ISCx Marketplace

ISCx Marketplace

ISCx Marketplace

Marketplace for purchasing insurance coverages

About Project

Company

Integrated Specialty Coverages

Role

Product Designer

Work

User Flows, Product Design, User Testing, Design System

Company

Integrated Specialty Coverages

Role

Product Designer

Work

User Flows, Product Design, Design System

Problem

ISC has many types of insurance coverage offerings, but are isolated across various platforms, leading to minimal visibility and awareness of product offerings to customers. The insurance application submission and approval process is complex and convoluted as there is a lot of back-and-forth communication between Agents, who submit applications, and Underwriters, who review applications.

Solution

Create a marketplace platform to grow visibility of all its coverage offerings that integrates internal, 3rd party, and wholesale products. Ensure the user experience is consistent for the Agent and Underwriter across their separate user journeys and keep track of the context of each step during application submission and approval to lower cognitive load for the user.

Impact

14%

14%

14%

14%

User growth

11%

11%

11%

11%

Revenue

32%

32%

32%

32%

Design task completion

User Personas

Agent: Submits Application

Agent: Submits

Application

Underwriter: Reviews Application

Underwriter: Reviews

Application

In Progress

Approval

Requested

Quote Approved

Pending Bind

Bound

In

Progress

Approval

Requested

Quote

Approved

Pending

Bind

Bound

Application submission & approval process

Application submission & approval process

User Journey Flow

I collaborated with the product team to generate user flows for the Agent and Underwriter and highlighted key points of their journey with the product manager to help me holistically see the decision points and effects of each action taken:

  1. Understand the triggers and actions the Agent and Underwriter take

  2. Identify the pre-requisites that need to be completed before the Agent or Underwriter may move to the next step

  3. Identify and understand the 2nd order / 3rd order effects of actions taken by the Agent and how it affects the Underwriter and vice-versa.

I collaborated with the product team to generate user flows for the Agent and Underwriter and highlighted key points of their journey with the product manager to help me holistically see the decision points and effects of each action taken:

  1. Understand the triggers and actions each user takes

  2. Identify the pre-requisites that need to be completed before the Agent or Underwriter may move to the next step

  3. Identify and understand the 2nd order / 3rd order effects of actions taken by the Agent and how it affects the underwriter and vice-versa.

Challenge

Challenge

It took multiple iterations of interviewing and understanding the user journey of Agents and Underwriters. It's a very complex workflow where there are dependencies between both user types, where an Agent cannot proceed to their next step until the Underwriter finishes their portion and vice-versa. Synthesizing the complexity and having a clear picture of the whole journey was an iterative process. Having the awareness of when to look at the journey from a birds-eye view or from a zoomed in view proved to be key.

It took multiple iterations of interviewing and understanding the user journey of Agents and Underwriters. It's a very complex workflow where there are dependencies between both user types, where an Agent cannot proceed to their next step until the Underwriter finishes their portion and vice-versa. Synthesizing the complexity and having a clear picture of the whole journey required asking the right questions. Having the awareness of when to look at the journey from a birds-eye view or from a zoomed-in view proved to be key.

Information Architecture

I identified the sections that contain the most application questions with the product manager to create an information architecture diagram. These diagrams map the questions per section to help me strategically think how to group sections across different pages to prevent overwhelming the Agent with an endless list of questions.

As an example, the diagram below shows the questions that will appear on the 'Business Operations' page when filling out the application for a coverage.

My team and I created and vetted the user journey flow for the Agent, who submits applications for the insured, and the Underwriter, who reviews the submitted application. Creating the user journey flow helped me holistically see the decision points and effects of each action taken:

  1. Understand the triggers and actions each user takes

  2. Identify the pre-requisites that need to be completed before the Agent or Underwriter may move to the next step

  3. Identify and understand the 2nd order / 3rd order effects of actions taken by the Agent and how it affects the underwriter and vice-versa.

Wireframes

Created initial sketches to map out the high level sections for submission questions for insurance coverages.

