This greenfield, ground up effort was aimed at creating a cyber risk analysis and underwriting assistance portal for an insurance giant, to be used by entities both internal and external to the customer. Cyber has historically been profitable as an independent line of business to the customer, who is the oldest and most trusted player in the cyber insurance arena. With ever growing cyber attacks and breaches, it was essential to equip the underwriters with logical, accurate and automated risk calculation tools.
Ecosystems
We started out with conducting business stakeholder workshops to understand the current ecosystem, in order for us to identify the opportunities for the future ecosystem. The current ecosystem was observed to be mostly manual which not only made underwriting a labor intensive exercise, but also posed significant threats related to human error, and inaccurate and inconsistent risk calculation.
Above: Ecosystems for current and future states
Envisioning Exercise
After developing an understanding of ecosystems and involved applications, we conducted one-to-one envisioning exercises with a diverse group of end users, wherein the users walked us through the manual process of interpreting risk and underwriting, one step at a time. In the absence of a recommended and structured process, the users had developed their own versions of complicated roundabout methods to collect information, calculate risk and create a policy.
Based on the data collected in the envisioning sessions, we created a journey map of existing process which uncovered that:
• Underwriters needed to interact with 12 different systems multiple times, back and forth, for each enquiry
• A much greater risk was involved in manual quoting and binding
• Most of the data was handled manually, and hence could not be retrieved for future analysis
Above: Journey map of then existing manual process
Vision Prototypes
We created vision prototypes for key user journeys based on the feedback received from envisioning exercises, journey maps, ecosystems and involved applications. Since it was a greenfield project with no existing referencing portal, vision prototypes played a vital role in validating design direction with the end users, and also in creating project vision and bringing all the involved teams to the same page.
Vision prototypes were driven by the proposed ecosystem (slide #1), wherein relevant information from all the applications involved in risk analysis were brought together in one portal and presented logically. This resulted in a one-stop-shop, with all the required information and analysis required for underwriting available at one place.
We conducted follow up feedback sessions with the users who had participated in the envisioning exercise, in which they were encouraged to use the vision prototypes for underwriting without any assistance. All the participants showed evident excitement with the vision of the portal, and agreed to a remarkable increase in efficiency.
Above: Cyber risk portal vision prototype
Final User Journey
After the vision prototypes were validated by the end users, we started refining the design based on their feedback. At the same time, the architecture and development teams started working on their building blocks based on a clear vision. A final journey map was created based on the new process in cyber risk portal, which brought about the following observations -
1. The final journey map was over 1200 points shorter than the initial in horizontal expanse. That is over 20% curtail in the overall submission process from end to end
2. Cyber risk portal replaced 4 external and 2 internal systems/applications, hence limiting the number of involved systems from 12 to 7. That is over 40% decrease. In other words, cyber portal made up for half of the originally involved systems
3. The one-block cyber risk portal replaced the intermediate steps and back-&-forth navigation by consolidating 24 data points and removing 9 intermediate steps
Above: Cyber risk portal journey map
Underwriter Dashboard
Launching the portal as a consolidated source of information was the first step towards utilizing this information to calculate risk accurately and consistently across the organization. We partnered with an external analytics firm to develop a patented and proprietary logic to synthesize the available data, recognize patterns and calculate risk accurately. This is where the underwriting experience actually got transformed, wherein the system not only collected and presented all the required data to the underwriters, but also made calculated recommendations through intuitive and innovative data visualizations. This would eliminate all the possibility of human error or (mis)interpretations.
We utilized the intelligence and visualizations for the design of a risk consulting portal, through which the customer's clients not only could gauge their existing risk but also discover the ways to reduce or eliminate them. The clients could also create forecasts for risk management by simulating controls.
User Testing Results
Multiple involved teams, with a range and depth of expertise, worked in close cohesive association on the design and development of the portal, which won customer's Galaxy Award of the year. The project team showed meticulous, extremely detailed planning and exceptional teamwork, and was also recognized for Agile Showcase.
After a week of portal launch, we revisited our envisioning partner-users along with new ones to record their feedback. The portal was voted as the highest rated portal in the customer’s entire commercial division with a satisfaction score of 93.7%. Some other observations were -
1. 93% of the responders rated the design as “Awesome”
2. 67%of the responders stated that they use fewer systems/applications/tools
3. 100% of the responders agreed that the portal helps them find the information faster
Above: Prominent user survey results for the portal
Advisen Cyber Awards 2018
The portal also won the ‘Innovation of the Year 2018 Award’ at the ‘Advisen Cyber Awards’ for specific innovation that made an outstanding contribution to improving the way that cyber risk is managed in the past year, at a gala dinner event in New York City.
Above: Advisen Cyber Awards 2018 ceremony in NYC
