Back
Retail Select Access - A dedicated system by Sayata for insurance retail agents
Platform Design
Sayata’s Retail Select Access
A dedicated system by Sayata for insurance retail agents
In a Nutshell
The RSA platform was created to address the challenge of offline interaction between wholesale brokers and retail agents in Sayata's ecosystem. The goal was to reduce the workload on brokers and increase the volume of submissions by enabling retailers to independently manage and make decisions. This strategic move aimed to empower retail agents and ensure brokers retained control. The platform aimed to streamline the process and boost efficiency for all parties involved.
The Company
Sayata is an insurance marketplace for SMBs.
Sayata empowers insurance professionals to grow their portfolios by streamlining the process of finding and securing business coverage for SMBs. Its end-to-end technological solution and educational tools enable efficient growth
My Role
Lead Product Designer.
I oversaw user research, designed user flows, and ensured seamless communication with the development team. I also managed and mentored another designer, aligned design efforts with business needs and optimized the user experience.
Strategic Goals
The first step was to sit with the PM and the stakeholders to lay down some Strategic goals:
1
Empower Retail Agents: manage submissions independently through a platform, enhancing their value to applicants.
2
Reduce Wholesale Brokers' Workload: Shift workload from wholesalers to retailers, improving submission handling efficiency.
3
Maintain Brokers' Control and Oversight: Give retailers more autonomy, but keep submission process control with brokers to maintain service quality.
4
Optimize Efficiency and Productivity: The platform benefits all parties by simplifying submissions and allowing more dynamic interactions.
5
Leverage Existing Technologies: Create the RSA platform leveraging existing technologies to accelerate development, utilizing proven solutions for faster delivery times.
6
Design for Future Expansion: RSA platform facilitates interactions for cyber insurance. Its design allows for expansion to accommodate more insurance lines, increasing its utility.
7
Integrate B2C Aspects: The RSA platform needed to combine B2B and B2C aspects for retail agents and direct applicant interactions.
Research Plan
The creation of the RSA platform's meticulous research plan was instrumental. It took into account insurance market dynamics, opportunities, submission complexities, user needs, and technological advancements to improve operations.
Discovery Phase
Initiates a project by gathering preliminary data on scope, users, and market. This phase aligns the team's understanding of objectives and opportunities, leading to focused research.
User Interviews and Surveys
Gather feedback from wholesale brokers and retail agents via surveys and interviews. Use this qualitative data to design a user-centric platform.
Market Analysis and Competitive Landscape
Market research is vital for distinguishing RSA platforms in insurance and finding opportunities. It guarantees meeting demands, unique features, and improved efficiencies, boosting adoption.
Technology Feasibility Study
Assessing technologies and frameworks is crucial for building RSA platforms; it ensures viability and smooth development.
Prototype Testing and Feedback Loops
Prototype testing iteratively refines designs through user testing, validating choices, usability, and functionality to deliver a user-friendly product.
User Interviews and Surveys
Implementation: We conducted surveys and interviews to gain insights into our target audience. It provided qualitative and quantitative data on their needs and expectations for the new platform.
Findings:
Streamline submission process to increase efficiency. Improve communication channels and policy access for retail agents. Create user-friendly interface for comparing diverse policies. Implement customizable proposal generator for professional and efficient client communications.
Streamline submission process to increase efficiency. Improve communication channels and policy access for retail agents. Create user-friendly interface for comparing diverse policies. Implement customizable proposal generator for professional and efficient client communications.
Implementation:
Minimize submission questions for faster process. Prioritized live updates and confirmations by the brokers to steps over speed of progress. Simplification of the comparison tool that is implemented in th wholesaler portal. Emphasize the proposal pack as the prominent CTA in the quote comparison.
Minimize submission questions for faster process. Prioritized live updates and confirmations by the brokers to steps over speed of progress. Simplification of the comparison tool that is implemented in th wholesaler portal. Emphasize the proposal pack as the prominent CTA in the quote comparison.
Insights and Recommendations
Based on comprehensive research encompassing user interviews, market analysis, and technological feasibility studies, we've distilled our findings into three pivotal recommendations for the RSA platform:
Focus on User-Centric Design:
Develop an intuitive interface that simplifies the policy comparison and submission process for retail agents, integrating customizable proposal tools to enhance client interactions. This addresses direct user feedback on the need for efficiency and professionalism in their workflow.
Capitalize on Market Gaps:
Leverage the identified market opportunity by offering a platform that combines B2B & B2C functionalities, targeting the unmet needs of both wholesale brokers and retail agents. This differentiation is key in positioning the RSA platform as a unique solution in the insurance technology space.
Ensure Flexibility and Compliance:
Design the platform with a modular architecture to easily adapt to regulatory changes and future expansions into additional insurance lines. This approach will secure the platform's long-term viability and trustworthiness in a dynamically evolving regulatory landscape.
Developing User Personas
Since the retailers were a new target audience, we developed detailed user personas. We synthesized the data from interviews, surveys, and market research to build comprehensive profiles representing our target audience's needs and challenges. These personas guide design decisions, ensuring the platform aligns with user expectations and workflows.
To address the industry's needs gap, our goal was to ensure that the RSA platform met most of those needs. To do this, we integrated empathetic insights sourced from both wholesale brokers and retail agents.
Defining The Problems
The next step was to identify and understand the core problems faced by our users was paramount. This critical step ensured that our solution would not only address surface-level issues but also tackle the underlying challenges that wholesale brokers and retail agents face in the insurance submission process.
A
Inefficient Submission Process:
Both brokers and agents are hindered by a cumbersome and time-consuming submission process, which often involves manual data entry and a lack of streamlined communication channels. This inefficiency limits the number of submissions that can be managed effectively, impacting productivity and potential revenue.
