Product Design - Design Systems - FinTech Marketplace
Beacon Auto
Marketplace
Executive Summary
Client names and branding have been changed to protect confidentiality.
Serving as the UI designer and brand liaison for Beacon Auto Finance, I translated the brand standards of a major financial institution into a white-labeled auto marketplace. By bridging the gap between existing enterprise requirements and a new technical platform, I helped launch an end-to-end car shopping experience for over 1 million vehicles across a network of ~5,000 partner dealers. This engagement served as the foundational model for a broader white-label strategy that secured seven-figure implementation fees and multi-million dollar annual recurring revenue (ARR) across the platform's partnership portfolio.
The Challenge
Beacon's customers already trusted the brand across a wide range of banking and financial services, but had no native car shopping experience to speak of. If a Beacon customer wanted to finance a vehicle, they had to go elsewhere, stepping outside the Beacon ecosystem entirely to browse inventory and then return to complete financing. This fragmentation meant Beacon was missing a significant opportunity to serve customers at one of the most financially meaningful moments in their lives.
The challenge wasn't fixing a broken experience. It was building one from scratch, and doing so in a way that felt native to Beacon's brand rather than like a third-party tool bolted on. For my role specifically, that meant taking brand standards that had never been applied to a marketplace context and making judgment calls at every level of the UI, from inventory cards and search filters down to personalized financing nudges and authenticated user flows.
The Solution
My work focused on three core areas: brand translation, component-level UI design, and stakeholder alignment.
Brand Translation
Beacon's brand standards were built for traditional financial product contexts. My job was to interpret and extend those standards for a marketplace environment, defining how their color palette, typography, and visual language should apply to inventory cards, search filters, dealer pages, and financing nudges. It wasn't a one-to-one lift; it required judgment calls at every level.
Component-Level UI Design
The platform's architecture was component-based, which meant design decisions had downstream implications across dozens of UI states. I designed within that system intentionally, ensuring that Beacon-specific styling was applied consistently across vehicle results pages (VRP), vehicle detail pages (VDP), prequalification flows, and authenticated user experiences. One of the standout features of the build was a Save and Compare tool, presented as a flyout drawer, that allowed shoppers to compare vehicle specs and pricing side by side. The feature was designed to work for both signed-in and guest users, with guest users able to compare vehicles freely but prompted to create a Beacon account to save vehicles to their profile. Designing for both states thoughtfully, without creating a jarring or frustrating experience for unauthenticated users, was a key UX challenge and a priority for both our team and Beacon stakeholders.
Stakeholder Alignment
I participated directly in conversations with Beacon stakeholders throughout the project, helping them understand both what was possible within the platform and what would best serve their brand. This kept design decisions grounded in both technical feasibility and brand intent, and reduced revision cycles by keeping all parties aligned early.
The Result
Beacon Auto Finance launched as a fully live product, giving Beacon customers a branded, end-to-end car shopping experience for the first time. At launch, the marketplace offered access to approximately one million vehicles across roughly 4,500 to 5,000 partner dealers, with personalized prequalification offers surfaced dynamically for authenticated users.
The components designed for this project proved reusable beyond the Beacon build. They were carried forward into a second white-label marketplace for another major automotive finance client, demonstrating that the design system was scalable and not just purpose-built for a single brand. The project also opened the door for our team to make meaningful customizations to the client's existing component libraries, iterating and improving on what was already in place rather than working around it.
The Beacon engagement ultimately validated both the white-label platform model and the design approach that made it repeatable at enterprise scale. By establishing a flexible, on-brand system capable of adapting to multiple contexts, the work laid the foundation for a broader multi-partner strategy. This shift not only drove platform growth but secured 7-figure implementation growth and significant annual recurring revenue, proving that thoughtful UI and systems design can be a primary driver for long-term financial stability well beyond a single launch.