Institutional Verification Flow Redesign
// 2 weeks | UX UI Design
// 2 Designers + 1 P0 + 1 Front-End Engineers
// 2 weeks | UX UI Design
// 2 Designers + 1 P0 + 1 Front-End Engineers
· Institutional clients contribute 30% to 70% of trading volume on crypto exchanges.
· Institutional verification is crucial for organizations to prove their legitimacy. Once verified, they can access higher deposit limits and larger withdrawals, enhancing their trading capabilities.
· User research indicates low conversion rates in the KYB verification step due to unclear instructions.
· User research indicates that 82% of users submitted multiple applications, with approximately 40% taking more than 5 days to complete their Know Your Business (KYB) processes.
· The conversion rate for document uploads is notably low at 41%, primarily because users are often confused about which materials to upload in various scenarios. The previous design failed to provide the necessary clarity and guidance.
Users had to read through lengthy text instructions to understand what documents were required. This approach was not user-friendly and led to frustration.
Key takeway:
· Pre-select country and institution type to show relevant files.
· Provide a document checklist upfront to help users gather materials efficiently.
· Include straightforward instructions for uploading files.
1. Replaced the text reading with guided selection.
2. Established a visual hierarchy.
3. Added an additional section for uploads to increase the chances of success.
The redesign shipped to the institutional onboarding flow serving KuCoin's global institutional client base — the segment responsible for 30–70% of exchange trading volume.
· 41% document-upload completion rate — established as the measurement baseline before release.
· 82% repeat-submission rate — the primary friction signal the redesign was built to address.
· ~40% of applicants taking more than 5 days to complete — a secondary cycle-time indicator.
· Document-upload completion rate (primary) — direct measure of whether the new checklist and guided selection resolved the clarity gap.
· Repeat submission rate (leading indicator) — if users are submitting the right materials the first time, this should drop from the 82% baseline.
· Application cycle time (secondary) — tracking whether the upfront document checklist reduces the >5-day tail.
Development capacity constraints meant the A/B validation had not run at the time of this writing. The design rationale, however, rests on three things:
1. Direct behavioural evidence: The 82% repeat-submission rate pointed to a clarity problem, not a motivation problem. The new design specifically addresses the information architecture — entity selection upfront, jurisdiction-specific document checklist, and inline guidance at the moment of upload confusion.
2. Competitor pattern consistency: Guided entity selection + upfront document checklist was the dominant pattern across three institutional verification flows we analysed. It reduces the cognitive load of "what do I need to prepare" before users enter the upload step.
3. Internal validation: Compliance and operations teams confirmed the checklist contents were accurate and comprehensive — resolving a key source of confusion that the previous text-heavy design buried in paragraph form.
The research was primarily derived from submission data and internal interviews. The next iteration would include direct sessions with the institutional decision-makers doing the actual verification — finance controllers, legal officers, and compliance teams at the applying organizations — to validate whether the entity-type selection logic matches how they think about their own corporate structure.
