Loan Monitoring

In the Brazil market Indigo offered loans to farmers to purchase their seed treatment, these credit lines were monitored for risk of default by internal teams. The crop itself was the collateral for the loan. This project highlights building a custom loan monitoring tool.

Project Scope

  • This project was a 0 to 1 project sparked by loans defaulting without prior heads up, and there was a need to show creditors that Indigo had a stable understanding of the open credit.

  • The primary focus was ensuring the collateral was monitored throughout the crop lifecycle using satellite data and feet-on-the-ground information.

  • Following the release, Indigo gained more investors in the crediting program and showcased the custom software as a way to stand out.

My Role

  • Working with partners in Sao Paulo, Brazil, through language barriers and often needing live translation in meetings. Presented and gathered feedback on designs with internal colleagues.

  • The sole UX designer on a scrum team of 6-8 developers across South America, the USA, and Ukraine can manage time zones and language obstacles.

  • Collaborate tightly with the Product Manager & Tech Lead, ensuring alignment on requests before exposing any asks to the development scrum team.

Problem Statement

Indigo needs an accurate understanding of the loan portfolio to manage the risk of loan default through the crop cycle. This system aims to create a clear, up-to-date representation of the loan portfolio for investors and Indigo to view.

Design Process

First Iteration

MVP

The loan monitoring system prior to the software solution was a combination of Excel sheets and comments in Salesforce. The team also relied on a third-party vendor for satellite data.

Excel, Salesforce

AgFinance Monitoring

The first iteration of monitoring was part of a larger effort to overhaul the outdated AgFinance or Agriculture Financing software built in-house. This monitoring project focused on moving all workflows from Excel, Salesforce, etc., into a software system.

First Iteration

Early Design

Most of the team working on monitoring was unfamiliar with the loan financing business model, so we were learning on the fly to understand context as well as solve user needs.

Use cases

The crop cycle has several stages: harvest, planting, and more. Each of these crop stages warrants a different set of statuses and callouts. For example, a risk alert in the planting stage is not the same risk alert level in the harvest stage. The team is looking for specific steps in each stage to be completed at a certain time, depending on that stage.

Designs

Prototype

Here is a prototype managing loans in the list view and exploring a loan details page.