Fast Track

Lighthouse

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

BACKGROUND

Momentum, one of South Africa’s leading insurance and asset management providers. Momentum provides financial wellness products & services in South Africa including medical aid, Multiply, retirement annuities, investments & insurance.

BRIEF

How do we make sure that we remain at the top in terms of life insurance in our country given the impact of technology on society?

CHALLENGE

On average it takes 21 days to onboard a new Client and the process is paper-heavy.

ROLE

Design Lead: Prototyping, Usability Testing, User Flows, Research, Wireframes

SOLUTION

A fast track option for clients that qualify which reduced onboarding time by over 40%.

Design studio participants

START WITH THE CLIENTS

We spoke with policyholders that had recently purchased a life insurance policy. What was their experience? Good, bad, okay, and why? Was there anything that left a sour taste in their mouth?

INSIGHTS

• Many just figured that the process is what it is. They hated the amount of paperwork that it took.
• Not everyone is tech-savvy but generally, they had a good experience with their financial adviser at the point of onboarding.

HOW ARE THE ADVISERS FEELING?

We invited groups of independent advisers from different branches along with tied advisers to our design lab where we conducted the interviews. We had at least 6 advisers from each branch to get the common thread of what the pain points were in the whole process.

“Why couldn’t you send me a message or something? How was I going to know? Why don’t you have a system in this day and age to deal with that? Communicating with us when something needs our involvement to make the process continue. We get paid only when it’s on the books!” — Finacial Adviser

INSIGHTS

• Most really believed that our Companies life insurance policy was one of the most comprehensive in the industry. The process was also thorough and that led to payouts being high when necessary due to the thoroughness of the initial onboarding.
• There was an issue with the language used in the documents as it was not easy to explain in layman’s terms to a potential client.
• The time it takes to onboard a client is long and there is no communication about where the process is.
• No communication when the process needs the Adviser’s involvement again to continue.

One of the many sketches from the Design Studio

HOW’S THE COMPETITION?

We looked at the competition on how they were innovating and we were able to draw insights from our interviews with the advisers given that most were independent and they worked with all products. We also looked at how life insurance was going in the international space.

INSIGHTS

• Some of our local competitors were making big strides in the digitization of their process but our company still helped a better product offering from the Financial Advisers viewpoint.
• Internationally we were seeing a rise in the exploration of machine learning and AI in the process of underwriting and onboarding of clients.

Design studio instructions — Round 2.

WHAT’S SLOWING THE CLIENT ONBOARDING?

We started finding out about the whole process. The key being Underwriting, so I interviewed one of the head underwriters in the company who had trained all of the underwriters to get an understanding of their process. What was important for them and why?

INSIGHTS

• The thoroughness of the underwriting is a major reason why the company is an industry leader in life insurance and has a good payout record
• The answers to the initial questions would dictate whether a potential client will need a nurse to take the blood samples or if it needs to be a Dr for more tests.
• The questionnaires could be changed or reduced as long as we were able to draw the same insights or better.

Wireframe

INITIAL DESIGNS

With the vast amount of stakeholders in this process, both external and internal, we had to consolidate all of this information and come up with some potential solutions in a short space of time. I hosted a design studio with multiple stakeholders believing that this was the best format to tap into the collective knowledge of our team in the least amount of time. Involving underwriters, legal, the vast development team, and product owner.

INSIGHTS

• Having experts from different fields, during the critiquing of designs helped by them bringing up constraints that you would not be aware of unless you were from that department.
• As we were going through some of the underwriting questions, along with the legal team, it was deemed that some questions were outdated
• Need to make sure that the client answers every question and so make sure to ask the questions in such a way that they are compelled to give an answer
• This setting gave everyone new insights as to what each department in the process of onboarding a new client had to take into consideration.
• Appreciation for other people’s work functions grew as an understanding of the different roles grew.

High fidelity

REFINING DESIGNS

From the design studio, I was able to take the key designs to inform my designs that we would then go and test with clients and advisers for online onboarding.

INSIGHTS

• Many Advisers were firstly opposed to this as they felt that it would cut them out of the process.
• The underwriting team was very open to innovation and trying new things.
• The insurance industry has existed for long without adapting to the changing times. As we were going through some of the questions used in underwriting along with the legal team. It was deemed that some questions were outdated.
• Something that was key was that I would need to make sure that the client answers every question and so asking the questions in such a way that they are compelled to give an answer. Most questions being multiple choice.

MORE TESTING

The fears of the financial advisers from the previous testing informed our next tests with advisers as we would now reinforce our operating model that it is not cut them out but make it easier for them.

INSIGHTS

• Feedback was more fluid. “This seems to solve our problem, but what about when we don’t have signal? Can we work offline?”

FINAL THOUGHTS

The question about working offline informed our decisions in terms of syncing information once they were online again but being able to store it offline when there is no internet connectivity.

The constraints of having to be able to sync with old technologies stifled some progress. We had a beta group whose turn around times were reduced by over 40%. The key would be educating advisers on this new process given that they felt their process is an art and changing it may affect their effectiveness.