Role

Design Lead
(XD/UX/UI)

Client

Bank of America
Merrill Benefits OnLine

Year

2024

New regulations = new opportunity

International employees who receive equity awards through their employers must certify their tax status every three years via the W-8BEN form. New government regulations require more stringent capture of customer data, not only for individuals but the financial institutions that service them. I was tasked with modernizing and simplifying a 1990s-era tax certification process—making it responsive, accessible, and fully integrated into the Merrill mobile app. In terms of scope, this was the largest Benefits OnLine initiative of 2024.

Challenges all around

For participants
The process was not ADA-compliant or responsive, with confusing instructions and clunky UI.

For employers
The data capture was inconsistent, causing excessive call volume to fix errors in the process.

For the bank
New regulations and a broken experience meant frequent manual fixes to inaccurate data.

Advocating for streamlined solutions

The scope of this project spanned multiple backend systems and a highly complex business flow. The primary challenge was solidifying requirements within a narrow budget and timeline to keep design momentum moving forward.

As Design Lead, I partnered closely with over 30 teammates across Tech, Product, Business, Legal, and Accessibility — often coordinating across disciplines in joint working sessions. My approach included:

• Rearchitecting user flows to streamline a fragmented experience

• Creating detailed wireframes to support requirement-gathering and alignment

• Building high-fidelity prototypes using the enterprise design system

• Delivering clear, accessible validation messaging and visuals for complex form-level error states

• Ensuring ADA compliance in partnership with accessibility specialists

• Collaborating with backend teams to solve for system limitations

• Managing cross-functional relationships and driving alignment with business and tech leads

• Providing comprehensive design QA specs to support smooth implementation

Reducing friction for clients

To simplify the experience, I grouped related form fields into logical steps that could be easily navigated on both desktop and mobile. I collaborated closely with partners to identify the fewest number of steps and fields necessary, balancing legal requirements with ease of completion. I also referenced the current W-8BEN tax form from the IRS to ensure compliance and accuracy, adding contextual tooltips to help users understand what was being asked and why.

Improving accuracy and reducing rejections

The redesigned W-8BEN experience introduced a simpler, more intuitive UI along with enhanced data validation to improve accuracy and reduce risk. By adding clearer instructions and real-time error handling, we cut the form rejection rate from 30% to under 1.5% — significantly decreasing errors and resubmissions.

In the first six months post-launch (November 2024), the new experience handled nearly 40,000 submissions from employees in over 100 countries, spanning 350+ subscribing companies.