Product Initiative
Line of Credit, 0-1 Launch
Role
Head of Design
Background
Brigit is a financial wellness platform serving underserved Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and hold thin or no credit history. The platform serves more than 12 million users, ranks first in the financial wellness category, and has sent over $3 billion to people who needed it.
Our gateway product, Instant Cash, gives qualified members $50–$250. Its activation funnel is deliberately frictionless: once a member subscribes thru a one-step confirmation, the money is simply there. That decision-free activation is a large part of why Instant Cash has the market fit it does.
Challenge
A $250 ceiling addresses an immediate shortfall. It does not address an emergency room visit or a set of tires.
A low advance limit was the single largest driver of churn, and nearly 40% of churning members had attempted to request more before they left. Raising the Instant Cash limit was not viable within our business model. Serving the need required a different product.
The Brief
In November 2024 the business proposed a $500 installment loan with no interest and no late fees, made viable by a $180 annual membership billed at $15 monthly and repaid as principal on a monthly schedule.
The commercial shape was set before design engaged. The brief was to move fast: reuse the existing underwriting and payment infrastructure, and reuse the frontend paradigms from Instant Cash and Credit Builder to expedite release.
Reuse carried an assumption nobody stated — that the person taking a credit line is the same person, in the same state of mind, as the person taking a cash advance.
I led the design effort over eight months with two designers, one product and one brand, working alongside two product managers, seven engineers, three legal partners, two finance partners, and our external bank partner, Coastal Community Bank.
Discovery
The product decision was fixed. How our members think when they borrow was not. Before we committed to an experience, I directed the team to establish a baseline understanding of members’ mental models around loan products.
We surveyed 4,000 members, reviewed prior studies of consumer loan products, and consulted recent publications from the American Bankers Association.
Knowledge of Loans
Members believe they understand how loans work. They are not naive borrowers.
Hidden Costs Concern
Most members carry significant anxiety about hidden costs.
Fear of Rejection
Most members carry equal anxiety about rejection, given their thin or negative credit profiles.
Initial Design
We designed a conventional loan application following Brigit’s established pattern: a benefit introduction, multi-step KYC and underwriting, a real-time approval result, subscription and repayment details, and a consent and confirmation step. Once the account activated, members could disburse between $250 and $500.
It satisfied all three design goals. It was an Instant Cash flow with a loan agreement attached.
Simple Qualification
Reduce the fear of rejection.
Costs Transparency
Reduce the fear of hidden costs.
Familiarity
Reuse the paradigm that already works.
Validation
We tested with 50 members in moderated sessions. Completion stalled at 63%.
The minimum payment structure felt rigid and was described as locking members into a commitment. Members criticized the fee. Several volunteered that they were afraid they would not be able to pay the money back.
They were not confused by the interface. They were declining to commit to an amount they had not chosen, at a cost they could not see, on a schedule they had not set.
Our members’ mental model had shifted from quick cash seeker to defensive borrower. Most of them already carried debt, and a great deal of it.
The Redirect
The obvious response to a 63% completion rate is to optimize the screens. There was a clear path through copy, hierarchy, and friction reduction, and the team was ready to take it.
Before we chased the 63%, I asked the team to answer a harder question:
“How do we balance revenue growth against the risk of trapping members in a debt cycle?”
The Answer
Trust had to be established before commitment, not requested at the point of it.
I guided the team to shift from a subscribe -and-go to a checkout experience — the model members already knew from buy-now-pay-later. Rather than approving members into a fixed obligation, we would let them select the exact amount they needed and see the precise monthly breakdown and payment timeline before signing.
We kept the reused infrastructure: the same underwriting, payment rails, and account management. We rejected one inherited pattern: the decision-free activation funnel.
The Structural Change
Agency is a conversion and retention strategy. A rigid loan would cost long-term trust and higher default rates.
I took the validation insight and that trade-off through the iteration cycles with our VP of Product, and presented it directly to our CEO and VP of Marketing: the version that let members choose would ask more of the funnel now and hold members longer later. My role was to make the member’s shifted mental model impossible to ignore and to show what the design needed in order to earn trust. The product, business, and finance teams carried that requirement to our bank partner, Coastal Community Bank.
CCB changed the vehicle from a fixed installment loan to an open-ended line of credit: a $100 minimum draw, a choice of 3, 6, or 9-month repayment plans, and a $15 monthly membership members can cancel at any time. That change was what made the design possible.
Brigit Line of Credit
The final flow inserts two decision points ahead of account opening. Every instinct in a growth organization says two additional screens cost you conversion. In a credit product, the decision is the conversion.
Agency
Members choose exactly what they need, in $50 increments, and select the repayment plan that fits their month. The choice happens before the account opens. Selecting your own terms is the act of opening the account.
Clarity
Before signing, members see the principal, the membership fee, the monthly cost, and the complete payment timeline. They review a schedule they built themselves.
Speed
Once terms are confirmed and the agreement signed, funds disburse immediately. We added deliberation where members wanted it and removed every delay from the moment they no longer did.
Outcome
The Line of Credit launched in July 2025 as a beta to 10,000 members.
Roughly 4,100 entered the funnel and 3,890 opened accounts — a 94% completion rate, against 63% in validation on the version without amount and term selection. Average draw settled at $478. Payment rate is tracking at 68%, and the product is positioned as an ARR lever for 2026.
We added two decision steps to a conversion funnel, and completion went up 31 points.
Reflection
Trust is not a visual aesthetic.
We shipped a credit product where giving members control converted better than taking it away, inside a company whose entire existing product was built on taking it away. The pattern that made Brigit successful was the largest threat to what we built next, and it never announced itself as a risk. It arrived as an efficiency.