SMB retirement onboarding transformation
Sun Life Financial - 2025
Lead Designer
A new enrolment and onboarding experience for group retirement plans that saved sponsors time, sped up member benefits, and reduced Sun Life’s support costs.
My role
As Lead Designer, I led the end-to-end digital transformation of the SunLight+ group retirement plan, turning a complex manual process into a simple, trustworthy digital journey for small and medium businesses.
I guided my team of two UX designers, a service designer, and a UX writer from discovery to delivery, working closely with cross-functional partners to co-create, test and refine the MVP.
Together, we delivered a fully digital experience that met key business goals: reduced support needs, drove digital adoption and market growth.
User Research, Strategy, UX Design, UI Design
Key impacts
↓ 25% reduction in onboarding-related support volume
↑ 30% increase in digital onboarding completion rate
Expand to new market and target to onboard 4000 new business annually
Challenge
Sun Life has traditionally focused on large businesses, and small-to-medium businesses are a new market opportunity. With the launch of SunLight+, a simplified group retirement plan, came the chance to modernize that experience by creating a digital, self-serve journey that is tailored and helps small businesses enrol and onboard quickly and with far less friction.
Approach
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Led research to understand the group retirement ecosystem and uncover key pain points in the enrolment and onboarding experience.
Conducted interviews with business and support teams, synthesize the data to identify where friction occurred and why.
Explored competitor to spot trends, opportunities, and best practices to design a simpler, faster and more intuitive digital journey for small businesses.
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Leverage research insights to define the core value proposition and reimagine the user journey.
Partnered with product and business teams to align on priorities and shape a simpler, more transparent enrolment and onboarding experience.
Focused on key capabilities like Save and Resume, progress tracking, and clear pricing — to give users real-time feedback, reduce friction, and build confidence at every step.
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Validate the design and gathered insights on usability and motivation through user testing. Collaborate with a researcher to run think-aloud sessions, observing how users interacted with the prototype and identifying pain points and opportunities.
Findings help to simplify app publishing, add built-in security validation, and enhance the dashboard with customizable metrics.
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Partner closely with developers to translate designs into a smooth, high-quality implementation.
Led weekly syncs with the development team to review progress, address design challenges, and maintain alignment on the user experience and product vision. This close collaboration ensured a cohesive build process.
Testomonies
“You’re doing a wonderful job. The work looks fantastic, and the fact that it no longer takes 30 minutes to explain the process is a real sign of the simplicity you’re creating. It takes time and dedication to make things this clear. Thank you.” - GRS AVP Director
Key features designed
This project had two phases: digitizing plan enrolment and improving sponsor onboarding. The entire experience was anchored in three principles: simplicity, clarity, and momentum.
Helping small businesses set up their plan digitally — in just a few minutes 🔓
Plan application enrolment
In the enrollment phase, our goal was to turn a long, manual application into something sponsors and advisors could complete easily and confidently in just few minutes.
We applied best UX and form-design practices, guided by behavioural insights, to create a four-step flow that asks only what’s necessary.
The result is a transparent, and human-centric enrollment journey that drives faster completion.
Guiding sponsors, step by step by turning onboarding into faster plan launch and earlier benefits ✨
Onboarding experience
We designed a guided onboarding experience that made getting started feel simple and enjoyable.
Instead of following lengthy emails and chasing checklists or waiting on support, sponsors could see exactly what to do next, track their progress, and feel confident every step of the way. The result was faster plan launches, fewer blockers, and a smoother path to receiving benefits.
Empowering sponsors stay on top of every enrolment with an employees enrolment dashboard ✨
Onboarding experience
We designed the Member Enrolment Dashboard to give sponsors clarity and confidence throughout the enrolment process. Instead of manually tracking progress or chasing updates, they could now see every employee’s status in one place with key metrics, detailed views and prompts to take action.
By making progress visible and guidance intuitive, the dashboard helped sponsors improve member enrolment rates by 30%, reduce support dependency by 25%, and feel more in control of every step. What once felt like admin work became a clear, guided experience faster, calmer, and more human.
Impact and outcomes
01
A fully digital onboarding experience
We delivered a self-serve digital experience that replaced manual process, giving sponsors and employees a faster, smoother start-to-finish apply, enrolment and onboarding journeys.
02
Faster growth, ready for 4,000 new businesses
With a scalable digital process and intuitive design, the platform is now positioned to expand into new markets and onboard up to 4,000 new businesses every year.
03
25% fewer support tickets
By automating enrolment tracking and guidance, sponsors could enrol and get onboard on their own, reducing onboarding-related support volume by 25% and freeing up internal teams.
Behind the work
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This project shows the power of design to bring clarity to a complex ecosystem and move an organization forward with confidence. Through systems thinking, research, and rapid validation, we built a shared understanding of the future-state experience and used design to guide strategic decisions.
As Lead Designer, I wanted to show how design leadership can align cross-functional teams around a common vision, shape roadmaps, and de-risk major initiatives. By connecting marketing, product, strategy, business, and engineering, we delivered a solution that met critical business goals and became a key pillar of Sun Life’s 2026 roadmap.
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By investing early in systems thinking and target-state journeys, we were able to align teams faster, reduce rework, and make confident decisions under tight timelines.
This project also reinforced a key lesson in design leadership: trust matters. By partnering closely with cross-functional teams and giving designers clear direction, thoughtful feedback, and the space to own decisions, we stayed focused and delivered a strong, human-centered experience together.