Regulatory Reporting

Regulatory Reporting

Redesigning regulatory reporting for faster, more accurate submissions, contributing to $1.2M in enterprise ARR.

Product Design

Enterprise SaaS

Compliance

Overview

1

Financial institutions are legally required to submit suspicious activity reports to regulators such as FinCEN, AUSTRAC and FINTRAC. Failure to submit accurate reports on time can expose organisations to significant regulatory and financial risk.

Napier's existing Regulatory Reporting experience had become a major source of customer frustration.


Napier's existing reporting experience had evolved around government PDF forms rather than digital workflows. Poor terminology, minimal validation and fragmented interactions created an experience customers found difficult to use, with some choosing to complete reports manually outside the platform.

Outcomes

$1.2M+ ARR

$1.2M+ ARR

The redesigned Regulatory Reporting experience became a key capability during enterprise sales engagements, contributing to over $1.2M in new enterprise ARR.

Scalable Platform

Scalable Platform

Designed a reusable reporting framework capable of supporting multiple global regulators including FinCEN, AUSTRAC and FINTRAC.

Safer Submissions

Safer Submissions

Introduced schema-driven validation and structured workflows to reduce submission errors while improving confidence in regulatory compliance.

Role

Role

I led the end-to-end redesign of the reporting experience, partnering with Product, Engineering and Compliance specialists from discovery through developer handover. My responsibilities included workflow architecture, interaction design, validation strategy, prototyping, usability testing and scalable design patterns for future regulators.

The Challenge

2

Existing experience copied regulator PDFs

The interface mirrored government forms rather than supporting how analysts naturally complete reports digitally, increasing complexity and slowing completion.

The interface mirrored government forms rather than supporting how analysts naturally complete reports digitally, increasing complexity and slowing completion.

Limited validation increased regulatory risk

Validation focused primarily on required fields rather than regulator submission rules, allowing reports to reach submission with critical errors.

Customers lost confidence in the platform

Poor usability reduced confidence in the platform, with some organisations abandoning the feature entirely in favour of manual regulator submissions.

Understanding the Legacy Experience

3

The existing reporting experience had evolved incrementally around regulator forms rather than analyst workflows. Completing a report required navigating long, unstructured forms with little guidance, making submissions slow, error-prone and difficult to validate.

  • Terminology copied directly from regulator PDFs

  • Long, unstructured forms increased cognitive load

  • Minimal validation before submission

  • No clear indication of completion progress

  • Repeated manual data entry from investigations

  • Actions adapt to investigation state

The experience prioritised replicating paper forms over supporting digital reporting, increasing effort while reducing confidence in report accuracy.

Research Insights

4

Paper forms don't create good digital experiences

Paper forms don't create good digital experiences

Rather than recreating government paperwork, I redesigned the experience around how analysts complete reports digitally. Clear information hierarchy, progressive disclosure and structured sections reduced complexity without sacrificing regulatory accuracy.

Rather than recreating government paperwork, I redesigned the experience around how analysts complete reports digitally. Clear information hierarchy, progressive disclosure and structured sections reduced complexity without sacrificing regulatory accuracy.

Building evidence was disconnected from reporting

Building evidence was disconnected from reporting

Analysts investigated suspicious activity within the case management system before manually re-entering the same information into reporting forms.


Analysts investigated suspicious activity within the case management system before manually re-entering the same information into reporting forms.

Analysts investigated suspicious activity within the case management system before manually re-entering the same information into reporting forms.


Validation happened too late or not at all

Validation happened too late or not at all

Users often discovered errors only after attempting submission, creating frustration and uncertainty around report quality.


Users often discovered errors only after attempting submission, creating frustration and uncertainty around report quality.

Users often discovered errors only after attempting submission, creating frustration and uncertainty around report quality.


Different regulators shared common patterns

Different regulators shared common patterns

Although reporting requirements varied, the overall workflow remained remarkably consistent, creating an opportunity for a reusable reporting framework.


Although reporting requirements varied, the overall workflow remained remarkably consistent, creating an opportunity for a reusable reporting framework.

Although reporting requirements varied, the overall workflow remained remarkably consistent, creating an opportunity for a reusable reporting framework.


Key Product Decisions

5

01 Digital-First Reporting Experience

01 Catalog and Filter System

Rather than recreating government paperwork, I redesigned the experience around how analysts complete reports digitally. Clear information hierarchy, progressive disclosure and structured sections reduced complexity without sacrificing regulatory accuracy.

  • Designed for digital workflows

  • Faster to scan and complete

  • Minimise unnecessary data entry

  • Clear completion progress

  • Consistent & familiar interaction patterns

  • Actions adapt to investigation state

Alternatives Considered

  • Closely mirrored regulator PDFs for familiarity.

  • User testing showed like-for-like translations created unnecessarily long, noisy forms.

  • Evolved towards progressive disclosure while retaining familiar terminology where appropriate.

02 Case-Driven Evidence Builder

Reporting should build upon an investigation rather than restart it.

Analysts can add transactions, customers, entities and investigation events to their case before launching the reporting workflow, allowing information to be referenced directly throughout the submission.

03 Intelligent Prefill

Structured investigation data automatically populated relevant report fields, reducing manual entry while improving accuracy and consistency across submissions.

  • Edited prefilled data + reset to prefill value

  • Prefilled from evidence

  • Manually entered data

Alternatives Considered

  • Initially treated prefilled values as read-only.

  • Research showed source data wasn't always complete or accurate.

  • Introduced editable prefilled fields with Prefilled, Edited and Manual indicators, plus reset to preserve traceability.

04 Regulator Validation

Validation mirrored regulator submission schemas and surfaced issues throughout completion, helping analysts resolve problems before submission rather than after rejection.

Reflection & Hindsight

6

Regulatory reporting presented a different challenge. Unlike many enterprise workflows, success wasn't measured by speed alone—it depended on helping users produce accurate, compliant submissions with confidence.


Every design decision had to balance usability with strict regulatory requirements, ensuring simplification never came at the expense of correctness.


One of the biggest lessons was recognising that familiarity doesn't always create good user experiences. While customers initially requested interfaces that closely resembled regulator PDFs, iterative testing showed that directly replicating paper forms introduced unnecessary complexity. Preserving familiar terminology while redesigning the workflow for digital completion ultimately delivered a far better outcome.


If revisiting the project, I'd invest more time validating the framework across a broader range of regulators earlier in the design process. While the reusable architecture proved successful, earlier cross-regulator validation may have revealed additional opportunities for standardisation without sacrificing regional requirements.

Transaction Screening

Data Marketplace

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