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MACQUARIE GROUP
Insights are a commentary system that embeds formal analysis within reports, supporting regulatory compliance by preserving context, enhancing audit readiness, and increasing confidence in Macquarie’s reporting practices.
background
Macquarie’s Treasury division manages multi-billion dollar decisions every day.
These important decisions and discussions happen across spreadsheets, dashboards, ad-hoc conversations, emails and Microsoft teams.
These overly manual and outdated processes meant that three different spreadsheets with the same formulas, used by three different team would produce three different values for the same piece of data. There was no single source of truth.
As a result, Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) increased Macquarie’s liquidity coverage ratio holding back more than $6B dollars in operational capital.
The solution? The Macquarie Analytical Reporting System (MARS) - Macquarie Group's most ambitious digital transformation initiative, aiming to centralise and standardise treasury intelligence.
problem
Today, looking back at previous analyses is time consuming and fragmented.
APRA can choose to audit a specific report or reporting period at any time. When this happens, analysts must manually piece together the rationale behind decisions by searching through Excel notes, Teams messages, and informal conversations. This rediscovery process is time-consuming, disrupts daily work, and risks losing critical context.
SOLUTION
Insights formalise commentary into structured, traceable, and auditable inputs
This allows analysts and reviewers to capture key decisions and observations directly within reports as they work. This preserving context throughout the analysis process and reducing the overhead of audit preparation.
Solution
Capturing formal commentary in context, reducing audit overhead and simplifying future referencing.
01
Tagging visuals to anchor insights and retain context
Users can anchor insights directly to specific visuals, either by interacting with the visual or from within the insight text field.
After exploring multiple tagging methods, a footnoting pattern in the text field was chosen for its intuitiveness—analysts were already familiar with footnoting from their daily reporting tasks.
When tagged, an insight captures the exact visual along with the data state, including any filters applied. Selecting the tagged insight later reveals a snapshot of that original context, recreating the exact view the analyst had when writing the comment.
Impact
- Eliminates ambiguity around which data the insight references
- Reduces back-and-forth during audits and reviews
- Increases confidence in the accuracy and relevance of insights
- Ensures decisions are clearly traceable in a regulated environment
02
Historical insights for trend analysis and reference
Users can access insights from previous report runs or dates directly within a side panel, eliminating the need to switch tools or search through archives.
This persistent view enables analysts to see how past decisions were made, what data influenced them, and how their perspectives have evolved over time.
Impact
- Supports pattern recognition and trend analysis
- Reduces effort to rediscover past commentary
- Aids anomaly investigation and audit preparation
- Maintains continuity for clearer performance and risk narratives
03
Version history for collaboration and traceability
In this reporting environment, running a new calculation for the same day replaces all report data—even if only one value changes—wiping existing insights.
To prevent loss of work, Insights maintains a version history tied to each calculation run. This allows analysts to reference and recover previous insights, preserving their commentary even as data evolves.
Impact
- Prevents loss of insights when reports are recalculated
- Preserves analyst effort and original context
- Supports consistent, continuous analysis over time
- Provides a reliable audit trail aligned to specific data versions
- Builds trust in commentary within fast-paced, high-change environments
04
Insight index for visibility and navigation
The insight index provides a centralised view of all insights across a report, allowing users to scan and access commentary quickly.
As each page in the report often represents a distinct area of analysis—such as capital, liquidity, or risk—insights are spread across sections. The index shows who authored or updated each insight and includes key metadata like timestamps, applied filters, and calculation versions. Clicking an item takes the user directly to the insight in context.
Impact
- Speeds up navigation and review across multi-page reports
- Improves visibility of insights in large, collaborative reports
- Surfaces key context like authorship, filters, and timing
- Supports efficient audits by reducing time to locate critical commentary
05
Copy insights to support daily workflows
Insights can be copied from previous runs and edited for the current day, mirroring analysts’ existing habit of reusing end-of-day commentary via email. This reduces the need to start from scratch and aligns with established reporting behaviours.
