CANADIAN INSURANCE PROVIDER

Creating Insurance Products for the Emerging Middle Class

THE CHALLENGE

Partnering with the No. 1 insurance provider in the Philippines to create new insurance products for lower-income consumers.

OUTCOMES

Core insights about a previously underserved insurance segment
Training a cross-functional internal team on implementing design sprints
A business design brief based on insights gathered in user testing

OVERVIEW

Being a part of the Emerging Middle Class often means you’re focused on making ends meet. The basic necessities are top of mind: paying school fees, making rent, and contributing to family medical expenses. But as e-commerce has grown, small luxuries are more accessible – for some, it’s phone chargers, for others, a fashion find. Even for people who have a little extra to spend, insurance often remains intimidating and out of reach.

The Canadian Insurance Provider realised that in order to target the Philippines’ EMC, it was critical to gain a ground-up understanding of beliefs, behaviours, fears, and motivations. The goal was to make insurance accessible and simple for all: an idea that is core to the insurance provider as a company, and at the centre of a new potential consumer base. The client partnered with Heist to quickly gain a deeper understanding of this particular segment, and translate these learnings into design opportunities and concepts.

At the end of the process, the client identified one winning concept from the design sprint run by Heist, ready to design and build. This concept is currently in development.

PROCESS

Heist’s work with the client was fast-paced and aimed at rapidly identifying a solution that directly met the end user’s needs. Across a two-week sprint, the team conducted seven days of fieldwork, holding more than 100 quick conversations in public spaces to gain a broader understanding of attitudes around insurance and overall financial management. The Heist team also conducted 15 in-depth in-home visits that provided a firsthand look at the mental frameworks people use when making financial decisions, as well as the challenges they might face – like medical emergencies and job loss – that can derail plans for saving.

The second week was focused on synthesising these insights and running a design sprint to develop more than 70 concepts. These concepts were shared with key senior stakeholders at the company. Seeing them in their prototype format helped the company’s leaders align strategy and direction. Further, the concepts were curated for national regulators, and provided a touchpoint to understand the intent and benefit of a new category of insurance products.

At the end, Heist had not only developed a winning concept that is expected to come to market in 2019, it also passed on the tools of design to the client’s internal team, and helped introduce policymakers to a new format for purchasing insurance – one that gives hundreds of thousands of new Filipinos access to coverage that helps smooth out the inevitable bumps of life.

We wanted a high impact project in a condensed timeframe, and we wanted to involve a larger group of diverse stakeholders in the journey. Whether you need sharp cultural insights or concepts ready to be prototyped, Heist is brilliant at rapidly assembling an exceptional team around your design or research project and just getting it done – when and where you need.