Work

Insurance cases

Web · Financial services industry (FSI) · September 24’ - December 24’ (4 months)

Role - Research, Visual designs

Team - 1 Designer (myself), 1 PO, 7 Developers (front end and back end), 1 Technical architect, 3 Testers

Tools used - Figma, MS word

Market - US market

*Due to NDA policies, certain information has been omitted.

Overview

Company XYZ is a supplemental insurance provider (Carrier) that offers group supplemental insurance policies to organizations (Clients/Policyholders) for enrolling their employees (Insured members). XYZ collaborates with four key partners: Electronic data interchange partners, Case Builders, Tech partners, and Brokers.

The initiative is focussed on designing a centralized solution within XYZ supplemental insurance company’s B2B portal that gives case builders all the client and platform information they need to build enrollment forms in third-party administration platforms (TPAs). It also enables case builders to test these forms before releasing them for enrollment.

The goal is to reduce errors during the time of enrollment, speed up the enrollment form build process, and give platform partnership managers (PPMs) real-time visibility into case progress and quality of form build.

Key terminologies

Challenges

During the research the following were the challenges that were discovered and prioritized.

Proposed and implemented solution to address the challenges

The solution involved designing a centralized section named "Cases" within XYZ company’s B2B portal that guides case builders through a process. The process provides all the necessary client information required to build enrollment forms and enables case builders to test these forms before enrollment. Additionally, it offers platform partnership managers (PPMs) real-time visibility into the status of enrollment form builds, ensuring transparency and smoother coordination throughout the process.

How did i arrive at the solution ?

At the beginning of this initiative, I had minimal clarity about its objectives, target users, and their pain points. Recognizing this, I prioritized a structured research process— starting with discovery to understand the initiative’s goals, users and their challenges. I then defined and outlined these challenges, brainstormed and evaluated possible solutions to identify the most feasible and high-impact ones, and ultimately designed and tested the solutions to ensure they effectively addressed user and business needs.

The design process adhered to an agile methodology, breaking down significant tasks into sets of sub-tasks that are executed through sprints.

Discover

The goal was to thoroughly understand users and products, uncovering key needs and expectations.

• Stakeholder interviews:

3 interviews were conducted with portal managers who collaborate closely with case builders to gain insights about them. Due to company policies, direct access to case builders (external users) was limited

• User interviews:

2 interviews were conducted with case builders to gain insights about them and into their way of working, challenges, and needs.

Define

The findings from discover phase were synthesized in define phase.

• User persona:

Developed a detailed user persona for case builders to define the goals, needs, challenges, and expectations.

Ideate

An ideation workshop was conducted online to explore numerous ideas for the initiative involving active participation from PO, relevant stakeholders and technical teams. To visually present these ideas to business stakeholders, lo-fidelity wireframes were created, which helped gather feedback. Based on this feedback, subsequent iterations were made and ultimately the final versions were finalised.

Current process

• A case builder is assigned a case within the TPA by their manager.
• The case builder details are then shared with the PPM’s via email.
• Client Managers send client-specific information to the PPMs.
• PPMs forward this information to the case builders through email.
• Case builders begin creating enrollment forms in the TPA using the information received from the PPMs.
• PPMs maintain an Excel sheet to track the progress and status of each enrollment form build.
• Once the form is completed, case builders share it with client employees and begin the enrollment process.
• Errors often surface during enrollment, requiring corrections before employees can continue.
• This causes repeated iterations, delays, and frequent escalations from clients to the PPMs.
• Many enrollment site builds miss deadlines due to this time-consuming process, leading to client dissatisfaction and, at times, loss of clients.
• After the enrollment form build is finalized, PPMs update the completion status in Excel and await the next year’s enrollment cycle.

Design solution explantion

Explore the user flow

• All client-specific information that case builders typically receives over email will now be gathered into a single, centralized insurance case within the XYZ company’s B2B portal, serving as the one source of truth for enrollment form creation.
• Once the case builder builds the enrollment form using this consolidated data, the B2B portal requires them to test(quality check) the enrollment form. The enrollment form must achieve a minimum quality score of 90% to qualify for employee enrollment. Only forms that pass this threshold can be shared for employee enrollment and it is the case builder’s responsibility to ensure they successfully pass the quality check.
• This replaces the previously scattered and ambiguous workflow with a streamlined, guided, and user-friendly process.
• Case builder is supported at every step of the process, ensuring they have the right information and clear actions to build, test(qualicty check), and launch enrollment forms efficiently.
• Additionally, this approach provides the associated PPM’s with real-time visibility into the status of each case, allowing them to monitor whether the case builder is enrolling employees at the appropriate time accurately.

How did the solution solve the user challenges ?

The solution provided case Builders with a centralized source of truth for all client-specific information and platform materials needed to build enrollment forms, addressing their challenge of sifting through scattered emails. It also offered a way to test enrollment forms before they were sent out, significantly reducing errors and the resulting client escalations during the enrollment process. Additionally, by centralizing visibility into the enrollment form status, the system resolved platform partnership managers’ (PPMs) lack of insight into the enrollment process, enabling them to monitor progress and ensure timely enrollment completion.

Visual designs

Test

Upon the completion of the designs, users were recruited and usability testing was conducted with 2 PPM’s and 2 case builders to achieve the following objectives

• Assessing user satisfaction - The goal was to comprehend the users' interactions with the product and enhance overall satisfaction with the experience.
• Issue identification - The testing aimed to uncover usability issues, including confusing navigation, unclear instructions, or inefficient workflows, with the objective of mitigating user frustrations.
• Gather improvement insights – To collect direct user feedback on potential enhancements for improving the overall usability and experience.

Following the completion of the testing phase, the gathered feedback was carefully analyzed and thoughtfully incorporated into the final design iterations.

Impacts

Upon the completion of product development, the success of the initiative was assessed.

The following are the real values compared to achieved benchmark values post-development. These achieved benchmark values were gathered directly from the product owner (PO), Platform Partnership Managers (PPMs), Case Builders, and other relevant business stakeholders, as impact-measurement tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel could not be integrated into the third-party administration platforms (TPAs).

Post enrollment suryveys were sent to client employees after they complete their enrollment asking them to rate their satisfaction with the form and enrollment experience on a scale of 1-10.