Advice to reduce abandonment on your financial forms

Financial services is Zuko's biggest customer sector. In this webinar we take you through some of our top tips to improve conversion rates in banking, credit card, loan, insurance and forex customer acquisition forms.

‍

‍

You can download the White Paper mentioned in the webinar here.

TLDW: The key tips in the video to improve your financial form conversion are:

1. Speak your customers’ language - talk to them how they speak
2. Consider “non-intenders” - not everyone will buy now but they may buy later
3. Manage expectations early - let them know what they need
4. Use multi-step forms - they are more effective than single page
5. Make job picking simple - people are precious about their jobs
6. Do you need their phone number? - people hate giving it to you
7. Leverage your offline infrastructure - your branches can help you
8. Insurance forms have their own quirks - be careful of how you structure them

‍

Optimizing Financial Forms (Webinar Transcript)

Alun Lucas:
Okay, well let’s make a start. First of all, welcome everyone to our webinar today on optimizing financial forms.

Just a quick hello first, so you can see who you’ve got on the call from Zuko.

Firstly, myself — I’m Alun, the Managing Director. And also my colleague Lena, who will introduce herself now very briefly.

Lena:
Sure. Hi everyone — I’m Lena. I’m one of the Account Managers at Zuko. My role is to make sure everybody gets the most out of the tool, help users analyse data, and basically support you with anything that could help you optimize your forms.

Alun:
Great.

Before we start, just a little bit of housekeeping. We’ll be answering questions at the end, so if you’d like to ask anything, please drop your questions in the Q&A and we’ll take a look at them at the end.

Also, the slides and the recording will be made available to you afterwards, so you don’t need to take copious notes.

I’ll start with the presentation now. I’m going to turn off my video so it’s not a distraction — and I think Lena will do the same — so you should just hear my voice and see the slides.

Introduction to Zuko

So first up, just a very quick introduction to Zuko for those of you that don’t know us.

Zuko is a software platform and consultancy service designed to help optimize form conversion. We help businesses understand when, where, and why users abandon forms, with the goal of improving conversion rates and reducing abandonment.

As you might imagine, we spend a lot of time looking at forms: testing them, optimizing them, and analysing form behaviour data.

Because of that, we produce a lot of content to help businesses improve the form experience and form conversion.

The most recent piece of content is our white paper on optimizing forms in the financial sector — including banking, insurance, credit cards, loans, foreign exchange, and more.

That white paper is available for download (there’s a link on the slide). This webinar is based on the white paper, but since we only have around half an hour, this is a condensed version covering the key points.

If you’d like the full detailed version, we’d encourage you to download the white paper.

What We’ll Cover Today

Today we’re going to cover eight key points that came out of the white paper. These are particularly relevant to financial services, and hopefully you’ll find them useful.

The first point is the language you use on your forms.

1. Use Customer Language (Not Industry Jargon)

This seems simple, but it’s important: you should be speaking your customers’ language — not the language you use internally day to day.

Often we live in our own industry bubbles, and we assume everyone understands our jargon. But customers often don’t.

So just because we’re comfortable using terms like premiums, APR, KYC, etc., it doesn’t mean customers actually know what those terms mean.

It’s our responsibility to make the process as easy as possible for potential customers — and this is business-critical.

There are plenty of studies showing that plain language improves comprehension, improves user experience, and ultimately improves conversion rates because people understand what they’re agreeing to.

So as a general principle: review your form language, test it with real customers, and check whether they actually understand what you’re asking.

Some examples of common finance-sector terms that cause issues:

• Premium (insurance customers often don’t know what this means)
• APR (often better to explain this as an interest rate, rather than just an acronym)
• Assets (people may not know what you mean — or how to calculate it)
• Income (people interpret income differently depending on employment type)

For example, “net assets” can be a major source of abandonment because customers may not know how to calculate it properly — does it include property value? outstanding mortgage? investments? etc.

So always think about language from the customer’s point of view, or it can end in tears.

2. Designing for “Non-Intenders”

The second point is non-intenders.

By non-intenders, we mean visitors who arrive at your site but have no intention of buying today.

Forrester research suggests that 49% of visitors to financial websites have no intention of purchasing immediately — but that doesn’t mean they won’t become customers later.

So your forms need to consider these users, and avoid putting them off.

There are three main groups:

a) People looking for information or comparisons

These users are in research mode. They may want to compare interest rates or mortgage options, but they’re not ready to decide today.

So key facts like interest rates, fees, or costs shouldn’t be buried at the end of a long form. They should be easy to find upfront.

b) People not ready yet, but likely to return

These people might want to buy later — but not today.

So you should clearly explain what information they’ll need when they return, such as passport details, national insurance numbers, income documentation, etc.

c) People checking eligibility

These users want to know whether they’re eligible for a loan or credit card before committing.

Here, what works well is a quick eligibility checker that asks for the bare minimum information. Don’t ask for personal details until they’re ready to proceed.

3. Manage Expectations Early

A major issue we see in financial forms is that users arrive with no idea what’s coming.

