NY UX Agencies

Fintech and financial services UX agencies in New York

Financial products fail on trust before they fail on usability. A confusing transfer screen costs a user money, a slow KYC flow costs an account, and a dense underwriter tool costs an hour of someone's working day, every day.

See the agencies Read the FAQ

Why New York helps here

Fintech UX is a domain problem as much as a design one, and the agencies below have all shipped inside it rather than adjacent to it.

New York helps in a way it doesn't in most categories. The carriers, the exchanges, and the banks are all within a subway ride, and it shows in who has genuine financial work in the portfolio.

At a glance

Five studios, side by side

Facts only, no scores or rankings. What each team is built for, and where it sits.

Studio Fintech focus Presence
Cake & ArrowInsurance and financial services onlyManhattan, ~47 people
Clay GlobalPayments, exchange, enterprise UX and brandSoHo, Manhattan; remote-first, SF HQ
ustwoResearch in regulated environments, bankingBrooklyn; London HQ
Big HumanCrypto and consumer finance, MVPsManhattan
XXIXData-visualization-heavy interfacesNYC HQ, ~30 people

The agencies

Five with real financial work

The read, signature strengths, work to know, presence, and who each one suits.

Cake & Arrow logo

The only New York studio doing this and nothing else.

The read:
Cake & Arrow works exclusively in insurance and financial services and has done since 2002, which is an unusual bet for a design agency and the reason its domain knowledge runs deeper than generalist competitors. The team has spent years on the unglamorous side of the industry, agent portals, quoting applications, and underwriter tooling, where most studios only touch the consumer app. Its research practice is the differentiator, built on sustained interviewing of agents and underwriters rather than a discovery sprint.
Signature strengths:
UX research, insurance and financial services UX, enterprise software design, product strategy, service design.
Work to know:
Chubb, Travelers, Aflac, MetLife, Northwestern Mutual, Unqork, Citi, and EY.
Presence:
Manhattan, roughly 47 people.
Suits you if:
You're a carrier, brokerage, or established financial institution and you want a partner who already knows what a quote-to-bind ratio is.
Clay Global logo

Enterprise and payments UX, with the interface polish to match.

The read:
Clay Global's financial work sits at the infrastructure end, payments and exchange products where the design problem is making an inherently complex system feel handleable. It came up as an enterprise and SaaS UX shop, so dense B2B interfaces are native territory rather than a stretch. Because brand sits in the same studio, it suits fintech companies where the product has to look trustworthy as well as work, which in this category is not a cosmetic concern.
Signature strengths:
Enterprise and SaaS UX, payments and fintech interface design, UX research, design systems, brand identity.
Work to know:
Product and interface work for Coinbase and Stripe, alongside Google, Amazon, Slack, and Sony.
Presence:
148 Lafayette St, SoHo, Manhattan. Remote-first, San Francisco HQ.
Suits you if:
You're building payments, exchange, or B2B financial infrastructure and need the UX and the visual language from one team.
Website:
clay.global
ustwo logo

Research rigour, tested in regulated environments.

The read:
ustwo's banking work sits alongside a substantial medical and enterprise practice, and that combination matters more than it looks. Studios that have designed under clinical constraint tend to handle financial compliance without treating it as an obstacle to good design. The research function is genuinely staffed rather than a service line on the website, which is what you want when the question is why users abandon at verification rather than what the screen should look like.
Signature strengths:
UX research, interaction design, service design, UI, product strategy.
Work to know:
Banking work for HSBC, plus products for Google, Peloton, Samsung, and Google DeepMind.
Presence:
Brooklyn studio at 20 Jay St, London headquarters, plus Malmö, Lisbon, Tokyo.
Suits you if:
You have a behavioural question about your product and need research that will actually answer it.
Website:
ustwo.com
Big Human logo

Crypto and consumer finance, scoped for speed.

The read:
Big Human's financial work leans consumer and early-stage, and its instinct is to ship a tight first version rather than design the full roadmap. That discipline suits a fintech startup with a runway and a launch date, and suits a regulated incumbent considerably less. Strongest on onboarding and account flows where the design job is removing steps.
Signature strengths:
Product UX and UI, mobile app design, product strategy, branding.
Work to know:
Gemini, plus the team behind HQ Trivia and Vine, with client work for Whistle, Rockefeller Center, and Netflix.
Presence:
51 E 12th St, Manhattan.
Suits you if:
You're an early-stage fintech that needs a launchable product rather than a research programme.
Website:
bighuman.com
XXIX logo

Built for screens with too much data on them.

The read:
XXIX's data-visualization practice is the reason it belongs on this list. Trading interfaces, portfolio dashboards, and risk tooling all fail the same way, by putting everything on screen and calling it transparency, and legibility under density is a specific skill. It works globally from New York with founders and growth-stage technology companies, and interface and brand come from the same roughly 30-person team.
Signature strengths:
Product UX, interface design, data visualization, brand.
Work to know:
Brand and product work spanning startups to large technology companies, including data-visualization projects.
Presence:
New York City headquarters, operating globally, roughly 30 people.
Suits you if:
Your hardest screen is a dashboard and nobody has made it readable yet.
Website:
xxix.co

FAQ

Fintech UX, answered

What makes fintech UX different from general product UX?+

Consequence and constraint. A mistake in a consumer app costs a click; a mistake in a transfer flow costs money and trust that doesn't come back. On top of that, compliance dictates parts of the interface, so the design work is often about making a required step feel survivable rather than removing it. Ask an agency how it has handled a flow it wasn't allowed to simplify. The answer separates domain experience from a nice portfolio.

Do I need an agency that specialises in financial services?+

For regulated work, usually yes. Insurance and banking have vocabulary, workflows, and internal politics that take months to learn, and you'd be paying a generalist to learn them. For a consumer fintech app with straightforward mechanics, a strong general product studio is often the better hire and will bring fresher thinking to the interface.

What should I ask to test real fintech experience?+

Ask for a flow they designed that involved KYC, identity verification, or a compliance gate, and what the abandonment looked like before and after. Ask who they interviewed. Studios with genuine domain depth talk about agents, underwriters, and compliance officers as users; studios without it talk only about customers.

What does fintech UX cost in New York?+

More than general product UX, because domain knowledge is part of what you're buying and research cycles run longer. A defined product engagement commonly starts in the tens of thousands. Enterprise programmes with multiple user types, a design system, and compliance review run well into six figures. Approach three in parallel to calibrate.

How long does a fintech UX project take?+

Longer than the equivalent consumer project, mostly because of stakeholder and compliance review rather than design time. Twelve to twenty weeks is a fair expectation for research and design on a defined product. Enterprise work in insurance or banking is usually phased across quarters.

How do I choose between two strong agencies here?+

Match the studio to the side of the business you're designing for. Internal tooling and carrier work points to Cake & Arrow. Payments and exchange infrastructure points to Clay Global. A behavioural research question points to ustwo. A consumer launch points to Big Human. A dashboard nobody can read points to XXIX. Each profile leads with what that team is genuinely built for, which is a faster filter than another round of case studies.