My team and I created and vetted the user journey flow for the Agent, who submits applications for the insured, and the Underwriter, who reviews the submitted application. Creating the user journey flow helped me holistically see the decision points and effects of each action taken:

  1. Understand the triggers and actions each user takes

  2. Identify the pre-requisites that need to be completed before the Agent or Underwriter may move to the next step

  3. Identify and understand the 2nd order / 3rd order effects of actions taken by the Agent and how it affects the underwriter and vice-versa.

UI Design

Agent Pre-Submission Flow: In Progress

  1. Grow visibility of available coverage options.

  2. Ensures that the context of the application status is maintained throughout the Agent pre-submission flow by keeping application status visible across pages.

  3. Indicates the specific step the Agent or is currently on to keep context of where they are within the application process.

  4. Questions per page were strategically divided from mapping out questions (see Information Architecture section above).

  5. Provides consistent Agent experience.

UW Post-Submission Flow: Approval Requested to Quote Approved

  1. Ensures that the context of the application status is maintained throughout the Underwriter post-submission flow by keeping application status visible across pages.

  2. Always indicate the specific step the Underwriter is currently on to keep context of where they are within the application process.

  3. Provides consistent Underwriter experience.

Agent Post-Submission Flow: Quote Approved to Pending Bind

  1. Agent is now able to view quotes and upload App Packet with signatures for the coverage application.

UW Post-Submission Flow: Pending Bind to Bound

  1. Underwriter review documents uploaded by Agent and binds the policy.

Agent Post-Submission Flow: Bound

  1. Agent views the Submission Page and sees that the application is bound.

Bundle Use Case

  1. The UI design eventually evolved to account for bundle use cases where the insured wants to bundle multiple insurance coverages.

UX Improvements: User Feedback and Analytics

50+

50+

50+

50+

Beta Users

80%

80%

80%

80%

Voiced similar points

Used Hotjar to gather user feedback and analytics

Improvement #1: Endorsement Redesign

Underwriters want to be able to group endorsements by effective date for a simplified review process and to gain clarity on changes to an application. Underwriters also want to be able to see which endorsements will impact costs.

Endorsement History - Original Design

Endorsement History - New Design

Challenge

Challenge

The original endorsement design posed a technical challenge where it'd be difficult to calculate the rate of the endorsement if we combine many changes under one endorsement ID. Besides improving the user experience by making it easier to digest each endorsement change (having one change per endorsement), it also decreased the technical complexity for engineers.

The original endorsement design posed a technical challenge where it'd be difficult to calculate the rate of the endorsement if we combine many changes under one endorsement ID. Besides improving the user experience by making it easier to digest each endorsement change (having one change per endorsement), it also decreased the technical complexity for engineers.

Improvement #2: Agents expressed frustration with delayed visibility of quotes or price indication.

Agents want to be able to explore prices much earlier in their user journey and not have to wait to complete all the coverage questions to view a quote. As a result, we added a 'quick quote' feature to the user experience.

Improvement #3: Underwriters expressed frustration with having to manually verify duplicates of insured applications.

We added the feature to detect existing insureds when entered with a similar 'Company Name' that an Agent has entered in the past. This prevents having duplicate applications for one insured customer (e.g., will no longer have two applications with company name "Cyberdyne Systems" and "Cyberdyne Systems LLC").

Adapting Quickly and Scaling for More Users

UI changes for scaling insurance products and users:

  1. Launched partner insurance coverages with email communication.

  2. Allowing Agents to request access for other insurance coverages.

  3. Launched partner insurance coverages to link out to their websites.

Usability:

  1. Used icons to signify which insurance coverages require email communication and approval for access.

  2. Indicated which coverages have limited distribution or are only offered in certain states.

My team and I created and vetted the user journey flow for the Agent, who submits applications for the insured, and the Underwriter, who reviews the submitted application. Creating the user journey flow helped me holistically see the decision points and effects of each action taken:

  1. Understand the triggers and actions each user takes

  2. Identify the pre-requisites that need to be completed before the Agent or Underwriter may move to the next step

  3. Identify and understand the 2nd order / 3rd order effects of actions taken by the Agent and how it affects the underwriter and vice-versa.

Design System

Design time decreased by having clear documentation of a design system, leading to increased productivity and completion of design tasks by 32%.

Underwriter Task Manager