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The Borrower Experience Review

Your qualified borrowers are leaving your application.
This review reveals where & why.

We go through your lending application as a well-qualified borrower and show you exactly where qualified applicants stop, on screen, ranked by severity. No intake call. No internal prep.

The Borrower Experience Review · $7,000

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No briefing call required. Delivered in 21 business days or a full refund.

From Shanelle Roberts. 20 years in systems design, 2.5 inside a regional bank, a U.S. Utility Patent from T-Mobile, and 79 Texas banks reviewed in 2026.

What lands in your inbox
  • A Product Signal Report, findings ranked by severity
  • A narrated video from the borrower's perspective
  • A live leadership debrief with a coded prototype
What your analytics miss

A drop-off rate tells you where they left. Not what they hit.

Your dashboard shows a screen number. It can't show the trust gap or the friction that made a well-qualified borrower quit, with a competing lender one tab away.

Where borrowers fall out · illustrative
Start application100
Identity & income78
Documents54
Rate & terms38
Submit24

Example only. The review shows where and why borrowers fall out of your application, not a count from your analytics.

The standard you're measured against

Your applicants already applied on Rocket, Better, and SoFi.

Three things those lenders treat as table stakes, timed against what a regional bank makes the borrower do.

Pre-approval
Fintech~3 minutes, no hard pull
RegionalDays, after a callback and a hard pull
Prequalify & see options
Fintech~90 seconds, soft check
Regional"A specialist will reach out"
Document & status
FintechSynced accounts, real-time status
RegionalFind, scan, email, then wait
FintechRegional bank

Bar length represents time to an answer. Shorter is better. The review shows exactly which of these your application is missing.

Before and after

The same mortgage page, reimagined

Drag the handle to compare. On the left, a typical regional-bank mortgage page. On the right, the same bank with published rates, a 60-second readiness check that skips the credit pull, and a local-lender promise. This is the kind of reimagined product page the Borrower Experience Review prototypes for your team.

Reimagined mortgage page with published rates, a 60-second readiness check, and a local-lender promise A typical regional-bank mortgage page with a stock photo and a generic call to action Before After

Illustrative example. During the Review, the reimagined page is a prototype concept shown to your leadership.

As the next step after your Borrower Experience Review, the highest-impact prototype can be built and delivered as a working page, ready to A/B test against your current one.

Our commitment

Delivered within 21 business days of the confirmed start date, or a full refund.

When the 21-business-day clock starts depends on access. If you provide sandbox credentials, the clock starts the day we receive them, and they must reach us within 5 business days of your signed scope agreement. If credentials take longer than 5 business days, the 21-day delivery guarantee is not in effect until they arrive. If you choose not to provide credentials, work starts within one business day of payment and the clock starts then.

The guarantee also assumes your team's availability allows the work to proceed on schedule. If your calendar prevents signing the scope agreement or delivering sandbox credentials in time to allow delivery within 21 business days, the guarantee does not apply.

Before you commit

Questions executives ask.

How is this different from an internal UX review?
Your team knows what every screen is supposed to do. A borrower does not. This is conducted by a researcher who approaches your application with genuine intent to complete it, without the institutional context that makes internal reviewers immune to the friction your borrowers feel.
Do you need sandbox credentials?
For a full end-to-end walkthrough, yes. If you provide them, work begins the day they arrive and the 21-business-day clock starts then. Credentials must reach us within 5 business days of your signed scope agreement, or the delivery guarantee is paused until they do. They are transmitted encrypted, stored in a role-restricted vault, and destroyed within 24 hours, with written confirmation. If you choose not to provide a sandbox, work starts within one business day of payment and we go through your live application up to the point a credit pull or compliance event would trigger, and that becomes a finding.
Is there a limit to how many you take on each month?
Yes. The Borrower Experience Review and the Audit share a combined cap of 8 engagements per month so every debrief gets full attention. If your preferred month is full, we'll confirm the next available start date.
Is there any ongoing commitment?
None. Fixed fee, fixed scope. When the deliverables are received and the debrief is complete, the engagement is closed. No retainer.
The offer

The Borrower Experience Review.

Best Value

The Borrower Experience Review

$7,000
Fixed fee · 21-business-day delivery
  • Product Signal Report (all 45 BFI signals)
  • Narrated video walkthrough
  • 60-minute live leadership debrief
  • Coded interactive prototype preview
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Limited to 8 engagements per month, shared with the Audit

Encrypted credential transfer Role-restricted vault Destroyed in 24 hours Written confirmation
About the researcher

About Shanelle Roberts

Shanelle Roberts, founder of Smart Chic Systems

Shanelle Roberts is a customer acquisition researcher and systems designer based in Waco, Texas. She has spent 20 years in product and systems design across T-Mobile, Wilmington Trust, M&T Bank, Microsoft, Expedia, and the UN World Food Programme, including 2.5 years inside a regional bank where she led the design team that built the first secure digital payment experience for an institution where fraud had cost mid eight figures across three prior years.

She holds a U.S. Utility Patent from T-Mobile and designed the iOS version of Scam Shield, which stopped over two billion robocalls in its first 18 months.

Every audit is conducted personally by Shanelle. There is no account team and no outsourced review. You work directly with the person who goes through your application.

Smart Chic Systems, Inc. is based in Waco, Texas. All client engagements are delivered by US-based practitioners.

More about Shanelle →