NORTHERN TRUST
Building a unified lead intelligence platform to empower white-glove wealth management.
Context
Northern Trust is a wealth management firm serving high-net-worth individuals. Its client base is specific and its services are white-glove, so finding the right prospect at the right time is a needle-in-a-haystack problem.
Challenge
Northern Trust’s wealth strategists had many methods and platforms for sourcing potential clients, but sifting through raw data to find a “hot” lead wasn’t worth the time and energy, which made prospecting an uphill battle. They challenged us to build a unified, research-informed platform that delivers high-potential leads to strategists looking to grow their client portfolios.
Discovery and Research
We co-created with 40+ partners from across wealth management, including 16 deep-dive research subjects and 20+ async prototype testers.
The dominant theme: more leads and more research weren’t helpful. Wealth management, by nature, requires trust and a deep understanding of the human behind the data.
Discovery and Research
Four key principles emerged during synthesis to guide our design process:
Simplicity
Partners need insight, not more to read. They want the data points they care about most front and center, with the option to dig deeper if something piques their interest.
Trust
Transparent lead logic is the foundation of conviction. Knowing why a lead has potential, and why now is the time to approach them, drives outreach.
Responsibility
Owning the outreach process amplifies partner value. Each strategist has their own approach to outreach, so full automation of communication was never the ideal solution.
Actionability
Data points alone can’t drive action. People won’t entrust their financial wellbeing to a stranger, so referral-based approaches are essential.
Key Takeaway
Strategists need the right leads, context, and rationale at the right time. From there, they use their unique judgment and expertise to build the connection.
The Solution
Guided by the research, we designed a single, prioritized feed of high-potential leads that fit Northern Trust directly. Leads are scored on a variety of data signals that reflect financial qualification and timeliness of outreach.
Lead Feed
In the lead feed, users can view a curated list of high-potential leads, filter for those that match an individual strategist’s prospect profile, and save those views as presets for future use.
Each lead’s scoring methodology is available as a natural-language summary, building trust through transparency.
Lead Profile
We designed lead profile pages around our four research-backed principles. A simple layout with an intentional information hierarchy elevates high-priority data points and offers natural-language opportunity and executive summaries, giving strategists what they need upfront and room to investigate further if the lead looks promising.
Specificity in data labeling ensures strategists can make the distinction between key contact methods and information—ensuring ultimate clarity. Inline citations build on that trust by providing documentation around critital information.
Companion Space
Because data points alone can’t drive action, we designed an outreach management feature that documents past interactions for context, makes recommendations, and helps strategists find a warm connection as an alternative to cold outreach.
Because it surfaces recommendations instead of prescribing next steps, the feature preserves strategists’ autonomy and gives them the tools to do what they do best: forming connections and building trust in real life.
I would hate to pigeonhole people into one approach, because markets are different.”
— Wealth Strategist
How We Built It
This project moved back and forth between Figma and Cursor, connected by the Claude-to-Figma MCP. I worked directly with our data engineer to fold in real data, evaluate ways to represent it, and ensure Northern Trust’s brand standards, including ontology and visual identity, were upheld.
300
improvement in experience according to a survey participant
100%
of surveyed testers said they found a lead worth reaching out to
247
qualified, high Net- worth individuals surfaced in the tool upon initial release
Outcome