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For AJ Bell, strong product decisions start long before a design reaches a screen.
That’s why 11:FS Pulse has become embedded in the discovery stage of new projects, as one of the first tools the UX teams reach for.
The AJ Bell team begins by bringing together existing data and research to build a clear understanding of the market: what competitors are doing, which experiences are setting the standard, and where familiar patterns are creating unnecessary friction.
Pulse then helps them to build on that foundation, giving them a fast, reliable way to map the competitive landscape, build stakeholder confidence, and make informed design decisions from day one.
The UK investment platform market is highly competitive and continually evolving. Customer expectations, digital experiences and product features are changing rapidly, making it increasingly important for teams to maintain a broad and up-to-date view of the competitive landscape.
AJ Bell’s existing competitor and market research as part of the product discovery involved manually gathering and organising examples from a wide range of providers. This was time-intensive and sometimes resulted in a narrow view of the market .
As the business continued to innovate across its products, the team identified 11:FS Pulse as an opportunity to make competitor research more scalable, more consistent, and easier to access, helping teams spend less time collecting information and more time analysing it.
“Before Pulse, the quality of our discovery work was more likely to depend on who was in the room and what apps they happened to use. Now we have a more consistent, unbiased baseline to work from.”
“Before Pulse, the quality of our discovery work was more likely to depend on who was in the room and what apps they happened to use. Now we have a more consistent, unbiased baseline to work from.”
“Before Pulse, the quality of our discovery work was more likely to depend on who was in the room and what apps they happened to use. Now we have a more consistent, unbiased baseline to work from.”
“Before Pulse, the quality of our discovery work was more likely to depend on who was in the room and what apps they happened to use. Now we have a more consistent, unbiased baseline to work from.”
Today, Pulse provides a structured starting point for new initiatives.
At project kick-off, the UX teams use the platform to rapidly understand the competitive landscape. Their research is often focused on UK investment products, including ISAs, pensions and investment accounts.
But the team is not looking for features to copy. Instead, it uses Pulse to examine how different providers solve similar customer problems. That includes analysing complete investment journeys, portfolio management flows, design systems, interaction models and the small micro-interactions that shape the overall experience.
This helps the team identify best-in-class patterns while also recognising common UX pitfalls before they make their way into AJ Bell’s own products.
Pulse also makes research easier to communicate.
Rather than relying on personal opinions or anecdotal references, teams can take clear visual evidence into stakeholder conversations. Showing how multiple brands approach the same journey helps create a more objective discussion, gives stakeholders confidence in the recommendations and builds buy-in around the chosen direction.
“Pulse is the first tool we go to when a project kicks off. It gives us a fast, reliable way to understand the competitive landscape and bring stakeholders along with us while enhancing the quality of the data we use.” - Esti Landa, Head of UX Research, AJ Bell
Today, Pulse provides a structured starting point for new initiatives.
At project kick-off, the UX teams use the platform to rapidly understand the competitive landscape. Their research is often focused on UK investment products, including ISAs, pensions and investment accounts.
But the team is not looking for features to copy. Instead, it uses Pulse to examine how different providers solve similar customer problems. That includes analysing complete investment journeys, portfolio management flows, design systems, interaction models and the small micro-interactions that shape the overall experience.
This helps the team identify best-in-class patterns while also recognising common UX pitfalls before they make their way into AJ Bell’s own products.
Pulse also makes research easier to communicate.
Rather than relying on personal opinions or anecdotal references, teams can take clear visual evidence into stakeholder conversations. Showing how multiple brands approach the same journey helps create a more objective discussion, gives stakeholders confidence in the recommendations and builds buy-in around the chosen direction.
“Pulse is the first tool we go to when a project kicks off. It gives us a fast, reliable way to understand the competitive landscape and bring stakeholders along with us while enhancing the quality of the data we use.” - Esti Landa, Head of UX Research, AJ Bell
Pulse is helping AJ Bell improve both the speed and quality of early-stage product work while ensuring a consistent and unbiased baseline.
In the short term, the ambition is to increase team velocity and agility. Designers can spend less time sourcing examples and more time interpreting them, comparing approaches and applying the findings to the problem at hand.
Over the medium term, AJ Bell expects better-informed design decisions to contribute to measurable improvements in customer experience and NPS. The value is not simply in making research faster, but in giving teams a broader and more robust evidence base from which to design.
The longer-term goal is to broaden access to Pulse across AJ Bell.
UX may be leading its use today, but the opportunity extends further. By giving product owners and other stakeholders direct access to high-quality competitor research, AJ Bell can make evidence-led decision-making a shared capability across the organisation.
That means fewer decisions shaped by personal preference, more productive conversations at the start of each project and a clearer understanding of what best-in-class looks like across the investment market.
For AJ Bell, Pulse is becoming more than a research library. It is a common reference point that helps teams align faster, challenge assumptions and begin a project with a wider view of the market.
