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I would love to hear from a Vanguard employee on their tech challenges, e.g., why is the client web interface significantly worse than competitors? Or is it pur

I would love to hear from a Vanguard employee on their tech challenges, e.g., why is the client web interface significantly worse than competitors? Or is it purposeful? E.g., slow down, trade less?!

jjice 1y ago
I actually like their revamp a lot (last few years?). They have a million subdomains they send you around which is weird, but I don't mind the current UI. Sometimes they still send you to an old page though, like for scheduled investments (if I recall). What are the parts that irk you, out of curiousity? I think Fidelity's Net Benefits (which I believe is distinct from the personal site) is pretty bad though.
- sea-gold 1y ago
  Not the OP, but besides the subdomains, it feels like each section/UI/subdomain was designed by a different team. The overall interface doesn't feel cohesive (to me).
- bradfa 1y ago
  I HATE the new web interface. It's significantly slower, shows less useful information, and has many more times where it just doesn't work as compared to the old web interface. If there was an option to go back to using the old web interface fully, I would sign up for that immediately. For an example of a thing I hate about the new web interface is trying to buy a stock. You end up in some different part of the website where after you place your order it shows you a differently formatted order status page than the normal order status page. There's an Exit button at the top. Pressing the Exit button will pop up asking if you want to leave because you'll lose all your unplaced orders, of which you have none because how you got to the Order Status page was by fully placing an order. It's confusing for no reason.
  - SomethingNew71 1y ago
    Vanguard is really good at listening to feedback and using that to inform fixes to the various web and mobile applications. So if you're using the UI and see a survey, you should absolutely submit this feedback. They listen to it, and effect that change quite quickly on modernized pages.
    - bradfa 1y ago
      I provide them feedback in their surveys and through unprompted methods at least once a year about how much I detest the new web UI. Don't worry :)
  - jjice 1y ago
    Oh interesting. I guess I only follow the fund purchase flow on the website once and a while and everything else is automated, so I don't end up using the site as much. Probably makes me a not-so-great testimonial in hindsight.
    - bradfa 1y ago
      Most of my Vanguard investments are in a very small number of IRA mutual funds which have automatic monthly deposits configured, but even just for the few trades I do with fun money each month the current web UI grates on me. I know it can be better, Vanguard used to be good at this.
  - programmertote 1y ago
    Agree with all you've noted. I'd also add that 'Exit'/'Close' buttons sometimes don't work (I use Firefox btw). Worse, you have to click so many different buttons to buy just one index fund. In contrast, I can do all that in one pop-up/side panel in Fidelity or Charles Schwab. I have been a long time user of Vanguard (almost two decades) and I wish they revert to their old web UI, which is informative and simple enough to get all the jobs I need to do in an efficient manner.
candiddevmike 1y ago
In my experience, every brokerage UI is dripping with tech debt. You can see all of the layers of paint put on over the years on top of some old ass legacy system underneath it all. You click around enough and find 2000s UI elements still in most of them.
psanford 1y ago
Vanguard is one of the few financial institutions that supports webauthn.
- lokar 1y ago
  But you still can’t turn off sms fallback? Or can you now?
  - bombcar 1y ago
    There is a way, apparently, but it's complicated. Bogleheads may have something on it.
breadwinner 1y ago
The worst aspect of their web interface is poor information density. Take a look at this page as an example: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vfiax https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...
SomethingNew71 1y ago
There has been an immense push to modernize the Vanguard site and the underlying architecture. This has been an enormous effort over multiple years. Since Vanguard was always a "no-branches" company, it's always been web-based. So, as a result, much of the site was built at the "bleeding edge of the time" but they are now in a position where that needs to be fully modernized. Vanguard's architecture is enormous, but they are getting closer and closer to fully modernizing the site and retiring legacy completely. Its something that has been happening and will continue to happen over the next few years.
no_wizard 1y ago
Not an employee, but the reason I ended up not using them is because when I went to sign up, due to having a 401K account with them via a previous employer, I had to call their customer hotline, and their customer representative wanted alot of sensitive information over the phone - including giving them a password for my account. I refuse to do business with a company with that shoddy of security practices. There's no reason what the representative was doing couldn't have been done online through a secure portal that respects my privacy, but alas, it could not. I went with Fidelity. Its been great. Though all these brokerages have their pros and cons, I groked the setup at Fidelity pretty fast.
xvilka 1y ago
The Futu[1] has amazing trading interface, native app, no Java (looking at you, Interactive Brokers), for all desktop systems as well as mobile ones. [1] https://www.futunn.com/en https://www.futunn.com/en

