Redesigning Nedbank Insurance's life cover application journey to improve sales and reduce drop-offs
Challenge
MyCover Life is a Nedbank life insurance product that clients can take out digitally on the Money app. The digital application had low sales and high drop-offs. Most of the drop-offs happened in the medical questionnaire, where clients were asked complex, multi-part questions and had to work out and capture their own BMI. The application also used insurance jargon instead of explaining what MyCover Life covers and why it is worth taking out. When clients had to select a cover amount or review a premium quote, the application gave them nothing to help them make the decision.
Approach
I used 3 lenses. The first was a heuristics evaluation of the application, which showed that the medical questionnaire had no progressive disclosure and that personal questions were asked without explaining why they were needed. The second was behavioural insights, used to refine the medical questions. These showed that clients answer more accurately when a question is broken into parts, that they respond better to action-based wording than to diagnostic wording, and that an honesty declaration upfront makes clients more truthful. The third was benchmarking against existing life cover digital journeys.
Solution
The redesigned journey opens with an education screen that sets out the product benefits in plain language, with the honesty declaration upfront, as the behavioural insights suggested. A prep screen then tells clients what to expect. In response to the heuristics evaluation, questions are asked one at a time. The medical questions were simplified into action-based language, and the BMI question was removed completely. Clients are guided to the cover amount they qualify for, with an explanation of why, and the premium follows from the amount they choose.
Outcome
Sales increased by 70%, drop-offs reduced across the application stages where they had been highest, and average completion time fell to under 5 minutes. The project showed that small points of friction were behind a large share of the drop-offs, and that explaining what the product covers gave clients more confidence. Rewording the medical questions from diagnostic to action-based language changed how honestly clients answered them. Clients can also now save the application and come back to it, so they no longer have to finish it in one sitting.