Insurance Policy Workflow App

Friends Cove

Date

2024

End Client

Friends Cove Mutual Insurance

Role

UX Design
UI Design
UX Research
Retool

Our goal was to design a custom internal tool for the Friends Cove Insurance team to replace their many disjointed spreadsheets in order to provide organization and efficiency for inbound new policy applications. We wanted our solution to help the team save time and resources by utilizing automation and enabling cross-team visibility.

We worked with the Friends Cove team to deeply understand their workflow and requirements for each of their users: {name three ‘personas’} and then with our development team to build the solution using Retool, a low-code platform for building and shipping custom internal business tools quickly.

Problem

The Friends Cove team provides home and commercial insurance, working directly with insurance agents to track and manage thousands of policies, receiving dozens of new policy applications every week. The underwriting and inspections teams complete the bulk of their work using a Policy Admin System tool that stores all active and inactive policies, allowing them to review and update policy data, order inspections, as well as make notes and set reminders.

While the Policy Admin System facilitates a large portion of their job duties, the platform lacks project management capabilities, forcing the team to cobble together their own makeshift project management processes using a series of disjointed spreadsheets, email inbox rules, and personal checklists.

Friends Cove was facing these main issues with their current process:

The underwriting and inspection teams were operating in separate silos with little visibility into each other’s workflow, making it difficult to collaborate and cover job functionalities.
Each team had multiple spreadsheets and project management systems that required heavy manual input and duplicate work across teams.
The current workflow lacked personalization and the ability to track deliverables for each team member.

Research & Data Mapping

We conducted user interviews with team members from underwriting, inspections, and finance, as well as C-level stakeholders.

After assessing and documenting the current workflow, we created a series of data mapping and information architecture diagrams to illustrate the new workflow system and better understand the requirements and data structure for our Retool app solution.

We created flowcharts for both the current and new workflows, and defined the new statuses that would be used in the Retool app.

Retool App Solution

We worked directly with Retool developer advocates to better understand the structural and design capabilities of the Retool app-building platform.

Through a multi-faceted approach of designing directly in Retool and in Figma, we created a working prototype of our solution for ease of hand-off to the development team.
We designed a solution for the Friends Cove underwriting and inspection teams that integrates seamlessly with their Policy Admin System and provides each team with a customized view of incoming policy applications and upcoming deliverables.

Underwriting Board

The Underwriting Board provides a customized view for the underwriting team to track all outstanding underwriting tasks in one centralized hub.

Integrating directly with their Policy Admin System, this board provides a view of new policy applications and upcoming reminders set by the underwriting team. Team members can click to view the policy directly in their Policy Admin System or view the Policy Detail page to see policy data and track policy-specific tasks. Here team members can also view all reminders for policies segmented by urgency.

Inspections Board

Similarly, the Inspections Board provides a customized view for the inspections team to track all outstanding inspections tasks. Team members can view reminders and track policies along the inspections workflow, which follows a 60-day timeline from when inspections are ordered.