I would love to hear from a Vanguard employee on their tech challenges, e.g., why is the client web interface significantly worse than competitors? Or is it purposeful? E.g., slow down, trade less?!

jjice 1y ago

I actually like their revamp a lot (last few years?). They have a million subdomains they send you around which is weird, but I don't mind the current UI. Sometimes they still send you to an old page though, like for scheduled investments (if I recall). What are the parts that irk you, out of curiousity? I think Fidelity's Net Benefits (which I believe is distinct from the personal site) is pretty bad though.

sea-gold 1y ago
Not the OP, but besides the subdomains, it feels like each section/UI/subdomain was designed by a different team. The overall interface doesn't feel cohesive (to me).
bradfa 1y ago
I HATE the new web interface. It's significantly slower, shows less useful information, and has many more times where it just doesn't work as compared to the old web interface. If there was an option to go back to using the old web interface fully, I would sign up for that immediately. For an example of a thing I hate about the new web interface is trying to buy a stock. You end up in some different part of the website where after you place your order it shows you a differently formatted order status page than the normal order status page. There's an Exit button at the top. Pressing the Exit button will pop up asking if you want to leave because you'll lose all your unplaced orders, of which you have none because how you got to the Order Status page was by fully placing an order. It's confusing for no reason.
- SomethingNew71 1y ago
  Vanguard is really good at listening to feedback and using that to inform fixes to the various web and mobile applications. So if you're using the UI and see a survey, you should absolutely submit this feedback. They listen to it, and effect that change quite quickly on modernized pages.
  - bradfa 1y ago
    I provide them feedback in their surveys and through unprompted methods at least once a year about how much I detest the new web UI. Don't worry :)
- jjice 1y ago
  Oh interesting. I guess I only follow the fund purchase flow on the website once and a while and everything else is automated, so I don't end up using the site as much. Probably makes me a not-so-great testimonial in hindsight.
  - bradfa 1y ago
    Most of my Vanguard investments are in a very small number of IRA mutual funds which have automatic monthly deposits configured, but even just for the few trades I do with fun money each month the current web UI grates on me. I know it can be better, Vanguard used to be good at this.
- programmertote 1y ago
  Agree with all you've noted. I'd also add that 'Exit'/'Close' buttons sometimes don't work (I use Firefox btw). Worse, you have to click so many different buttons to buy just one index fund. In contrast, I can do all that in one pop-up/side panel in Fidelity or Charles Schwab. I have been a long time user of Vanguard (almost two decades) and I wish they revert to their old web UI, which is informative and simple enough to get all the jobs I need to do in an efficient manner.

candiddevmike 1y ago

In my experience, every brokerage UI is dripping with tech debt. You can see all of the layers of paint put on over the years on top of some old ass legacy system underneath it all. You click around enough and find 2000s UI elements still in most of them.

psanford 1y ago

Vanguard is one of the few financial institutions that supports webauthn.

lokar 1y ago
But you still can’t turn off sms fallback? Or can you now?
- bombcar 1y ago
  There is a way, apparently, but it's complicated. Bogleheads may have something on it.

breadwinner 1y ago

The worst aspect of their web interface is poor information density. Take a look at this page as an example: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vfiax https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-fun...

SomethingNew71 1y ago

There has been an immense push to modernize the Vanguard site and the underlying architecture. This has been an enormous effort over multiple years. Since Vanguard was always a "no-branches" company, it's always been web-based. So, as a result, much of the site was built at the "bleeding edge of the time" but they are now in a position where that needs to be fully modernized. Vanguard's architecture is enormous, but they are getting closer and closer to fully modernizing the site and retiring legacy completely. Its something that has been happening and will continue to happen over the next few years.

no_wizard 1y ago

Not an employee, but the reason I ended up not using them is because when I went to sign up, due to having a 401K account with them via a previous employer, I had to call their customer hotline, and their customer representative wanted alot of sensitive information over the phone - including giving them a password for my account. I refuse to do business with a company with that shoddy of security practices. There's no reason what the representative was doing couldn't have been done online through a secure portal that respects my privacy, but alas, it could not. I went with Fidelity. Its been great. Though all these brokerages have their pros and cons, I groked the setup at Fidelity pretty fast.

xvilka 1y ago

The Futu[1] has amazing trading interface, native app, no Java (looking at you, Interactive Brokers), for all desktop systems as well as mobile ones. [1] https://www.futunn.com/en https://www.futunn.com/en