Desiree Ong
Work
About
Resume
smartTRADE.
Role
Sr. Product Designer
smartTRADE, Emirates NBD
Timeline
2024 · Emirates NBD, Dubai
contents
smartTRADE · fintech · trade finance · corporate
b2b
Redesigning a clinical dashboard so one coach can look after more patients
Corporate clients raised letters of credit through wet ink, couriers
and opaque handoffs, with no way to see where anything stood. I
owned the 2024 redesign of smartTRADE, Emirates NBD's online
trade hub: letter-of-credit, guarantee, discrepancy, settlement
and tracking, with UCP 600 and maker-checker controls intact.
AED 1bn
Emirates NBD's investment in digitising its
corporate bank, the programme my
redesign sat inside.
The mandate
~25%
Of the UAE letters-of-credit market runs
on this platform, the scale my flows had to
hold.
The stakes
9 tabs → 1
The most field-heavy instrument in
banking, collapsed into one scannable
review before anything commits.
The redesign
platform context reported by Emirates NBD, public sources · redesign shipped 2024
Case snapshot
Role
Sr. Product Designer ·
smartTRADE, Emirates NBD
Team
Cross-functional squad: product,
trade ops, engineering, design
Timeline
2024 · Emirates NBD, Dubai
Tools
Figma · usability testing
What I did
Owned smartTRADE's trade-finance journeys,
and held one line: drop the paper, keep the
controls. Led the research, journey design,
document upload, approval flows, review-
before-commit and the live tracking
dashboard.
Impact
Redesigned the import-LC, discrepancy and
settlement journeys on the platform carrying
~25% of the UAE's letters of credit: one tabbed
canvas, a single review-before-commit,
maker-checker governance fully intact.
Constraints
Regulated trade instruments (UCP 600 / ICC
rules), maker-checker governance, document-
heavy workflows and many products inside
one hub.
01 · Context
a billion-dirham bet on digital.
Emirates NBD put AED 1 billion into digitising its corporate bank. Trade finance was the most
paper-bound part of that estate, and among the most valuable: the bank holds roughly a quarter of
the UAE market in letters of credit.
what I inherited
a bet already proven
Trade requests up 2.5× (2019→2021),
guarantee processing 80% faster, fully
paperless for government clients.
my brief · 2024
the harder second act
Journeys that had won on availability,
redesigned to win on usability: the LC
wizard, discrepancies, settlement.
the line I held
drop the paper, keep the controls
Maker-checker and every regulated
control stayed fully intact. Only the wet
ink and couriers left.
02 · Problem
a branch visit for everything.
01
Paper, couriered to a counter
Every LC, guarantee or trade-loan request meant a physical
dossier, signed in wet ink and carried to a branch before anything
could move.
02
Submitted, then blind
Once a request was in, the client had no way to see where it
stood. Status meant phoning the relationship manager or chasing
trade ops.
03
Re-keyed, and error-prone
The same terms were typed and re-typed across forms by hand.
Manual handling bred redundancy, rejections and rework on tiny
discrepancies.
04
Many products, no single home
LCs, guarantees, collections and loans each lived in their own
process. A treasury team had no one place to run their trade
portfolio.
“
the signal · stakeholder & client research
where is my LC right now?
Importers
Exporters
Corporate trade ops
Visibility, not new features, was what clients asked for first.
03 · The shift
from the counter to the desk.
Raising an import LC, the core task. Before and after smartTRADE.
The bet behind it. The fastest way to speed up paper is to thin maker-checker approvals. But in
trade finance the controls are the product. So the rigor stayed, intact and digital, and the speed
came from elsewhere: saved clause templates, digital upload, live status. Trust survived the move
online; only the paper didn't.
a slow, opaque paper trail
→
every trade product,
online and
visible
.
Days of paperwork with no status, now LCs, guarantees, collections and
loans run online, in one place, with status you can track.
04 · Process
designed for trust.
Learn the real trade-ops anxieties, prototype a flow that keeps the bank's controls but loses the
paper, and validate it sprint by sprint with engineering.
in their own words
“I just need to know my guarantee
was received and is moving, not find
out three days later it bounced.”
Rajesh P.
Corporate Treasury
“Our LCs all share the same clauses.
Typing them fresh every time is where
the mistakes creep in.”
Fatima Z.
Trade Operations
“Nothing leaves our company without
a second pair of eyes. The tool has to
respect that.”
Daniel O.
Finance Controller · Checker
the bet
A separate tool per product ships faster, but it rebuilds the old silos
and makes users relearn the bank product by product. Instead:
one
hub, one pattern
, the whole portfolio in one place.
reframe paper as a flow
A service blueprint of the journey showed the blocker wasn't the form. It was the
missing visibility and second-eyes governance once paper left the building.
prototype the online request
LC and guarantee flows with reusable clause templates, digital upload and a maker-
checker route built in, not bolted on.
validate with real users
Usability-tested the online flow against the paper process. Far faster, with far more
confidence a request was moving.
ship a responsive system
Delivered a responsive design system so the same trade patterns held across
products and devices, and new instruments could be added without redrawing the
hub.
