Life Insurance Sales Platform

Caixa Seguradora |  2019

Life Insurance Products

A new life insurance sales platform in the more than 3,000 branches of the Caixa bank.

Role

UX Designer
UX Writer

I was one of the leaders and creators of this project, which I had the opportunity to work on previously in the pilot. Not only did I do the strategy and feature definition, but I also did user research and developed the wireframes. Together with other UX/UI Designers, I also took part in visual design within the Caixa Seguradora branding to the technical limits of SalesForce.

The context

The platform for selling life insurance products at the Caixa Econômica Federal agencies, one of Brazil's largest banks, was obsolete. There have been no relevant updates in the sales process for at least 5 years, making the task of offering insurance more challenging than usual. In addition, most Brazilians do not have the culture of buying financial products, including products such as life insurance. For them, the product is complex, too technical and with way too many terminologies.

And so, it was not an easy feat to make the prospect perceive aggregated value and become sensitized to purchase the product. As a result, the buying and selling experience is not always friendly, with jargon and impediments to the sales system.

The briefing

Purchasing life insurance is an act of love, after all, the product will benefit someone else when in need of use. Obtaining it is far from being only a rational decision, and if the end-user can't understand this careless attitude, then the business might need to rethink how to offer it. That was the case and common thinking for this project: recreate a more human-centred and appealing user experience.

The new sales platform also had to be simple and fit all infrastructure and technological requirements. Due to the volume of bank agencies in Brazil, over 3,000, not every POS had the capacity to run modern cloud services.  It was mandatory to build an accessible solution that could run properly in every browser, including Internet Explorer 9.

With all those factors, the team was driven and determined to build the best solution in the given circumstances. And so, the following items were addressed:

  • A sales flow reflecting the user journey
    Before any quotation, it was necessary to understand the users' lifestyle, family configuration, and financial needs. After all, the coverages and premium needed to reflect it.
  • User-friendly tone
    We already knew insurance products had jargon of being complex. Dismistify and translate it for regular people was a must, even if it means changing product labels and names.
  • Paperless
    More than 40% of the life insurance policies tended to get cancelled a few days after closing the deal.  The main problem was with the contracts: some pages went missing or missed the client's signature. We needed to make sure the new sales platform could solve this problem.
  • Training the staff
    With all changes, the bank staff also needed to get along with the new sales platform. They needed to embrace the changes and understand the importance of the new processes.
Research and users

Before designing the solution, we needed to understand better the context and needs of the users. Parallel to the new sales platform, there was another project developing new life insurance products. The other squad has led two focus group research with different users: the Caixa bank salesperson and bank customers. Since the goals of both projects were to recreate the sales flow, we used all information and learnings to define features, map the users' needs and customer journeys.

As a result, we realized that both users and end-users found the product complex - hard to sell and difficult to understand. If not by monthly targets, bank salespeople would easily offer other products. Based on their feedback, they had a more intuitive sales platform and it was easier to persuade prospects. As for the bank customers, they couldn't follow up properly with all that was offered. Product characteristics, prices, coverages and premiums, there was too much information at the same time.

Bank salesperson
Pain:
hard to sell and explain the product to the customer.
Goal: achieve your sales targets for all products, including life insurance.

Caixa bank customer
Pain:
can't give a financial support to the beloved ones in her absence.
Goal: thrive financially with sustainable achievements

Wireframes and prototypes

The project had a slightly peculiar design phase. As mentioned above, another squad was developing the new life insurance products, including some design elements such as illustrations. In addition, the Product Design team from the Customer Experience Department had already developed and shared the Caixa Seguradora style guide, an in-depth brand guide for digital implementations. With this source, we already had outlined elements applications such as components, interactive design, grid structure, buttons, and other style standards.

From there, three low-fidelity wireframe versions were developed and validated with the stakeholders. They were also tested by Caixa Seguradora's commercial consultants, responsible for training the insurance products with Caixa bank salespeople. Unfortunately, for privacy reasons, these prototypes could not be shared.

Training the team

Part of our goal in this project was to make sure the bank salespeople got engaged and well-trained with the new sales platform. We knew there was naturally a learning curve, after all, most of them worked with the same tool for years. Besides, the interviews highlighted a possible discomfort with a new platform, and we wanted to mitigate it.

To support their training, we've developed a simple game emulating and illustrating the new sales flow. The Commercial Department, responsible for the salespeople training and capacitation, also created banners to share on our internal channels.

Training game:

Click here ↓
Learning & results

The new life insurance platform was done and delivered in 4 months after the kickoff. Though the new solution didn't affect the average volume of sales, we could witness a drastic reduction in plan cancellations. We believe that's due to two factors: the new process is now more instructive, limiting misinterpretations, and the digital signature and a paperless contract reduced flaws in the process.

As for my learnings, this project made me understand that a relevant user experience is more than a digital deliverable. It wouldn't matter if we could design a powerful solution if users can't be capacitated or motivated. Also, our efforts would go to waste if we didn't consider accessibility aspects. Brazil is a continental country, and not every town has good internet or access to modern computers. That also applies to services and businesses since Caixa Econômica Federal is one of the biggest banks in the country.

Final version

The new life insurance sales platform is only accessible through the internal system of the company, the AIC. But you can take a look at the final UI versions in the link below.

Click here ↓

Let's chat!

If you think we can work together, get in touch with me:

santana.luizf@gmail.com