Leapfrogging the competition with a superior adviser experience

A win for financial advisers is a win for AIA

AIA is a leading life insurance provider in the Australian market. In an increasingly competitive market, AIA recognised the need to provide an industry-leading experience for financial advisers who apply for, and manage, AIA insurance on behalf of their clients.

Fast, efficient and transparent processes enable advisers to achieve their goals of providing high-quality advice and service, and contribute to their overall business success. The ease of dealing with a particular insurer can make all the difference in an adviser’s final recommendation, where the insurance product and pricing is similar across providers.

By investing in creating the best experience for advisers in the market, AIA is on track to achieve strong new business acquisition and, at the same time, reduce internal inefficiencies and costs.

Exploring opportunities for targeted experiences

Working closely alongside the AIA project team, we undertook a rapid research, strategy and prototyping process. We engaged with 14 advisers and support staff, as well as dozens of stakeholders from across the business.

The customers and stakeholders we spoke to helped us to build a rich understanding of the customer, the product, the current adviser experience and the relevant internal processes.

We established a set of priority areas for future development. Competitor analysis highlighted areas that competitors were not doing well in – these presented opportunities to ‘leapfrog’ the competition.

Our research identified four main types of advisers, which allowed us to explore opportunities for targeted experiences and to evolve away from the current one-size-fits-all approach. We held a co-creation session with stakeholders to explore possible solutions for advisers within the priority areas, and to inform and inspire an interactive prototype.

Validation and value

We created a future state service blueprint, showing the proposed adviser flow across all stages of the customer journey, from research and quote generation, application, fulfilment and changes to in-force cover. We created an interactive prototype, which demonstrated the future state experience in more detail, and validated it with advisers and support staff over nine feedback sessions

The work completed allowed AIA to develop and communicate a strong business case, garnering internal buy-in and support for the changes. It also gave internal development teams the foundation they needed to properly understand the scope of changes being proposed.