Evergreen Wealth
Designing for a
$10K decision
A new kind of banking product, a brand with no history,
and a minimum commitment most clients weren’t expecting
Context
Product
A new model banking product: Liquid Treasuries, a hybrid checking and brokerage product invested in 6-month Treasury Bills.
Audience
The goal was to bring high-net-worth financial tools down to a mass affluent audience (30-55, $1M+ investable assets).
Requirements
The minimum to get started was $10,000. Regulated by both banking and investing entities.
Liquid Treasuries
Evergreen launched with a new kind of financial product: a banking experience built around “Liquid Treasuries,” where funds moved seamlessly between a checking account and a brokerage account invested in short-term U.S. Treasuries.
The value was compelling: liquidity combined with high yield and tax advantage, but the challenge was significant. Users were asked to commit a minimum of $10,000 to an investment vehicle they were unfamiliar with, a product they’d never seen before, from a brand they didn’t yet know or trust.
The success of the product depended on one thing: whether we could make something unfamiliar feel clear, credible, and worth trusting from the very first interaction.
The challenge
High initial commitment:
Users were being asked to trust a brand-new company with a $10k deposit to open an account.
The product model was unfamiliar:
Was it one account or two, how did the sweep work, and was it safe?
Enrollment introduced friction at critical points:
Passkey creation, SSN entry for KYC, complex disclosures, and bank linking through Plaid
Value disconnect:
Many users turned to chat for reassurance and support during the process
My role
Led product design across onboarding, enrollment, and core product flows
Helped define how the product should be explained across product, marketing, and content
Built a cross-platform experience that made a novel financial product feel understandable and trustworthy
What I changed
Helped align the team around the product’s real value proposition: yield and liquidity, not a debit card
Reframed the experience around clarity, trust, and momentum
Reduced cold-start risk by improving the path from account opening to funding
Simplified how the sweep model was explained so users could understand the product more quickly
Recommended an introductory bonus offer to incentivize account linking and funding
Why it mattered
The challenge was more than just usability. It was helping users feel confident enough to move real money into a product they had never seen before.
Outcomes
$30 million AUM
in first 6 months
Launched a first-of-its-kind product across platforms
Created a clearer path through a high-friction enrollment flow
Built more trust into the experience from the first interaction
Reinforced a lesson I’ve carried forward: in high-stakes products, clarity matters more than cleverness