They don’t know:

• how long it will take
• how many steps there are
• what documents they’ll need
• whether they’ll get an instant decision

This becomes a huge issue with multi-step forms, where users reach step 3 or 4 and suddenly get asked for a passport number or driver’s licence.

They leave to find it, and maybe they return — but maybe they’ve timed out, or maybe they don’t come back at all.

So it’s important to manage expectations early.

Tell users upfront:

• what they’ll need
• how long it will take
• whether identity checks are involved
• whether approval is instant or may take 24 hours

A great way of doing this is through progress bars, which show categories of information required and help users understand the commitment before they start.

4. Multi-Step Forms Perform Better (When Done Right)

In financial services, multi-step forms consistently outperform single-page forms — especially for long, complex applications.

They feel more manageable and less intimidating.

However, there are key rules to make multi-step forms effective:

• Cluster similar questions together
• Use easy questions before difficult ones
• Use a clear progress bar
• Allow users to navigate back and forth between steps
• Ensure data saves when users go backwards
• Keep steps to roughly 3 to 6 stages
• Use conditional logic and pre-fill wherever possible

One key point: if users click back and lose their answers, abandonment increases dramatically. People expect their progress to be saved.

5. Employment Fields Cause High Friction

A common pain point in financial forms is asking for employment information.

This is usually needed for pricing risk, but the problem is that many forms are designed to suit internal systems rather than the customer.

Users often struggle because their job title doesn’t match your list — and they become anxious about choosing the “wrong” option.

This is particularly true in insurance, where users fear that an incorrect job title could invalidate a claim later.

So how do you improve it?

In order of preference:

1. Ask whether you need this information at this stage
2. Use free text, and categorize it internally
3. Use a smart searchable job selector (best compromise)
4. As a last resort, use a dropdown list of broad categories

But overall, the goal is always to reduce friction as much as possible.

6. Phone Number Fields Are Consistently Off-Putting

Phone number fields often cause higher abandonment than you’d expect.

There are two reasons:

a) Fear of being contacted

Users assume you’ll call or spam them.

b) Bad UI and formatting rules

Users don’t know what format to enter the number in:
Should it include +44? brackets? spaces? dashes?

Baymard Institute research found that 89% of users enter phone numbers in a different format than the form expects.

So how do you mitigate this?

• Ask: do you really need the phone number?
• If you do, explain clearly why
• Use free text input and allow flexible formatting

Usually, if a phone number is needed, a human will interpret it anyway — so overly strict formatting rules often create unnecessary abandonment.

7. Use Offline Infrastructure as an Advantage

Financial services often have something other industries don’t: offline infrastructure.

That includes:

• call centres
• branches
• in-person support

You can use this to build trust.

For example:

• Display a prominent phone number on the form
• Consider directing users to local branches (depending on the market)
• Offer hybrid experiences (digital application supported by staff in branch)

McKinsey research shows that even in digitally mature markets like the US, 60% of new financial products are still purchased in branch.

So users still value the reassurance of human support.

8. Special Notes for Insurance Forms

Insurance forms often behave differently to other financial forms.

Earlier we talked about “easy before difficult” — but in insurance, that isn’t always true.

Many users want a quote first, and they don’t want to provide personal details like name or email upfront because they fear being contacted.

So in many insurance journeys, it’s better to:

• ask vehicle/property details first
• give the quote
• only request personal details after the user has seen the price

Another interesting behaviour we’ve observed is that if the quote returns too quickly, users sometimes distrust it.

If someone spends 5–10 minutes providing detailed information and then instantly gets a quote back, they may feel like it’s generic and not tailored.

In some cases, conversion can improve if you add a slight delay so it feels like the system is calculating properly.

Strange, but real.

Q&A

Lena:
Perfect. If anybody has any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat or in the Q&A box.

The question we have so far is: How would you recommend asking users for their income?

Alun:
Income is a tricky one.

First, you need to be clear what “income” means, because it means different things to different people — especially self-employed users.

So clarify whether you mean gross income or net income.

But people can get stressed if they think you need an exact number and that being inaccurate might cause rejection.

What we see working well is using income brackets — for example:

• £20k–£30k
• £30k–£40k
• etc.

Use radio buttons and let users pick a range. It’s easier for them, and it reduces the feeling that you’re prying.

You do need to make sure the brackets are sensible and consistent, but overall it tends to perform much better.

Lena:
Cool. We’ve got another question: How important is it to allow users to come back the next day and pick up from where they left off?

Alun:
Very important — especially for complex forms.

If users come back and find their progress isn’t saved, they’ll often bounce immediately because they don’t want to repeat the effort.

So yes, if you have a long or complicated form, it’s crucial to allow save-and-return functionality.

Closing

If anyone has any questions they’d like to ask offline, our contact details are in the slides. You can also email support@zuko.io.

We’re always happy to share our thoughts on anything form-related.

So thank you very much for your time today — and enjoy the rest of your day.

‍