behavioural research
Behavioural Research for Wealth Management Apps
Wealth management platforms carry high-stakes journeys: onboarding, risk profiling, portfolio review, and withdrawal. OpenScouter runs remote behavioural research sessions with neurodivergent participants and delivers corroborated usability evidence your product and compliance teams can act on.
When Usability Fails in Wealth Management, the Cost Is Regulatory as Well as Commercial
The FCA's Consumer Duty, introduced under PS22/9 in 2023, places a direct obligation on firms to evidence that their products and services work for consumers with characteristics of vulnerability. For a wealth management app, that obligation extends to every screen a client touches: the risk-appetite questionnaire, the portfolio dashboard, the withdrawal flow, and the ongoing support experience.
Most wealth management teams run analytics and occasional usability tests. What they rarely capture is the moment a client silently abandons a risk-profiling step because the language is ambiguous, or the moment a portfolio chart triggers confusion rather than confidence. Those moments do not appear in conversion funnels. They appear in behavioural data.
Neurodivergent users, people with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, and related cognitive differences, encounter friction at precisely the points that matter most: dense disclosure text, multi-step verification, and time-pressured decision screens. Identifying that friction is not only good product practice. Under Consumer Duty, it is part of the evidence base regulators expect firms to hold.
Firms must provide support that meets consumers' needs throughout the product life cycle, including for consumers with characteristics of vulnerability
For wealth management apps, this FCA requirement has direct product implications. Consumer Duty Outcome 4 is not satisfied by a generic accessibility statement or a one-time audit. It requires ongoing evidence that the support and experience you provide works for clients who may have cognitive differences, fluctuating capacity, or other characteristics of vulnerability. Wealth management clients interact with your app at moments of genuine financial consequence: reviewing a pension, initiating a withdrawal, or responding to a market event. If those journeys are unclear or cognitively demanding, the harm is both commercial and regulatory. Behavioural research with neurodivergent participants is one of the most direct ways to generate the kind of evidence the FCA expects firms to hold under this outcome.
Our approach
Three-Stream Capture Across Real Wealth Management Journeys
OpenScouter records interaction signals, think-aloud voice, and facial expression in parallel during live sessions. Participants navigate your actual app: onboarding, risk profiling, portfolio review, or any journey you specify. The three streams are correlated by an AI pipeline so that a rage click on a disclosure screen is matched to the spoken reaction and the facial signal at the same moment.
A Higher-Signal Panel for Complex Financial Interfaces
Neurodivergent testers find usability issues that neurotypical users overlook. In wealth management, where interfaces carry regulatory language, numerical data, and consequential decisions, that signal advantage is pronounced. A participant with dyslexia navigating a terms-and-conditions modal, or a participant with ADHD moving through a multi-step ISA application, surfaces friction that standard usability panels miss entirely.
Human-Confirmed Reports Your Compliance and Product Teams Can Use
Every OpenScouter report is reviewed by a researcher before delivery. Findings are mapped to specific journey steps, not presented as abstract scores. Where a finding is relevant to Consumer Duty evidencing, that is noted explicitly. Reports are evidence, not legal opinion, and they are structured so that product, design, and compliance stakeholders can each extract what they need.
What you receive
- Behavioural session recordings with synchronised interaction, voice, and facial expression streams
- AI-correlated findings mapped to named journey steps in your wealth management app
- Human-confirmed written report with severity ratings and recommended design changes
- Consumer Duty relevance notes where findings relate to vulnerability or support obligations under PS22/9
- A session summary suitable for sharing with compliance, product, and senior stakeholders
Frequently asked
- Which parts of a wealth management app can OpenScouter test?
- Any screen or journey you can share with remote participants. Common scopes include onboarding and identity verification, the risk-appetite questionnaire, the portfolio dashboard, withdrawal and transfer flows, and in-app support or help content. We work from a brief you provide and configure the session tasks accordingly.
- How does this relate to our Consumer Duty obligations?
- Consumer Duty under PS22/9 requires firms to evidence that their products and services deliver good outcomes, including for consumers with characteristics of vulnerability. OpenScouter sessions generate behavioural evidence that documents how real users with cognitive differences experience your app. That evidence can form part of your Consumer Duty documentation. It is not a compliance audit and our reports are not legal opinion.
- Are your participants actual wealth management users?
- Our panel is recruited for neurodivergent characteristics, not for financial product experience. Participants are briefed on the tasks and navigate your app as a new or returning user would. This is deliberate: it surfaces the friction that real clients encounter when they are not expert users of your specific platform.
- How long does an engagement take?
- A focused engagement covering one or two journeys typically moves from brief to delivered report within a matter of days. Scope, participant numbers, and any additional research questions affect the timeline. We will give you a specific estimate once we understand what you need.
- How does OpenScouter fit alongside our existing research tools?
- OpenScouter is a complement to tools you may already use, such as Hotjar for analytics or Dovetail for repository management. We add a specific capability: structured behavioural sessions with neurodivergent participants and corroborated multi-stream data. We are not a replacement for your in-house design research practice.
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Tell us about the vertical, the journey, and the evidence you need. We will scope a pilot in days, not weeks.