TMHCC Specialty Insurance

Overview

Tokio Marine HCC writes specialty lines, professional indemnity, liability, trade credit and surety, and sells most of it through brokers. In 2017 those brokers had no digital way to quote the small businesses they served: a quote was a phone call, an email and a wait. I led the design of a broker platform that gave each broker a branded site on one system, with a quote-to-policy journey inside it. It went on to house more than seventy brokers.

What brokers told us

Discovery ran as workshops per line of business and contextual interviews with brokers and underwriters. The professional indemnity brokers were comfortable with their workflows; their pain was quotes that took longer than a small business client would wait. Underwriters wanted less re-keying between systems and a better line of communication with the broker. Both wanted one place where the customer, the broker and the underwriter could see the same case. The sixteen words the two workshop groups (Trade Credit and Surety; Professional Indemnity and UK Liability) chose to describe the future portals became the review criteria for every wireframe iteration: flexible, efficient, dynamic, intuitive, recognisable, adaptable, versatile, omnichannel, fast, reliable, professional, modern, slick, easily maintainable, solid and simple.

The design

One platform, white-labelled per broker: the broker's name and colours on the front, TMHCC's products, rules and rating behind it. A broker signs in to a dashboard that reads like a morning briefing: performance across lines, renewals due, tasks pending, recent activity, and the customer list. A quote starts with who the business is and what it does, then asks the cover questions in plain language, with the reasoning available on request rather than printed on the page. The summary shows the price, what it covers, the excess chosen, and the other lines the business may need, each with a reason. Payment happens inside the portal with the summary kept in view. Confirmation issues the policy number and the documents and offers the two things a broker does next.

How it was made

User research and interviews, walkthroughs, profiling and personas, journey maps, information architecture, hi-fidelity interactive wireframes for desktop and mobile, prototypes, visual design and user testing. The wireframes carried the brokers' brand guidelines from the first iteration, so every review was of something that looked like the finished product and the client saw the redesign as it would ship. A modular design system, style guide and component library kept seventy sites consistent while letting each broker customise within the rules, with WCAG 2.0 AA built into the components.

Delivery

A team of fifteen with three direct reports, over a year, on Sitecore. Accessibility and compliance sign-off were release gates, and functional requirements were written so developers could estimate honestly, with UAT and QA gates before each release. Analytics were integrated so brokers could see what their site was doing and TMHCC could see the whole estate.

Why it matters

A platform that gives seventy independent businesses their own front door on shared rails is the same problem as any multi-tenant portal: distinct identity, common workflow, one place to change the rules. The hi-fidelity wireframes on this page are from the 2017 design, unretouched.