Summary
Background:
The Marketplace is a digital platform that automates and simplifies reinsurance transactions between insurers and capital market investors using Vesttoo technology. It has separate access for insurers and capital market investors, as well as advanced tools for internal users. The tool makes it possible to model the reinsurance risk, and structure and price it as a financial instrument suitable for the capital market, then find the right investor, optimize its investment portfolio and monitor the portfolio and individual transactions. The main challenge is to present a large amount of complex information and data in a simple and accessible way.
The Need:
The final part of the investment process is the monitoring of transactions, so we have created this feature to be an efficient and attractive tool that provides a high-level overview of the portfolio as well as access to a detailed view of each investment.
The Solution:
I have collaborated closely with the product manager, and later the front-end development team to create this feature. User research was conducted to assess the parameters that investors would like to see, as well as benchmarking against leading investment platforms. Initial sketches were followed by a series of tests, discussions with professionals, and iterations. The end result is a clean and efficient dashboard, created in close collaboration with the development team.
The Outcome:
Having a digital representation of portfolios and investments on the platform had a huge impact:
- Selling calls were much easier
- Conversion rates from the first to subsequent calls with investors increased
- The monitoring process became easier - as we had a single source of truth, and by uploading the data, we had a tool to identify data errors and correct them if necessary
- Investor engagement was also increased. We began to proactively receive requirements from clients, rather than chasing them down and barely satisfying their needs
- Conversion rates from the first to subsequent calls with investors increased
- The monitoring process became easier - as we had a single source of truth, and by uploading the data, we had a tool to identify data errors and correct them if necessary
- Investor engagement was also increased. We began to proactively receive requirements from clients, rather than chasing them down and barely satisfying their needs
Case Study
Main Goals and User Stories:
- Concentrate all insurance-related assets on a single platform
- Track investment portfolio performance
- Optimise future investment decisions (buy / sell / hold)
- Operational - notify when cash flow movements are required
- Track investment portfolio performance
- Optimise future investment decisions (buy / sell / hold)
- Operational - notify when cash flow movements are required
To help us achieve the goals, we came up with the following user stories:
• As an investor, I need to analyze future risk metrics of my portfolio, to make internal risk management decisions and improve the risk/return metrics of my portfolio by selling/ holding assets.
• As an investor, I want to monitor and track the performance of my portfolio and compare it to the initial projection, to assess my modeling capabilities and improve my selection of future investment opportunities.
• As an investor, I want to monitor and track the performance of each of my investments so that I'll be able to optimize it and improve my risk management
• As a Vesttoo salesperson, I want to have a tool that would convince and explain our value to potential customers
• As a Vesttoo salesperson, I would like to educate investors who are not used to investing in insurance market
User Research:
Our research included interviews and discussions with external and internal users to determine what information is important to present and what the current issues are in the reinsurance market. We also benchmarked leading investment platforms (collaborated with the product manager).
We came up with the following insights:
• We should keep the UI clean because the data is complex anyway and we don't want to confuse users
• Table/chart views are essential and much clearer than text
• Table/chart views are essential and much clearer than text
• In terms of innovative UI/UX ideas, we have to be careful because most of the industry is very traditional and used to working with Bloomberg, which is a system from the 70s
• Leading platforms have a specific structure (tabs dividing the information, sidebar, dashboards, watchlist, iconography
• Certain colors are used to highlight: blue - finance, green - profit, red - loss
• We want to be innovative - but still speak in the language of the familiar
Our Personas:
User Flow:
Sketches:
The next step was to create the first draft of the structure:
Design System Use
Using existing and adding new design components (icons, drop-down menus)
Initial sketches:
Iterations
There have been several rounds of testing of the prototype. We received feedback from proven potential users and professionals in the field. As a result, many changes have been made to the content and data visualization to better meet the needs of investors.
Our conclusions were:
• We should simplify our charts and even split some into two different charts. As we're building a completely new product, we need to educate our users and not make it too complicated
• We want to have fewer colors and to be more "serious". I came up with a more monochromatic color scheme for the charts and removed unnecessary icons and illustrations. In addition to the action icons, I have also created a new, more minimalistic, yet detailed icon language based on an outline, that we used in our illustration of the investment process, the homepage, and later other diagrams and features
• At this point, navigation will be through tabs rather than a sidebar, as our users are more familiar with this structure
• We started considering at which point and how we will communicate with the user to help them
• We had to consider development constraints as our development team was working with the Highcharts library. All charts had to be designed to be easily compatible with Highcharts
Final Sketches