05 · Solution
the trade hub, made legible.
An import LC is one of the most field-heavy instruments in banking. I designed it as a nine-step
tabbed canvas that ends in one scannable review before anything is committed.
Initiate LC › Review: every tab in one final, editable summary
step one · LC details, applicant & beneficiary
required documents & additional conditions
06 · The flow
raising an LC, step by step.
The core journey, the way a user moves through it: fill the tabs in any order, attach what's needed,
review before committing.
scroll, the screen follows each step ↓
01
start with the LC details
Applicant, beneficiary, amount and credit terms. The tabbed
canvas lets users jump between sections instead of one
endless form.
02
set documents & conditions
Select the documents the LC requires and add conditions, the
terms once hand-typed onto paper, now structured and
reusable.
03
attach the paperwork, digitally
Invoices, proformas and supporting files upload right in the
flow. The courier and the counter, replaced by drag-and-drop.
04
review, then submit for approval
Every tab collapses into one scannable summary, with an
inline error state if something's missing, before routing
through maker-checker.
the client watches the request move through maker-checker in real time,
answering “where is my lc right now?” on screen.
nine field-heavy sections validate and collapse into one scannable review before
anything commits.
07 · Design decisions
controls kept, paper dropped.
The hard part of digitising a regulated instrument is keeping its governance intact while shedding
its paper. Four decisions carried that weight.
01
Paper, couriered to a counter
Every LC, guarantee or trade-loan request meant a physical
dossier, signed in wet ink and carried to a branch before anything
could move.
02
Submitted, then blind
Once a request was in, the client had no way to see where it
stood. Status meant phoning the relationship manager or chasing
trade ops.
03
Re-keyed, and error-prone
The same terms were typed and re-typed across forms by hand.
Manual handling bred redundancy, rejections and rework on tiny
discrepancies.
04
Many products, no single home
LCs, guarantees, collections and loans each lived in their own
process. A treasury team had no one place to run their trade
portfolio.
the discrepancy screen, annotated · hover or tap the pins
discrepancy acceptance, review, settle and decide in one place
a discrepant bill decided line by line: accept, or reject with mandatory remarks. why capture
remarks? every decision becomes an auditable record, not a phone call and days of limbo.
08 · Screens
the full picture.
The four flows that carry the module: initiate, view, accept a discrepancy, settle.
click any screen to
view it full size ⤢
⤢
view LC · bills, SWIFT, advice, amendments
⤢
initiate · the full application, reviewed before submit
⤢
discrepancy · decide without leaving the screen
⤢
settle · choose the financing, link the forex
09 · Impact
what changed, three ways.
For the client
9 tabs → 1
The most field-heavy instrument in
banking, raised from one tabbed
canvas with a single scannable
review before anything commits.
For the business
5 errands →
1 flow
Discrepancy, settlement, forex,
charges and attachments, decided
on one screen instead of a phone
call and days of limbo.
For operations
1 pattern
Create, amend, view and settle
share one tabbed anatomy. Every
new instrument added to the hub
inherits it, with maker-checker
intact.
redesign shipped 2024 · platform context (2.5× growth 2019→2021, 80% faster guarantees) reported by Emirates NBD, public sources
10 · Recognition
the work, valued.
the smartTRADE launch · Dubai
Souwti · Your Voice Matters
Emirates NBD · Group IT
recognised for the smartTRADE
work
The bank's Group Information Technology team gave
me a Souwti "Your Voice Matters" appreciation
award for my work on the platform.
“
"In appreciation of your good work and
extraordinary support to help us achieve our
goals. We value what you have done and
continue to do."
internal recognition · Emirates NBD Group Information Technology
11 · Reflection
we brought the
whole branch online.
This wasn't a tool per product. It was a re-alignment, one hub,
one pattern, the whole trade portfolio in a single place instead of
a stack of silos.
The controls were never obstacles to design around. They were
requirements that had to become understandable, predictable
and hard to misuse, so a corporate could raise and track a deal
from their own desk.
Building it meant unlearning the old paper flow, blueprinting the
journey, testing it sprint by sprint, and reworking until
governance and convenience finally lived together.
And the pattern keeps growing. New instruments, predictive
status, discrepancies caught before they happen, the hub
should keep expanding long after this release.
“Good trade-finance design isn't a prettier form. It's a
treasury team raising a letter of credit from their
desk and knowing, the whole way, exactly where it
stands.”
The principle behind the hub
12 · Beyond the Figma file
I shipped visibility, not just screens.
A responsive design system and a reusable trade-request pattern, handed to engineering so the
same governance held across every instrument in the hub.
Accessible by default: AA-contrast tokens, clear focus states, and legible numerals for amounts,
references, and dates.
Next chapter · Dubai
fx online →