Inxeption
•
Shipped 2022
Spectrum: cutting underwriting from 7 days to 3
Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Team
Head of AI/ML & Data VP, SMB Lending & Payments 1 Project Manager 1 Designer 1 AI/ML Engineer 6+ Engineers 1 QA
Timeline
Feb 2022 — Oct 2022, 8 months
Overview
Helping Inxeption decide who to lend to
Inxeption’s vision was to support the full scope of industrial commerce: selling, moving, and financing products. To keep their operations running, Buyers and Suppliers needed short-term capital to bridge gaps like:
Purchasing materials before manufacturing a product for sale
Covering shipping costs before receiving payment post-delivery
Spectrum was Inxeption’s answer to the finance piece of that vision: an internal tool built to help the company determine which businesses were creditworthy, and trustworthy enough to lend to.
Problem
Underwriting was spread across systems
Before Spectrum, underwriters processed credit applications by compiling data from multiple systems into a presentation deck for credit committee review. This led to:
Slow turnaround time
Switching between systems was inefficient and time-consuming.
Risk of error
Manual data entry made typos, missed information, and inconsistent records more likely.
Disconnected information
Application details had no single, connected view.
Process
A new domain, shifting scope, and growing ownership
Spectrum was a 0-to-1 product, and that came with its own set of challenges from start to finish.
Starting from scratch
I was new to fintech, so I started by learning how underwriting worked at Inxeption. Through online research and our subject matter expert, I mapped the manual process from start to finish and identified everyone involved, from the underwriter to the credit committee and CEO. I also learned the vocabulary the tool would be built around, including Know Your Business (KYB) and Know Your Customer (KYC) verification.
Adapting to change
The project began with two financial offerings in scope: Line of Credit, depended on a planned partnership, and Merchant Cash Advance, which Inxeption could offer on its own.
When the partnership fell through, Line of Credit was scrapped, and I narrowed the user flows to focus solely on Merchant Cash Advance.
Around the same time, the product lead and a product manager left Inxeption due to company restructuring, and I stepped into broader ownership. I defined requirements and structured the project into epics and user stories framed around underwriter needs and goals, staying closely coordinated with the remaining stakeholders to keep it on track.
Partway through designing the screens, the financial offering pivoted again, this time to Inxeption Payment Terms. I reworked the designs to fit the new use case.
Designing for clarity
I structured the experience into a tabbed application that captured the underwriting process from start to finish: Details; Documents; KYB & KYC; Eligibility; Scoring, Pricing & Limit; and Final Decision. It was designed to flex across financial offerings and this held true when the underlying financial offering shifted from Merchant Cash Advance to Inxeption Payment Terms. Final Decision was the most complex of the six, requiring many conditions to be weighed across nine decision scenarios, all displayed within the same consistent interface.
Proposal
One workspace from intake to final decision
Spectrum gave Inxeption's underwriting team a centralized way to evaluate credit applications, guiding them from intake to final decision. That meant evaluating applications for Inxeption Payment Terms, the financial offering Spectrum ultimately supported for MVP launch.
Application details and documents
Underwriters began by creating an application for a business already in Spectrum. The form captured the application details, a link to the supporting documents on a secure storage platform, and whether those documents were provided. Those details appeared in the Details and Documents tabs, where they could be edited as needed.
KYB & KYC verification
Verification then moved to the KYB & KYC tab, where underwriters recorded their checks on the business and the individuals behind it against external sources.
Eligibility check
An Eligibility tab recorded whether the applicant met minimum requirements with clear Pass, Fail, or To Be Determined badges.
Risk score, risk-based pricing, and limit assignment
The Scoring, Pricing & Limit tab walked underwriters through building a recommendation in three sections:
Risk Score: Underwriters assigned a risk level is assigned (Low, Medium, High, or Undetermined).
Risk-based Pricing: A Standard Factor Rate populated from the assigned risk level, which underwriters could replace with a different recommended rate.
Limit Assignment: The requested limit, estimated monthly transportation spend, and desired payment terms from the application appeared together, so underwriters could enter a recommended limit with that context in view.
Notes in every section kept the reasoning behind each recommendation on record.
Final Decision
The final step, Final Decision, recorded the underwriter's recommendation, the credit committee's decision, and CEO sign-off, when required, into one view.
Results
A 7-day process cut to 3 days
The MVP launched on time in July 2022. The CEO personally commended the team, and the first application submitted was successfully routed to the credit committee, validating the workflow from day one. The impact was immediate: a 7-day manual process became a 3-day process.
Post-launch: machine learning scorecard and in-app due diligence
An machine learning scorecard was added to the Scoring, Pricing & Limit tab. It showed Risk Score, Risk Level, Credit Limit, and Payment Terms along with a date time stamp of when the score was generated. Underwriters could reference these outputs alongside their own risk level, factor rate, and limit recommendations.
Credit bureau data from Dun & Bradstreet was surfaced directly in the KYB & KYC tab, so underwriters could do their due diligence checks in Spectrum without keeping the bureau’s page open on another screen.
Other refinements included application stage and status indicators, a History tab with a change log, and Save and Download actions for a portable PDF snapshot.
Reflection
Growing through unfamiliar territory
I was nervous jumping into the fintech domain, but thrilled for the chance to work outside my comfort zone. Spectrum was more than a design challenge, it ended up being a test of how well I could adapt with a lean team and a moving scope. I'm proud of what we shipped, and even more so of how much I grew getting there.
