Empowering parents to give the gift of homeownership to their kids

From day 1 the problem was clear: asking your parents to access their home equity was going to be a challenging ask—for most young people. Over the course of the initial months, discovery through various methods such as in depth interviews with young people, their parents, mortgage brokers, and real estate agents led us down a path of how to frame our go-to-market approach. Using data-driven marketing and informative content, potential customers were educated about the benefits and mechanics of using their home equity for the purposes of gifting.

In partnership with our growth and product leads, I helped craft landing pages, ads, and messaging that gave us crucial information about how people perceived the initial offering. In tandem we were answering calls from potential customers, speaking with their parents, and learning that it would *not* be an easy conversation. To address this, I lead and co-designed with our research team a family communication workshop to dig deeper into the underlying fears, attitudes and cultural nuances behind the act of giving. Our insights from this workshop enabled us to craft an initial Ideal Customer Profile that we could begin then working with at the marketing level.

On the product side, I worked closely with product management and business operations to understand the regulatory and risk functions of the bank. We experimented with offering personalized assessment options to make the service more adaptable to diverse financial situations. I also lead the fully self-service origination flow that allowed parents to confidently apply for HomeBridge with a intuitive interface. The mechanics of the integration into the bank's transforming infrastructure proved a challenge that required creative concessions at the user interface layer, but ultimately resulted in a smooth and well-tested experience.

Shifting from the old-world of handing papers between departments, faxing and emails to a nearly-fully automated application process revealed a great deal of operational efficiency for the bank, and for a novel operating model when spinning up new initiatives. With the sales funnel experience and the origination product and experience, I also lead the delivery of the future state service blueprint, roles and responsibilities, standard operating procedures, and a fully-actionable end-to-end research outcomes report.

The HomeBridge venture is now fully operating as a division within HomeEquity Bank, with its industry-leading experiences and processes now integrating into the greater bank.