01The company
Protium Finance lends to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises across India — businesses that often can't get fast, flexible capital from traditional banks. Their mission depends on a simple thing going right: the loan application itself can't be the reason someone gives up.
02The problem
There was no existing personal loan flow to redesign — this was greenfield. The challenge wasn't fixing bad UI, it was deciding what the entire flow should be: how many steps, what to ask for and when, and how to make a process that's inherently about risk and paperwork feel approachable instead of bureaucratic.
03Process
I used the Double Diamond model — discover, define, develop, deliver — since this was a from-scratch build with no existing flow to anchor against.
04User research
I interviewed target borrowers directly to understand what they actually own, use, and worry about financially — not just what a typical loan form assumes about them. Two clear personas emerged, both wary of anything that felt like a black box.
05Information architecture
I grouped the research into affinity clusters — trust signals, paperwork friction, and pace — and used that to define the order of the flow across three zones of increasing sensitivity. Asking for sensitive information too early was the single biggest predictor of drop-off in the interviews, so the flow earns each question before it asks it. The validation step after PAN entry is a real decision point, not just a screen — a failed check loops back rather than dead-ending the application.
The flow asks for the least sensitive information first and explains why each later question matters before asking it — turning a form into a conversation with a visible reason behind every step.
06Wireframes
I translated the IA into low-fidelity, interactive wireframes covering the full loan journey — eligibility, employment, banking, selfie verification, address, agreement, and confirmation — and tested them before any visual design began, to catch structural problems while they were still cheap to fix.
07Final design
The final UI follows Protium's brand language — navy and coral, with custom illustration replacing the wireframe placeholders — while keeping every screen focused on one decision at a time. The result reads less like a bank form and more like a guided checklist — confident, not bureaucratic. Loading states like the bank-verification "penny test" step were designed deliberately, not left as a generic spinner, since this is exactly the moment trust is most fragile.
08Results
Protium saw a strong increase in personal loan inquiries after launch, with markedly more applicants completing the flow instead of dropping out partway. The clearest validation of the research wasn't the visual polish — it was that the order-of-questions decision, made before a single screen was drawn, turned out to be the thing that moved the number.