Suncentral 1.2 | Paula Aguirre Gomez

Suncentral

Sun Life Financial

Suncentral is a secure, centralized hub for Canadian financial advisors to access tools, resources, and workflows in one place. Replacing a legacy platform that was over 20 years old, it’s now one of the main portal for independent advisors selling Sun Life products.

As the sole UX designer and lead, I owned the end-to-end experience from day one, leading the full redesign, designing multiple 0→1 features, and creating new workflows that improved usability, efficiency, and personalization.

I advocated for the user at every step and fostered a collaborative, positive work atmosphere with both business and engineering teams, ensuring the platform met user needs and business goals.

Advisor Site (formerly Suncentral) was a 20-year-old platform in urgent need of modernization.

The legacy portal did not differentiate between user personas or business types and contained a large number of outdated tools and pages. This made redesigning Suncentral a complex challenge. Our goal was to deliver a modern, personalized experience that aligned with users’ evolving expectations and business needs.

Users can now access tools and resources specific to their role or business type, customize their workspace, and save frequently used tools, forms, and pages as favourites, significantly improving efficiency and personalization across the platform.

As the UX Lead and sole UX designer, I owned the end-to-end user experience of Suncentral, leading the full redesign of the platform while also designing multiple 0→1 features and complex workflows from concept through launch. I defined the UX vision and strategy, conducted research, and translated business and advisor needs into intuitive, scalable experiences. Working closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders, I ensured alignment from early discovery through delivery and implementation.

Suncentral launched in 2023 as a modern, intuitive, and highly personalized platform and now serves as the one of the primary digital hub for independent advisors and their teams to conduct their business.

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Personas.
The site serves three key personas: Advisors, Assistants, and Back-Office staff; each with unique workflows, requiring tailored experiences and features.In this site redesign, it was crucial to deeply understand the needs, pain points, and goals of each persona. This insight guided the creation of tailored experiences that effectively support their daily tasks.

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Former site UX audit
Conducted a comprehensive UX audit of the previous site to identify user needs, daily workflows, and key tools. Analyzed gaps and opportunities for improvement, and evaluated the most frequently used design system components to determine their effectiveness in supporting advisors.

Competitive analysis.

I performed a competitive analysis across major Canadian insurance companies, reviewing each platform in depth to understand user expectations, benchmark industry standards, and identify where we were excelling or missing opportunities to create a more differentiated, user-centered experience. Findings were presented to key stakeholders along with clear recommendations and proposed next steps.

User testing

Suncentral was truly built with its users. From the start, I led a user-centered design process grounded in collaboration and continuous feedback. Before launch, we conducted more than ten rounds of user testing, focusing on key areas such as the main menu’s information architecture, overall look and feel, usability, and the content hierarchy of the different pages. We also tested new experiences like Forms, Favourites, My Team, and the integration between Favourites and Forms. Both the public and secure homepages were validated to ensure a seamless, consistent experience.

I created wireframes, interactive prototypes, and demo videos to support each testing round, ensuring that every session generated meaningful insights. The feedback gathered directly informed design decisions, shaping the site into an experience that truly reflected how advisors work.

Through this process, I ensured that Suncentral wasn’t just a redesigned portal, it became a tool that genuinely supported advisors in their daily tasks.

Cross-functional collaboration

I worked closely with Product and Development teams to align design solutions with business goals and technical feasibility, ensuring seamless implementation and impactful user experiences. I also facilitated collaborative design sessions to educate the team on the importance of UX, encourage cross-functional alignment, and brainstorm solutions by incorporating diverse perspectives and ideas.

My process involved

Suncentral and its different new features

The research and analysis I conducted provided a strong foundation for the redesign of the portal across both the public and secure sites. In addition to the core portal redesign, I also designed new experiences from the ground up to improve usability and attract new users, several of which can be seen on the homepage of my portfolio.