3 weeks
Firemark (IAG’s insurtech innovation and venturing hub)
Millie, Enza, Hang and Chris
A Digital Solution for a new Insurance Policy (Quickcover)
Market research, Comparative and Competitive Analysis, User Interview, Affinity Mapping, Personas creation, Journey Map, Crazy 8s, Design Studio, MVP, Sketching, Wireframing and Prototyping
Trello, Google Form, Otter.ia, Miro and Figma
Insurance has been around since the 1830’s and started out as a "community pot of money", that would be used for funerals and other disasters. From these humble beginnings, it is now currently worth 76 billion and is projected to grow to 98 billion by 2025 in Australia. This growth is fuelled by post COVID recovery, and the increasing effects of climate change.
We were asked by Firemark to test the desirability and viability of such products, which we know is called Parametric Insurance, and also look at the business goals of reducing customer churn due to unaffordability.
Test the viability and desirability of Parametric Insurance and reduce customer churn due to unaffordability at renewal time.
In summary: The insurance industry desperately needs an image overhaul.
By providing insurance information in a transparent and concise way, we believe that there will be an increase in customer loyalty and retention and everyone, including the business, achieves peace of mind.
To begin, we needed to learn more about our client, the Insurance Market and Parametric Insurance around the world in order to better understand the users and the problems . We did this through Market Research, Competitive and Comparative Analysis and a Survey .
This also helped us to identify any information gaps and prepare for our user interviews.
IAG are the biggest underwriters of insurance in Australia, which has 29% of the market.
Their purpose is "making the world a safer place” by focusing on FOUR strategic pillars:
Firemark Ventures is part of the Firemark collective, IAG's Innovation and Venturing Hub.
Their focus is to disrupt the insurance industry by challenging the current norms.
They do this by is INNOVATION - using new technology, systems, ideas and business models around CUSTOMER-CENTRIC experiences.
In simple words, it is an insured amount of cash intended to help victims of natural disasters get by in the time between the occurrence of a natural disaster, and the time the insurance company takes to pay out the damage costs.
This process eliminates fraudulent claims and, in turn, reduces claim adjustment costs and creates a smooth, transparent and stress-free experience.
... or Value is below a certain level
Cash as and
when needed
You receive a
payout
A triggering event
A Claim Process
A pay-out mechanism
Loss or damage to physical asset
Complex; based on loss adjuster; can be slow
Reimbursement of actual loss / long process
Event occurrence exceeding parametric threshold
Transparent, based on an index, quick settlement
Pre-arranged payment structure / quick process
So the 3 key advantages that Parametric Insurance has over Traditional Insurance are:
An important point to drive here is that Parametric Insurance solutions ARE NOT designed to REPLACE but to COMPLEMENT traditional insurance programs.
We surveyed over 40 people across the country, and from those people, we interviewed 20 about their experience regarding being in a natural disaster and their interactions and experiences when it cames to claiming on insurance.
Originally, we wanted to try and capture people who live in natural disaster prone areas, such as those in the NSW floods/bushfires, however this was really difficult to do in the short period of time we had, so we decided to expand our search to anyone with any type of insurance.
The majority of people didn’t know anything about Parametric Insurance. We created a document with a simple, concise explanation about it and then asked our survey participants the final few questions:
Parametric insurance is a form of payment acting as a stop-gap between a disaster & receiving a full fledge insurance payment.
The payment is not dependent on property damage as such; it can for example, assist an insurer uf they're unable to work due to a natural disaster impacting their workplace or ability to work, helping to recover lost income.
Through this, parametric insurance has the potential to support large communities, promoting a quicker economic recovery in times of hardship caused by climate change driven peril events.
From our interviews, we learned that insurance in Australia has an image problem and that problem stems from there being a lack of transparency. For something as vital as insurance, more care needs to be taken when dealing with the entire subject matter from start to finish.
Based on all the information gathered from our Research and from our users real experiences, we created our Persona Helen.
Helen is a mother of two, living working full time from home with her partner, in what she believes to be an area that has a higher risk of natural disasters due to global warming. She is primarily worried about floods in this regard.
To mitigate any potential losses in the event of a flood, she has purchased home and contents insurance. Helen feels that this will give her and her family peace of mind that they will be protected and safe in the event of an emergency.
Based on insights from our User Interviews, we could define what Transparency means for Helen:
How does all of this aligns with what our competitors are doing?
It was hard to locate Direct Competitors in Australia. In fact there is only one currently offering Parametric Insurance . That wasn’t enough for us to get a proper understyanding on what “the best” were doing.
So we again expanded our net and went for the top performers both nationally, and internationally. It turned out that all the best are transparent, honest, and their insurance plans are simple and to-the-point.
The metrics that were used in the rating system included transparency, value for money, customer service and claim approvals. Interestingly, these are the same reasons that were brought up in our User Interviews-so there is a common theme here about “What customers look for in insurance” .
Brands such as NRMA and SGIO received far less approval ratings than best practise such as local insurer Honey and Lemonade from the US. We can see that there is a distinct correlation between the ease of information and transparency and the star rating and user approval.
We have a Hypothesis for that: “We believe that Helen will be able to purchase a parametric insurance policy with confidence if the information provided is transparent and concise. We will know this to be true when Helen renews her insurance policy with the addition of Quickcover (the name of the parametric insurance policy that we are working on).”
Knowing that best practise is all about providing transparent information, our ideation phase began and we found that our focus was more about how we could visually and descriptively do this using UI and UX copy.
The ideation process highlighted a few features but more importantly it showed us that it was more about the way we had to communicate the features of Quickcover.
Branding was given to us by Firemark: fonts, colours, logo and name of policy which was Quickcover .
We found that UX writing and UI design were the winners to be able to solve this problem for Helen and increase customer retention for the business.
Language is the primary interface here. It's the verbal UI . It was important to be to-the-point.
Iconography and simpler illustrations are particularly useful because they make information more accessible. They bridge communication barriers.
Icons and simple graphics means transparent information!
We further developed illustrations inspired by our competitors. It was also important that it didn't 'feel' like insurance . Or rather, it was important that it had feeling.
Based on our features and the brand assets we were given, along with those that we developed, we illustrated Helen's journey of renewing her insurance and the discovery of the new Quickcover.
This is an overview of what is essentially the user Task-flow.
Based on this storyboarded task-flow, we created low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes, tested and implemented feedback, to be able to move to the next step: Our Final Solution!
Our solution brings transparent information to our users, with a Human-centred design approach. Because that's what the UX is about.
Now that we have changed the way Quickcover information is delivered, we need to measure the success in terms of User Experience Design. We chose the Google Heart framework as a way to measure.
In terms of the business goals, we believe that through our research, synthesis, ideation and prototype, we were able to reach these goals of validating the desirability of Quickcover.
We also provided proof of concept of selling insurance in an EASY and TRANSPARENT way will increase renewal rates and increase loyalty of customers like Helen.
Now that we finished our part of the project, we have outlined the future Roadmap to ensure the success of the introduction of this newer type of insurance to a wider Australian market.
High-level Goal: Implement QuickCover on the market
Discovery Research: Desirability & Viability of the product
Usability Testing: Web version
Hi-fi Prototype
Include the pricing structure and sign up to QuickCover
Apply the graphics and structure to the entire Insurance
APP: for a faster Claim Process
New "Claim Process"
Usability Testing: Mobile version
Marketing NPS AI assistence