Borrowers received four offers with different structures - factor rates, daily remittance, APR, fees - and no way to compare them. Most chose the one with the largest headline number and regretted it.
STUDY 22 / 30 · ANONYMISED · NDA · NBFC & LENDING · US · SERIES B
NBFC & LENDING · US Loan terms a small business owner can actually compare.
RoleLead designer
Timeline9 weeks
Team1 designer, 1 PM, 1 researcher, 2 frontend
VerticalSMB lending marketplace · working capital
Normalised every offer to total cost of capital and cash-flow impact, and made the comparison the primary screen rather than a set of four offer cards.
Borrowers began choosing lower-cost offers. Early default fell, because the chosen structures fit the businesses' actual cash flow.
71%CHOSE LOWEST TRUE-COST OFFERfrom 24%
-31%EARLY DEFAULT (FIRST 90D)vs baseline
4.4 / 5OFFER COMPREHENSION, TESTEDfrom 2.0
THE ARGUMENT
Why the obvious solution was wrong.
The study matters because the product problem was reframed before the interface was polished.
A factor rate of 1.28 and an APR of 34% and a daily remittance of $214 are three descriptions that cannot be compared without arithmetic no borrower performs at the moment of decision. The marketplace was faithfully presenting each lender's preferred framing, which meant the interface was structurally optimised for whichever lender had the most flattering unit. Borrowers were not choosing badly. They were choosing without a comparable.
Every offer normalises to two figures shown at equal prominence: total cost of capital in dollars, and the cash-flow shape over the term. The lender's native framing remains available but is secondary. A tradeoff visual shows what a shorter term costs and what a longer one costs, in dollars rather than in rate. Seventy-one percent of borrowers now choose the lowest true-cost offer, up from 24%, and early default fell because the structures being chosen match the cash flow of the business rather than the marketing of the lender.
THE INTERFACE CRAFT
The interaction, rendered as a working product surface.
The specimen below is code-native and uses the study's own design logic. The client interface remains protected.
NBFC & LENDING
DECISION TRACEAPPROVE
5 factors · 2 overrides
DESIGN DECISIONS
Positions we would defend.
Each decision names the principle and the product consequence, not a stylistic preference.
Normalise or do not compare
Presenting four incomparable framings side by side is not a comparison. It is an interface that advantages the best-framed lender.
Timing over total for SMB
Small businesses default on cash-flow timing. The shape of the repayment deserves equal weight to its size.
Keep the native framing available
Removing the lender's own terms would break trust and comparison shopping. Demote it; do not hide it.
PRODUCT LEADER READOUT
What transfers, and what should remain specific to this product.
A case study is useful when its operating principle travels without turning the original interface into a template.
Read the operating condition
For SMB lending marketplace · working capital, the transferable lesson is not a copied screen. It is the condition the interface had to make legible: Every offer normalised to what the borrower repays in total, in dollars, at equal prominence for all four offers. Rebuild that visibility for your own roles, risk, terminology, and operating cadence.
Protect the design rule
Presenting four incomparable framings side by side is not a comparison. It is an interface that advantages the best-framed lender. Keep that rule in the acceptance criteria, component states, and production QA record so later visual cleanup cannot erase why the interaction exists.
Measure behaviour after ship
The evidence record is 71% for chose lowest true-cost offer, from 24%. Recreate the baseline and outcome window before rollout, segment the result by role and context, and state clearly what the measure cannot prove.
RESEARCH RECORD
The work behind the interface.
These artefacts connect the final interaction back to the evidence and product model that produced it.
Offer comprehension testing
Tested 40 small business owners on four real offers; 76% could not identify the cheapest without assistance.
Normalisation model
Built the true-cost calculation with the risk team across five distinct lending structures in the marketplace.
Default correlation
Analysed early default against offer structure fit to the borrower's cash-flow pattern rather than against credit grade alone.
Lender review
Ran the normalised display past four participating lenders to establish it was defensible and not misrepresentative.
“They started picking the cheapest one. It turns out they always wanted to.”
Head of Product, SMB lending marketplace · under NDA
NEXT STUDY · 23 / 30 · HEALTHCARE