BEQUANT: Institutional KYC Redesign

Led 2 designers across a cross-product design system (50+ components, 60+ pages) serving Exchange, Prime Brokerage, and Crypto Wallet. Redesigned institutional KYC and trading dashboard -the team shipped 3x faster after.

Context

BEQUANT is an institutional crypto platform offering exchange, prime brokerage, and custody services. The product had grown fast, but design hadn't kept up -each product area looked and behaved differently, distributed teams were shipping inconsistent UI, and institutional clients were struggling through an onboarding flow that felt like it was built by engineers for engineers.

Problem

Two things were broken. First, the institutional KYC flow: clients faced dozens of form fields with no guidance, unclear requirements, and no way to get help without leaving the flow. Drop-off was high, and the operations team was constantly intervening manually. Second, the broader design layer: typography, spacing, and interaction patterns varied across Exchange, Prime Brokerage, and Crypto Wallet -making the platform feel like three different products instead of one.

My role

I led a team of 2 designers while owning the redesign of both the KYC onboarding and the trading dashboard. Beyond the surface-level redesign, I built a cross-product design system with 50+ components and 60+ pages that standardized UI patterns across all three product areas. I worked in Agile sprint cycles with distributed engineering teams, running design reviews and aligning product, engineering, and compliance on every decision.

Key decisions

Built a cross-product system instead of fixing one product at a time

Why: The inconsistency wasn't a single-product problem -it was an organizational one. Fixing KYC without fixing the underlying patterns would have just moved the problem

Trade-off: Took more upfront effort, but every product area benefited and the system paid for itself within weeks

Added persistent support entry point throughout KYC onboarding

Why: Institutional clients deal with complex legal entities and edge cases -they need a human fallback at every step

Trade-off: Added visual complexity to forms, but dramatically reduced drop-off and manual interventions

Pushed back on separate navigation for corporate onboarding

Why: Stakeholders wanted a sidebar nav, but it competed with form content and broke the step-by-step flow

Trade-off: Required multiple rounds of stakeholder alignment, but testing confirmed better readability and task completion

Outcome

Shipped the redesigned KYC flow and trading dashboard -both approved by compliance and adopted without rollback. The cross-product design system (50+ components, 60+ pages) unified the visual language across Exchange, Prime Brokerage, and Crypto Wallet. Distributed teams started shipping consistent UI for the first time. Design-to-development velocity improved roughly 3x, because engineers could now build from a shared system instead of interpreting one-off mockups.

Why it mattered

This wasn't just a redesign -it was an infrastructure project. Before, every new screen meant reinventing patterns. After, there was a shared system that made the whole team faster. The KYC fix solved the immediate pain, but the design system changed how the company built product. That's why the 3x speed improvement stuck.

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