Went through the UX/product design interview process at Morgan Stanley for a role on their wealth management client experience team. There isn't much written about design interviews at banks specifically, so here's what actually happened.
Before the loop: the portfolio ask
They asked me to prepare a portfolio walkthrough, 2-3 projects, 30 minutes. I picked one B2C product, one enterprise dashboard (which felt relevant), and one research-heavy project. Spent about 3 hours preparing talking points. Not a presentation deck, just walking through work in a browser.
Portfolio review round
Two designers and what I think was a product director. I walked them through one project in depth and they asked questions the whole way through. The questions were good: why this interaction over that one, what did you cut and why, how did you know it worked. They were genuinely curious, not performing interest.
The biggest thing I noticed: they care about process and rationale more than the visual output. They asked about my research methods twice in the first 20 minutes. When I showed a clean UI, the question was "what informed these decisions." If you design without user research, this process will expose that.
Behavioral round
One-on-one with the hiring manager. Focused on: how I handle stakeholder disagreement, a time I pushed back on a product direction, and how I work with engineering in the design handoff process. Not dramatically different from design behavioral interviews at any other company.
What was specific to a bank environment
They asked whether I had experience designing for accessibility compliance (WCAG) and for users who are not digital natives (older wealth clients). I didn't have perfect answers but I had honest ones and talked about research approaches I'd take. They seemed to appreciate that framing.
Comp for the role I interviewed for (senior UX designer, similar to L5-ish at a tech company): offer came in around $155k base, 15% bonus target. Below pure tech, but the culture felt far less chaotic than the startups I've been in.