Hollard Insurance

Optimising insurance onboarding to enhance time to value and user experience.

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Hollard is the largest independent and privately owned insurance company in South Africa with operations in multiple African countries. The company‘s product portfolio is primarily divided into two main categories: short-term insurance and life insurance.

Industry

Insurance

Project duration

6 months

Platforms

Responsive web, Kiosk

Challenge

Hollard Life was experiencing a decline in funeral policy purchases, primarily attributed to a problematic customer onboarding process. Analysis of customer feedback and sales data reveals that a majority of potential customers abandoning their application before completion, resulting in lost annual premium revenue.

My role in this project

I joined the Hollard Life division’s digital team as a Senior UX/UI Designer came with the responsibilities of designing digital experiences, growing the design capability and evangelising design within the company.

In this project, I

Conducted in-depth analysis of the existing quote and onboarding flows, pinpointing the inefficiencies at both UX and UI levels to strategise solutions.

Conducted interviews with the customer experience (CX) team and a few users, and listened to customer calls to gather insights into the current system’s shortcomings.

Led the redesign of the new quote and buy platform, and leveraged work by the central design team to ensure that this update was seamlessly integrated into our design system, enhancing brand consistency across the platform.

Collaborated with managers, engineers, analysts, actuaries, marketing to ensure that the design aligns with Hollard’s business goals and objectives as well as our overall design strategy.

Goals

Hollard Life has experienced a decline in funeral policy purchases, primarily attributed to a problematic customer onboarding process. Analysis of customer feedback and sales data reveals that a majority of potential customers abandoning their application before completion, resulting in lost annual premium revenue.

Problem statement

How might we streamline and simplify Hollard’s funeral policy quote and onboard process to reduce customer abandonment rates, increase completed applications, and recover lost annual premium revenue while improving customer satisfaction?

Getting to the solution

Design approach

The digital team employed an agile methodology, incorporating essential scrum ceremonies such as daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives. However, our design processes adhered to the following model:

Discover

Understanding

Define

Synthesis

Create

Ideation

Deliver

Implementation

Stakeholder engagement

User interviews

Contextual inquiry

Design review

Task analysis

Empathy mapping

Insights gathering

HMW creation

User flow generation

Journey mapping

Wireframing

Interface design

Prototyping

Prototype feedback

Usability testing

Developer handoff

Design principles

I prioritised creating an intuitive and engaging journey that empowers users to quote and buy easily. Here’s a glimpse into my thought process when crafting this seamless user journey:

Intuitiveness

Creating intuitive navigation patterns and call to actions

Simplicity

Simplifying complex forms and interaction patterns

Accessibility

Designing for accessibility

Clarity

Use simple language for names and indicators

Leveraging the brand

In collaboration with the branding team, I utilised the established brand guidelines and integrated them into the design.

Purple

Green

Orange

Gold

Dark

Bold

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Medium

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Bold

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Regular

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Impact

The new application achieved the following:

Improved user-friendly experience - The new system educated and supported users, reducing support calls to the call centre.

Enhanced comprehension - Achieved a 100% comprehension rate during user testing

Reduced task time - The time required to complete the process was significantly shortened

Stakeholder approval - The journey received approval from various internal teams

Improved sales - The was an X% increase in sales after launch

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