The Real Cost of Poor UX in Financial Services

In most industries, poor user experience results in frustration and churn. In financial services, the stakes are significantly higher.

Across my work with An Post Money, AA Ireland, FBD Insurance, and KBC, I've seen the downstream costs of poor UX play out in very specific, measurable ways. Here's what that actually looks like.

The Call Centre Tax

Every unnecessary point of friction in a digital financial journey has a call centre cost attached to it. When a customer can't complete an insurance renewal online because the journey is confusing, they call. When they can't figure out how to link their accounts in a banking app, they call. When the password reset flow doesn't work on their phone, they call.

One of the clearest demonstrations of this in my own work was the FBD Insurance project. The redesigned digital journeys — built around how customers actually thought and behaved — contributed to a 165% increase in online revenue and a measurable reduction in call-centre demand. Those two outcomes were directly connected: customers who could self-serve confidently online didn't need to pick up the phone.

The Abandonment Cascade

In insurance and banking, the worst place to lose a customer is mid-quote or mid-application. They've already invested time and, in many cases, provided personal and financial information. Losing them at that point is a compounded failure — you've paid for the acquisition, you've consumed the customer's goodwill, and you've created a negative impression of the brand.

The AA Ireland MyAA redesign was specifically focused on this problem. The existing membership flow was losing potential members at multiple points in a journey that was simply harder than it needed to be. The redesigned flow — validated with AI saliency testing and real user testing before a line of code was written — delivered a 35% increase in member conversion.

The Regulatory Dimension

Financial services UX is increasingly a regulatory concern, not just a commercial one. Consumer Duty regulation in the UK and comparable frameworks in Ireland are beginning to hold financial firms accountable for product experiences that are unnecessarily complex, that obscure important information, or that create barriers to switching or cancellation.

This is a significant shift. For years, complexity in financial product UX was, perversely, sometimes a retention strategy. That era is ending.

Where to Start

• Measure abandonment rates at every step of your key journeys — not just at the final conversion point. The data will tell you exactly where to focus.
• Track call-centre contact reasons. The most common reasons customers call are almost always a direct map to the most urgent UX problems.
• Run usability testing with real customers, not internal stakeholders. What seems obvious to your product team is frequently impenetrable to a real user.

Good UX in financial services is not a nice-to-have. It is a commercial and regulatory imperative.

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