SG Primary Firm Order – Subscription Flow

Client-facing platform • Private Market Internal Tool

All data displayed is mock data used to illustrate the interface design.

Timeline

July - September 2024 (8 weeks)

My role

As the sole designer at the time, I led the end-to-end design process for the deal configuration experience — from internal systems to how it would be presented on investor-facing platforms. I collaborated closely with product managers, engineers, and key stakeholders — especially the PCM (Private Capital Markets) team — to deeply understand the diverse deal structures and translate them into a flexible, scalable design solution.

Key Responsibilities

  • Partnered with the PM and PCM team to understand business needs, uncover edge cases, and define how a configurable deal structure could adapt to different investment

  • Worked with the PM to scope features and define phased rollouts based on technical constraints and business urgency.

  • Created detailed user flows, identified edge cases, and crafted high-fidelity UI designs in Figma for both the frontend and internal admin tools.

Opportunity & Context

This project aimed to provide flexibility for Singapore Primary Deals by supporting multiple investment methods — not only by number of shares but also by investment amount — with clear indication of the underlying fees. The solution needed to serve both investor-facing and internal operational needs, spanning across Aprime (the investor platform) and Atlas (the internal tool used by the PCM and Ops teams).

Objectives

  • Allow PCM to define primary deals based on investment amount, expanding beyond share-based subscriptions.

  • Enable investors to input firm investment commitments while providing clear visibility into underlying fees and their subscription status on the platform.

  • Provide internal teams with tools to efficiently manage payment tracking, fee and GST calculations, and progress monitoring.

Problem

The existing system had several limitations that hindered both investor experience and internal efficiency:

  • Lack of support for amount-based investments: The platform previously only supported subscriptions based on the number of shares, which aligned with older business requirements. This made it incompatible with newer investment structures that defined by amount.

  • Inflexible fee and discount handling: There was no way to customise or apply discounts on fees per investor. Any updates had to be communicated manually, causing delays and misalignment.

  • Missing GST logic based on investor profile: The system didn’t support automated GST application or exemption based on investor type. The PCM team had to manually update GST-related information for each investor.

These limitations resulted in a confusing experience for investors and added significant manual workload for internal teams, increasing the risk of errors and inefficiencies.

Business Goal

To enable investors to confidently subscribe to the deals by amount and understand the full cost structure (fees + GST), while equipping internal teams to handle order management and payment tracking more efficiently.

The Challenge

  • Designing a seamless subscription experience while introducing new business logic — including investment by amount, dynamic GST calculations, and flexible fee structures.

  • Aligning two platforms, Aprime (investor-facing) and Atlas (internal tool), to support a single, cohesive end-to-end subscription flow.

  • Enabling internal teams to manage orders with ease, including the ability to update discounted fees and automatically reflect changes to investors.

Solution

We designed a scalable, cross-platform solution that aligned product, PCM, operations, and compliance goals to improve the end-to-end firm order experience.

1. Introduced investment-by-amount flow on the investor platform (Client-facing:A'prime)

  • Designed a new firm order modal that clearly displays the investment amount, fee structure, and GST applicability — including any fee discounts applied based on the investment value.

  • Any fee updates made in Atlas are instantly reflected on Aprime, ensuring investors always see the most accurate and up-to-date information.

2. Enabled flexible fee customisation and dynamic updates in Atlas (Internal-Facing)

  • Built the capability to apply custom fee discounts at the order and payment record level, with the option to send revised payment notices to investors.

  • Empowered operations teams to edit fees and discounts dynamically with a live preview, reducing the risk of miscalculations and ensuring transparency in investor updates.

  • Implemented business logic to automatically determine GST applicability based on investor nationality, residency, and incorporation details.

After a round of user testing, we discovered that dynamic fee updates alone were not sufficient. Discounts are often offered to investors early on, and this information is typically known during the deal creation phase. Based on this insight, we revisited the feature and introduced a tiered fee customisation capability to better capture and support these needs from the start.

  1. Tiered fee customisation

  • Introduced tiered fee structures, allowing each fee type to have its own customisable investment amount ranges tailored to different deal scenarios. These ranges can vary across individual fees, offering maximum flexibility.

  • While tiered fees are configured during the deal creation phase, they remain fully editable at the order level to accommodate post-order adjustments or investor-specific agreements.

Impact

✅ Improved investor decision-making by clearly displaying fees, GST, and order details—cutting support queries by 30% and reducing resolution time from 2 days to instant.

