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KIWI Insurance
4 - 8 Weeks (2020)
The client is a small-mid sized traditional insurance company located in the United States. They offer various types of insurance products for individuals and businesses. The client presently operates under a business-to-business (B2B) environment where they rely on regional agents to sell insurance directly to consumers.
The client was looking to diversify its revenue stream by incorporating a direct-to-consumer (DTC) distribution channel. This would entail creating a subsidiary company that would sell insurance directly to consumers, targeting individuals between the ages of 20 - 35 years old.
The scope of the project included the following:
- A proof-of-concept DTC web design
- A value proposition to set the customer apart from competitors in the market
- A re-evaluation of the client’s existing product offerings and streamlining various insurance offerings to cater to the market demand of individuals between the ages of 20 - 35.
The Challenge
Problem Definition
Coverage: As a customer, if my needs are outside the out-of-the-box offering, I have to pay an additional premium to have an add-on, despite some of the coverage in the standard coverage is not needed.
Difficult to Navigate / Hard to Understand: As a customer, the legal-speak of many policy documentation online and on paper is difficult to navigate and hard to understand. I often require a regional agent and/or customer support to intervene and help explain the information to me.
Opaque Data: As a customer, I don’t actually know how much of what I’m paying actually covers what I need. I worry whether I am overpaying my premium.
Objectives
Business Proposition: A streamlined business model that offered the three most common insurance coverage that would cater to the risk appetite of a direct-to-consumer market channel, while also being relevant to the demographic of those that are between the ages of 20 to 35 years old.
Specifically, the following three insurance offering:
- Renter’s Insurance
- Pet Insurance
- Personal Item Insurance (e.g., Jewelry, Electronics, Artworks, etc.)
Design Proposition:
- Accessible Information
- Transparent and Fair Pricing
- Flexibility and Customization
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Process
Step 1: Market and User Research
Based on initial discovery, I worked with the client and collaborated on defining the set problems identified as well as the overall goal and objective of the organization. The client has performed some preliminary market and user research, and as part of the project, I also worked on identifying performing product-market fit, identifying total addressable market, competitive analysis and user interviews.
After the research was completed, I presented my research and provided them with user personas to across stakeholders internal to the team and cross-functionally with client's organization. Based on iterative feedback and collaboration with the business development and marketing team, we were able to finalize who the client's ideal end-users were and what kind of prospects the client is likely to move forward with.
Step 2: Client SWOT Analysis
The external analysis then led to an in-depth review of the client's product and existing processes. I interviewed internal stakeholders on their roles and responsibilities, and performed side-by-side observation with representative to understand the company's messaging and positioning.
From there, I reviewed key product and service marketings that the client had and compared it with competitors in the market. Again, in collaboration with marketing and business development, we streamlined the offerings and begin to develop various differentiators that the client can offer against it's competitors.
Step 3: Ideation, Iteration and Prototype
Drawing inspiration from direct-to-consumer products across industries (e.g., content streaming, retail, food, beauty, healthcare, etc.), I reviewed commonalities in branding, user-flow, task-flow, and site information, along with key DTC characteristics that the client can benefit when finalizing their subsidiary.
The initial wireframes and mock-ups focused on showcasing the various insurance that the client could offer to individuals. Based on the initial usability test and user-feedback, the design although was accessible and intuitive for the user, it did not differentiate the client from it's competitors.
Through iteration and conversation, the final designs incorporated a business model where consumers can choose their price and bundle their own insurance package. The differentiator also included a breakdown of cost for the user to facilitate consumer empowerment and trust in the company's product.
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Key Takeaway
Wins
Based on what was presented in the deliverables, the client found the following proposition compelling:
- Streamlining the insurance product offerings
- Incorporating accessible information and dialogue within the product
- Enabling flexibility in the insurance coverage plan as part of the standard package
Challenges
- Transparency as part of the product ethos was hard to sway with the client. As a traditional business on the smaller end of the market spectrum, there were concerns to what degree of transparency would be given to the customer.
- The DTC concept although was compelling in it’s design, there were questions surrounding logistics for customer support and possibilities of including an insurance specialist available on hand. There were back-and-forths regarding adding additional tools (e.g., Intercom, Zendesk, Chatbot, etc.) to provide on demand service
Next Steps
- Based on conversation, there was a knowledge transfer and hand-off of the deliverable with the client. Pending internal conversations, the next step for this project would include market testing and iterating on the design of the website and the business for better market-fit.
- Once the subsidiary company is further along / mature in the market, it would be recommended to slowly include additional insurance coverage to grow alongside the needs of the consumer base.