Few lines, Designing for the Insurance industry.
Hala 👋
Fintech solutions future and present are promising; the insurance industry at the moment is moving at the speed of the light towards huge impactful innovations.
I was lucky to lead a few Fintech product innovations. Two of them were within the insurance industry.
Roughly talk, designers and innovators, whoever might lead a transformation or innovation project should understand the basics before he goes. here I’m mentioning few things that might help you understand things better, yet faster.
It's not only "Human, Design and Technology" Regulations plays a fundamental role here!
To save your time. You need to understand the country regulations/restrictions when it comes to this particular sector; It presents a core difference since simple you may not be able to add a button until it’s aligned with the regulations and the agreements between the insurance providers/brokers/agents and the government or partners.
The impact of regulations won’t stop here. It’s better to make everything visible and clear from the beginning to your users when it comes to the terms and conditions. In some cases, you may struggle to find the right trigger/nudge to be used within such context; the point is that most countries won’t act quickly with tiny mistakes here.
Simplifying the experiences might be your goal, but again, customer awareness during the different Issuance processes is a must.
I mentioned a few samples of challenges related to the regulations. On the ground, you will find more.
Underwriting is the real power!
One mistake you “must” avoid is not considering the UW team and not giving yourself enough time to understand the UW process, policies, and logic.
If you did not meet the UW requirements, or If you did not align with the team on what could be the To-Be journey, this could be the time for you to rethink all that you did, now much better than later. Signification changes will come up for sure.
Put yourself in the UW shoes; this will support you invest your time in building conceptual models accurately.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Numbers meant to be accurate!
While designing for e-commerce, showing the price of a particular item has no dependencies on other factors (or at least most of the time). The insurance policies are way different than that case.
Insurance UW systems are calculating the premiums based on multiple/complex factors. For example, may I got a quotation for 100$, and you may get the quotation for the same product for 500$.
This requires you to understand how the automated UW systems such as “Appian, Pega, etc.” work, the logic, hierarchy of information needed & dependencies.
The premiums accuracy and setting prospect/current customers expectations play a fundamental role here taking a particular decision later.
Boundaries are almost invisible
Business lines, Customer profiles, and historical data, data, in general, are indeed connected. And that’s the power of automation. So don’t expect to see old-school concepts, and if there are any, just reject them.
Historical data means a lot. When you are developing concepts, for example, for the UW dashboards, the way you are showing the customer’s history will define the final decision.
The Impact of a bad design here will lead to a significant loss. That’s why you need to understand how UW, for example, estimates and evaluates every single decision and action in real life. So you can develop at least a system that talks visually the same language the UW minds talk.
Business, and then anything.
, Technical-driven conversion won’t lead to anything when it comes to the stockholders. I believe that business-oriented designers and leaders are so crucial for any project in general. But here, the business-hat is significantly essential.
Starting from day one, try to deeply understand the business goals and the logic behind every interaction, requirement, and policy. Things will look crazy at the very beginning; over time, it will make sense.
Innovate, so you achieve a pre-defined ROIs
No one invests money in the seek of having a beautiful digital masterpiece; things in real life are not working like this, and it will never do so your understanding of the ROIs will help define the correct path whenever there are many; not only this, but while you are developing concepts, this will help you reduce the uncertainty, and build better business-oriented ones.