FWD INSURANCE

Brand voice and experience design.

For a fintech challenger disrupting giants.

Built around the needs of customers.

Optimised for simplicity, scalability, and speed.

Overview

Our challenge

Create a digital insurance buying experience from scratch – where customers can get a quote in 60 seconds.

What I did

  • Led the content team

  • Supported research to deeply investigate user needs

  • Defined and presented our strategy to the C-suite

  • Developed brand, voice, and design principles

  • Created product narratives and IA

  • Drafted writing guidelines for a conversational UX

  • Guided 2 writers to craft the copy, combining best practices with bold choices based on user insights

  • Oversaw alpha, beta and post-release A/B testing, optimising until we surpassed our goals

Who I worked with

  • Market research

  • Brand strategy

  • Product marketing

  • Product design

  • Product management

  • Insurance underwriting

  • Regulatory compliance

  • Engineering (web and app)

  • UX research

Our solution

  • A distinct brand identity and voice, rooted in customer insights

  • A conversational experience optimised for speed and scale

  • Achieved conversion rates 8X over industry benchmarks

  • Exceeded acquisition and retention targets for the year

A challenger brings us a challenge

FWD wanted to be Asia's first fully-online, direct-to-consumer insurance platform.

In a category full of long-established giants.

But that wasn’t the biggest problem.

Research showed high disapproval for the entire industry and buying experience.

Put simply, people hated getting insurance.

Our answer? Love the haters

We rooted our approach in a simple (if hurtful) category truth:

No one wanted to spend time on insurance. Ever.

Our task was not to make customers love us with a delightful brand personality and a highly engaging experience.

It was to help them get what they need and leave — as quickly as possible.

Laying the foundations

Resisting the urge to jump in and start building, we took a step back.

We knew from experience that without a vision, the path would become harder as we went, every tactical decision turning into a debate. A blocker.

So, we spent time on customer research and cross-functional workshops.

For a clear brand identity — with simple, practical principles to guide us.

Designing for the haters

We set ourselves an ambitious north star CX metric:

Let customers get any insurance quote in 60 seconds.

Conversational UX: Using first-person voice (‘I’) made users feel engaged and invested.

Cognitive ease: Clear signposting and simple language made the process feel lighter.

5 products. 10 markets. Zero BS.

Our voice had to work from Vietnam to Japan.

Our copy had to be understood regardless of financial and digital skills.

With our principles, I guided our UX writers and designers to build the experience.

Simplifying products, designing with progressive disclosure, optimising for speed.

Testing and iterating until users could zip through prototypes in 60 seconds.

KPIs? Sorted in 4 weeks.

Within a month of launch, FWD had hit their targets.

For the whole year.

With a quote-to-conversion rate of 23%.

1 in 4 users bought it — 8 times the industry average.

And our CX goal of delivering in 60 seconds?

One customer set a record of 24 seconds.

Awards & credits

CX Asia Awards 2017
Winner, Best Customer Experience (Insurance)

CX Asia Awards 2017
Highly Commended, Best Customer Experience

Global Innovation Awards 2018
Gold, Harnessing the power of technology

Agency: Dentsu Creative Singapore

Executive Creative Director: Stan Lim

Associate Creative Director: Abhishek Prasad

Sr Art Director/UX Designer: Anushka Yadav

Art directors: Brenda Li, JM Tan

UX writer: Samantha Tan

Copywriter: Dionne Lee

Technology Director: Fauzi R.

PREVIOUS

DESIGN PRINCIPLES | VOICE & TONE | UX WRITING

NEXT

CONTENT DESIGN | COLLABORATION