirrored ambiguity within the business itself.
To untangle that, we focused on the core tasks plan sponsors need to accomplish and mapped where those tasks lived across the broader ecosystem. We didn’t just document the journeys; we compared them to their qualified-plan counterparts to spot gaps, overlaps, and inconsistencies.
This mantra gave both teams a shared language, helped anchor design decisions, and created a more understandable experience for users navigating between the two services.
/ Implementing this new structure into the design
With the new structure in place developed a content/design strategy where MPM tasks would live in the green header at the top of the page. This created a clear visual cue that users were still in the MPM environment.
Next, we designed the main page around six deep links that took users directly to the relevant sections of the Newport site. This made navigation faster and more intuitive, while clearly signaling when users were moving between systems.
/ What we achieved
3 Point increase
In user CSAT scores
24hr decrease
In time spent on case resolution
Stakeholder alignment
Increased UX and UI on Vanguards side smooth stakeholder relations between Vanguard and Newport
Lets Talk
If you'd like to learn more about this project feel free to contact me.
Sarahavekotte@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shavekotte/