Designing a clearer path for declined customers

When a customer is declined for term life insurance, the moment can feel like a dead end. I led the end-to-end design of an embedded Guaranteed Issue experience – turning a disappointing "no" into a clear, next step.

A decline shouldn't feel like a dead end

At PolicyMe, roughly about 15% of completed Term Life insurance applications were being declined or postponed, with especially higher rates among seniors due to health and other risk factors. We had no PolicyMe-branded alternative, which mean sending these customers to an external agent for coverage. This broke our "one-stop-shop experience" and weakened our value of "never say no" and left brand value and business on the table.

The challenge was to build a standalone and embedded Guaranteed Issue Life Insurance journey that could give these customers a credible path to purchase coverage that still provides them with peace of mind for their loved ones.

Designing the full cycle

I was responsible for shaping the experience for 2 journeys from end to end which included:

• Understanding the customer problem
  

• Facilitating early workshops with internal stakeholders and cross-functional teams to align on the problem space

• Exploring different UX and messaging directions
  

• Refining the solution based on feedback

• Helping define a clearer path from decline to Guaranteed Issue

Bringing stakeholders in early

A new insurance product reaches across the whole company, not just the screens. I ran a series of 2-3 workshops; the first one was meant to capture requirements from every team that touches the journey. I brought each team to the same board to map what known requirements, open questions and deliverables.

Mapping the end-to-end flow

I took all the insights from the workshop and began to draft a journey map that reflected my understanding of how the end to end flow could work across all cross functional teams. Of course there were areas where there were gaps in my knowledge and the 2nd workshop was used to to surface them.

Talking to the people closest to the customer

It was very integral that I spoke with advisors since they are our front lines. There were a few key questions that I wanted to answer including:

• How advisors handle declined and postponed applications; language they use, what works or doesn't work with these cases
  

• How customers actually react when they're told they have been declined for term life insurance
  

• How we could offer Guaranteed Issue Life insurance as an alternative path without it feeling like a bait-and-switch

Here's what I learned

GI insurance needs and perceptions

As a part of launching this product, we needed to understand people's motivations and how they perceive life insurance and related needs later in life. We spoke to 2 cohorts; PolicyMe and external of people aged 55-75 for a total of 30 interviews total.

Here's what we learned

Principles that guided the designs

Standalone flow key screens

Embedded flow screens

Post launch reality

Customers were reaching checkout, but they weren't settling, so conversion was a lot lower than expected. We also saw low app-start to policy-create performance pointing to friction both before and at checkout.

• The working hypothesis was that there is price shock at checkout, a moment that needed human reassurance
  

• This opened up for a border opportunity – for a product of this nature, we need a clearer advisor touchpoint which could help the customer cross the finish line
  

This shifted how I though about the problem, it wasn't only about a clearer digital path, it was about recognizing where a fully self serve experience wasn't enough.

What I learned

This project challenged me to think across product, marketing, education, messaging and behaviour. I learned how valuable it is to:

The embedded journey actually surprised us, we had a couple customers who completed the application