Touchless reimbursement product: capture, policy checks, approval and payout
Company: American Express
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a reimbursement system that handles claims with as little manual work as possible.
```hint Find where the manual work is
Trace one expense from the moment it is paid until the money is back in the person's account. Every hand-off along the way (capturing the receipt, filling in details, checking policy, approving, paying out, recording it in the books) is a candidate for automation, but not every one should lose its human check.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Which reimbursements are in scope: employee business expenses such as travel, meals and software, or claims such as benefits or medical reimbursements?
- Is this an internal tool for one company's employees, or a product sold to businesses, for example to corporate card clients?
- What size of company, and how many countries and currencies, must the first version support?
- What does the current process look like: paper or spreadsheet claims with manual approval, or an existing expense tool the company wants to replace?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Who the users are (employees who submit, managers who approve, finance teams who audit and pay) and which needs the first version serves first.
- The claim lifecycle and the pain at each step: capture, categorization, policy checks, approval, payout and accounting.
- Which steps to automate first, using data such as card transactions and digital receipts, and where a person must stay in the loop.
- Controls against fraud, duplicates and policy violations, plus tax and audit requirements.
- Metrics covering time to reimbursement, the share of claims handled without manual work, policy compliance and finance workload.
### Follow-up Questions
- Automation now approves most claims without a manager. How do you keep fraud and policy abuse from rising?
- Half the expenses are on corporate cards and half on personal cards. How does the design differ between them?
- How would you roll this out to a company with offices in several countries, each with its own tax and receipt rules?
Overview: A product design question about building a reimbursement system that needs little manual work. It tests understanding of employees, approvers and finance teams, choosing which steps of the expense lifecycle to automate, fraud and policy controls, and metrics such as time to reimbursement and the share of claims handled without human review.