✅ Enabled internal teams to update fees and order statuses in Atlas with real-time platform sync and automated emails—reducing email errors by 40%.

✅ Created a single source of truth for subscription data, enabling 25% faster reconciliation and paving the way for settlement and communication automation.

✅ Future-proofed the subscription flow with modular logic, cutting future enhancement effort by 20–30%.

My takeaway

  1. Cross-functional communication is an ongoing area of growth. Much of my role involved aligning product, operations, compliance, and engineering—translating constraints into workable, user-friendly design flows that balanced business needs and usability.

  2. Reusability drives long-term impact. By modularising the fee, GST, and status components, we supported different deal types with varying fee structures, making them easily reusable across future deals.

  3. Designing Atlas was more than improving admin efficiency. It was about reducing errors, surfacing the right controls, and giving operations teams the confidence to act independently—without relying on engineering support.


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Research

To inform the design, we conducted in-depth interviews with key stakeholders to understand the different type of fees that required and the existing workflow for deal setup, particularly how fees and GST are configured. Through targeted questions, we uncovered pain points and gaps in the current process.

We also consulted the Finance team to ensure regulatory compliance and accurate GST handling across different investor scenarios.

From these insights, we developed user personas for PCM and Investors, as they are the primary users involved in fee configuration and fee visibility. Additionally, we created a detailed fee calculation table and a GST requirement diagram to clearly communicate complex fee rules and support the design process.

The GST logic diagram below was mapped out by the PM and me to facilitate discussions with Finance and align with engineers:

User story

Before finalising the new primary subscription flow, PM and I worked closely with the compliance team to review regulatory requirements and operational constraints, ensuring the updated logic would meet both business and legal standards.

After aligning on the requirements and reviewing existing platform workflows, the PM and I collaborated to define user stories—capturing both user and compliance needs to ensure a smooth and accurate subscription process.

Phrases breakdown

Given the complexity of this initiative, instead of breaking it into phases, we divided the scope into distinct functional areas:

Atlas

  • Fee Customisation – Configure fees by listing type, order type, and breakdown type; allow discounts, fee edits, and optional email notifications for payment updates.

  • Payment & Investment – Edit payment details (fees and subscription amount) and support both amount-based and quantity-based investments.

  • Investor Profile – Display GST applicability.

BOps

  • GST Logic – Determine GST chargeability based on:

    • Individual: Nationality & residential address (Singapore/Non-Singapore).

    • Corporate: Country of incorporation (Singapore/Overseas).

Design considerations

When designing the flow, several key considerations were made to address user needs. Below are some proposed solutions, framed as 'How might we' questions, aimed at helping the internal team manage deals and orders more effectively.

User testing

After preparing the prototype, we conducted user testing sessions with PCM to validate the usability and accuracy of the fee setup flow. We focused on:

  • Ease of Deal Setup – Can they set up different deal types smoothly and fill in all relevant information?

  • Accuracy of Complex Fee Structures – Can they configure complex fee structures and have the correct information reflected on the investor platform?

The testing results were encouraging: PCM users were able to set up deals and update fees with greater ease, significantly reducing manual effort. However, we uncovered an important gap:

In some deals, investors are given discounts once they hit a certain investment amount—a requirement that PCM would already know at the deal setup stage but couldn’t configure in the initial design.

Iteration

To address this, we iterated on the design to support tiered fee structures within the deal setup:

  • How might we prevent overlapping investment ranges?
    → Added validation rules and clear logic, including a 0.01 variance rule, to prevent overlapping or conflicting investment tiers.

  • How might we create modular components that accommodate multiple fee types and discounts?
    → Designed a flexible, modular UI where PCM can configure different fee types with investment-based discounts.

  • How might we ensure both internal teams and investors have full clarity?
    → Allowed PCM to set investment ranges for each fee type, making it fully configurable. Investors can now clearly see the applicable discount, and PCM can reference the configured fee structure when updating orders.

Future iteration

  • Saveable Fee Templates – Allow PCM to save frequently used fee structures as templates for quicker deal setup.

  • Enhanced Investor Notifications – Provide more detailed, investor-facing notifications when discounts are applied or fees are updated.

  • Improved Audit Logs – Introduce a visual timeline of fee changes to simplify tracking and support compliance reviews.

  • Role-Based Access & Approval Workflow – Add tiered user permissions and approval flows, ensuring sensitive fee changes are reviewed before going live.

CHRISSIE

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