Impact
- Saves time by reducing repetitive rework
- Encourages adoption by fitting existing workflows
- Maintains consistency across reporting cycles
- Simplifies the process of updating insights with new data
06
Rich text formatting for clarity and emphasis
Analysts can structure their commentary using headings, bold text, lists, and other formatting tools. This enhances readability and helps reviewers quickly identify and understand key points within complex reports.
Impact
- Improves clarity and organization of insights
- Makes commentary easier to scan and digest
- Enhances communication across analysts and reviewers
- Supports more effective decision-making based on insights
- Enables analysts to structure their commentary using headings, bold text, lists, and other formatting tools, improving readability and helping reviewers quickly scan for key insights.
Process
Driven by real user workflows, the Insights feature transformed from a last-minute MVP addition into a strategic solution that streamlined end-of-day reporting, enabled visual tagging, and reduced reliance on external tools.
FEATURE Discovery
The idea for the Insights feature didn’t come from a top-down requirement
It came from speaking to users. While developing the comments feature, I sat down with analysts to understand how they worked. What surfaced was a daily ritual: users would consolidate their thoughts and findings from the day, then email a formal summary of key commentary to stakeholders.This wasn’t just a routine — it was a pain point.
Rebuilding this commentary every day was repetitive and manual. We realised this formal communication needed to be part of the product experience. Despite the roadmap not accounting for it, I advocated to prioritise the Insights feature. The value to users clearly outweighed other planned work, and the team agreed to adjust scope.
technical discovery and scope
I met with the lead developer and feature analyst to understand what we could realistically build in time for MVP.
I met with the lead developer and feature analyst to understand what we could realistically build in time for MVP. The result was modest: a simple text input box without formatting or tagging.
But I didn’t stop there. While designing for MVP, I also began mapping out what a more strategic version of the feature could look like. This ensured the backend would be structured in a way that could support more complex enhancements down the line — like referencing visuals, tagging, and interactivity — without a major overhaul.
INITIAL EXPLORATION
With few existing patterns to follow, I focused on what we knew:
Analysts wanted to reference visuals and data in their commentary, similar to how they used screenshots and Excel comments in their current workflow.
I began exploring rich text editing tools, like Notion-style modular blocks that could be rearranged, and multiple tagging mechanisms — either from the visual directly or from within the text box.
One constraint we hit early: PowerBI visuals weren’t nameable in a consistent way without user input, which would create onboarding friction. This would make visual tags difficult — a core part of our tagging concept. Later, an AI solution was introduced to generate these names, but we had to work around it in the short term.
refining concepts
We pivoted to a footnoting concept
Analysts — many with technical or academic backgrounds — were already familiar with the concept of footnotes. This allowed us to connect commentary to visuals without relying on user-named elements.
To make things even clearer, I pushed for a visual highlight state — so when a footnote was tagged or hovered, the associated visual would be visually elevated. Initially dismissed as technically unfeasible, I demonstrated how much it improved clarity and discoverability. This convinced the developers to reinvestigate — and ultimately, we made it work for a later release.
DESIGN VALIDATION
We tested the feature with analysts and got strong feedback: it solved a major daily pain point and reduced the need to juggle tools.
I moved through multiple rounds of high-fidelity design, iterating both digitally and physically (wall-based sketching). This let the team engage with concepts in more tangible ways.
We tested the feature with analysts and got strong feedback: it solved a major daily pain point and reduced the need to juggle tools. Commentary was now documented in context — no more repetitive emails, screenshots, or rework.
STRATEGIC RELEASES
From findings the strategic state, we were able to incrementally build towards the best user experience.
The MVP version shipped with basic visual tagging. But with more time and backend investment, we eventually enabled a snapshot mode: when commentary referenced a visual, it now included a frozen version of that visual — filters, state, and all — making audits and reviews much easier.
The result: analysts could now communicate insights clearly and traceably, right within the platform — reducing the friction of context-switching, supporting governance, and saving time.