Both brokers and agents are hindered by a cumbersome and time-consuming submission process, which often involves manual data entry and a lack of streamlined communication channels. This inefficiency limits the number of submissions that can be managed effectively, impacting productivity and potential revenue.
B
Difficulty in Policy Comparison:
Retail agents struggle with comparing policies due to the diverse and complex nature of insurance offerings. The absence of a unified format for policy information makes it challenging to evaluate and select the best options for their clients, leading to decision paralysis and reduced client satisfaction.
Retail agents struggle with comparing policies due to the diverse and complex nature of insurance offerings. The absence of a unified format for policy information makes it challenging to evaluate and select the best options for their clients, leading to decision paralysis and reduced client satisfaction.
C
Adaptation to Regulatory Changes:
The insurance industry is heavily regulated, with frequent changes that can impact the submission process. Both brokers and agents face challenges in staying updated with these changes, ensuring compliance, and we need a system that will allow our dev “core” team to update the system regularly.
The insurance industry is heavily regulated, with frequent changes that can impact the submission process. Both brokers and agents face challenges in staying updated with these changes, ensuring compliance, and we need a system that will allow our dev “core” team to update the system regularly.
D
Inadequate Control and Oversight for Brokers:
Brokers want to reduce their workload by involving retail agents in the submission process but are concerned about losing control and oversight. Striking a balance between empowering agents and maintaining oversight is crucial.
Brokers want to reduce their workload by involving retail agents in the submission process but are concerned about losing control and oversight. Striking a balance between empowering agents and maintaining oversight is crucial.
Flow Planning
The RSA platform's flow planning stage utilized flowcharts and low-fidelity wireframes to map out user journeys, streamline operations, and ensure a seamless experience. This planning phase aligned the team's understanding of the platform's functionality and user interaction, and allowed the Dev team to start working on the infrastructure.
Flowchart of the portal at launch, divided to 3*3 cells: Broker-Retailer-Sayata on one axis, and OnBoarding-Submitting-Binding on the other.
(Note: This is a reconstructed flowchart where I removed some proprietary steps)
One of the iterations of a low-fidelity wireframe of a form page.
One of the iterations of a low-fidelity wireframe of a the main dashboard.
Design & delivery
In the Design & Delivery phase, we transformed our user research and flow planning into tangible, functional designs based mostly on existing DS components used in a new way, and prepare them to development.
Here are some of the screens:
The main dashboard includes the retailer’s name and logo for a sense of familiarity even from the first use (the logo is automatically from the specific agency’s website by by automatic scraping tools we created), and the statistics focus on giving them a sense of success, which pushes them to reach higher within the RSA platform.
The submission process was refined and reduced to the minimum needed to create a bindable quote, and the rest of the questions are presumptions based, and will be confirmed later in the process, at the binding stage. The form layout is clean from distractions, and as the users as mostly “old school” agents who are used to printed forms, the main form is create as paper-like shape (including the letter page size dimensions) for some kind of skeuomorphism.
The comparison page is a simplified version of the comparison tool of the wholesaler portal, and it reduced to the minimal details the retailer needs to understand the nature of the quotes and their statuses. Deep dive into the quotes is possible through additional actions. The CTAs are placed it contextual areas per quote, and the Proposal Pack, a branded marketing tool to deliver the relevant info to the applicants, in the main CTA at the bottom navbar.
For editing the quote, we oped for a mini sidebar drawer instead of dedicated page, so the users will be able the see the live changes below.
The Binding step is a list for drawers for mini-forms, so not to overwhelm them with too many questions at one hand, but on the other hand make it clear what will be the next steps to reduce the back and forward with the applicant needed.
Usability Testing
Usability testing with end-users refined the RSA platform's design and functionality, and raised three points:
A
Streamlined interface with clearer CTAs after policy comparison guides users seamlessly to the next step.
B
Reduced onboarding steps and provided contextual tips for better accessibility.
C
Usability testing evolved RSA into a more user-friendly and effective tool.
Lessons Learned
The development of the RSA platform yielded refined lessons:
1
Data-driven design and user engagement enhance user satisfaction and platform performance.
2
Effective product design seamlessly blends with existing workflows, enhancing user experience without causing confusion.
3
Future-proofing entails designing adaptable architecture for seamless market shifts and insurance expansions.
Impact and results
After the RSA platform's introduction, Sayata witnessed a 27.17% increase in submissions by retail agents and a 5.8% rise in broker submissions in the following quarter, leading to an overall submission increase of 14.19%.
Additionally, the number of risks bound through Sayata grew by 12.08%, and the average time from submission to binding request dropped by almost four days. While these improvements coincide with other updates and market changes, the RSA platform's launch was the primary new intervention, suggesting its significant influence on these positive outcomes.
Although those stats were really positive, they focused on a few lines on insurance, while in others where the market was softer & the lines were more complex, we didn’t met all of the KPIs.
Future plans were laid out to improve this:
A
Predictive Analytics:
Integrate data science and machine learning for risk assessments and market trends, empowering brokers and agents with actionable insights.
B
Multi-lines submissions:
Expand platform support for receiving quotes from multiple insurance lines in a single submission, enabling users to handle submissions more efficiently.
C
Broker-Agnostic Process:
Create a broker-agnostic process, allowing agents to create accounts and submit without a pre-existing broker of record.
D
Continuous Improvement:
Conduct advanced user research, focusing on behavioral pattern analysis and user interviews to drive continuous improvement.
Thank you!
This was a long process, and deserved an appropiate case study. Thank you for your attention! 🫡
Back to all case studies