OVERVIEW
CHALLENGE
PROBLEMS
Fragmented Portfolio Visibility
Institutional investors typically manage assets across multiple custodians, external managers, and asset classes (public equities, fixed income, alternatives, real estate, private credit). Aladdin has addressed this through its unified platform, but many organizations still struggle with reconciling internal vs. externally managed assets into a single, trusted view.
Risk Analytics are inaccessible to non-quants
Sophisticated risk tools (VaR, stress testing, factor decomposition) exist in platforms like Aladdin, but they’re designed for quantitative analysts. CIOs, CRMs, and compliance officers who need risk information daily can’t self-serve — they rely on quants to pull reports and translate findings.
Compliance Monitoring Is Reactive, Not Proactive
Mandate compliance (concentration limits, FX hedge ratios, ESG screens, duration constraints) is typically checked in batch processes — daily or weekly. By the time a breach is detected, the portfolio has already been out of compliance for hours or days. Pre-trade compliance exists but is often disconnected from the risk and portfolio views.
Legacy UX creates cognitive overload
Many institutional platforms were built for functionality, not usability drawing from legacy design systems. For example, Bloomberg Terminal’s keyboard-driven interface has a learning curve measured in months. Even more modern platforms like Aladdin present information in dense, undifferentiated tables that demand expertise to parse. There’s no progressive disclosure, no visual hierarchy that guides attention to what matters most.
PROTOTYPES
[1] Client Mandates Dashboard
The primary view. A sortable table of institutional client mandates with at-a-glance KPIs, expandable rows, and AI-generated insights.
[2] Conversational AI Sidebar Panel
A conversational AI panel that sits alongside the main content, accessible via a toggle button in the header. It has full read access to all platform data and responds to natural language queries about portfolio risk, opportunities, and compliance.
[3] Market Intelligence Feed
An curated newsfeed of market events, regulatory changes, and sector intelligence, each scored for relevance to the user’s active mandates.
[4] Workflow and Task Management
An internal task tracker with priority filtering, compliance-linked tasks, and mandate associations.
OUTCOMES
Reflections & Learnings
As a speculative concept, Nexus doesn’t have production metrics. But the design process produced artifacts and insights that demonstrate impact:
Produced a complete PRD with database schemas, API contracts, and build instructions that could be handed directly to an engineering team or AI coding agent for implementation
Designed a token-based theme system that supports full dark/light mode with smooth transitions and is re-brandable in under an hour
Demonstrated that AI-native interfaces (conversational sidebar) can coexist with traditional data-dense financial UIs without compromising either paradigm
What did I learn?
Data density is not the enemy, poor hierarchy is
AI provides a collaborative lens, not a replacement. It is a tool to be used like any other.
Domain immersion is non-negotiable for platform design. Reading into BlackRock's documentation on Aladdin became foundational in forming thoughtful product decisions.
Try it
Live prototype is shipped and available to test on the browser at: blackrock-wealth-management-concept.vercel.app