Main conference presentation
Online product development in the financial services industry; can it be done?
Monday March 26 2007, 9:30 - 10:15AM
I was assigned to work on a web store project for a large financial services company. My job was to investigate the suitability of traditional off line products to be sold online. In the discovery phase of this project I learned that Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) currently account for 90% of all existing product sales. As a result this company’s products are designed purposely to accommodate the IFA. Each product’s commission structure and its perceived benefits are assembled in such a way that ensure IFAs collect a larger commission and are able to entice customers with more features and benefits than comparable competitor products. Products are continually morphing into seemingly more attractive versions of themselves. The problem is after a series of these reinventions, financial services products have become so convoluted and complex they cannot be sold without an IFA’s or at least a customer service agent’s guidance and advice.
Did the solution lie in stripping these products down to their core elements and rebuilding them in such a way that they are easy to comprehend by any online user with average intelligence? Or was the answer to equip online users to have a more informed interaction with their IFA by educating them about the mechanics and complexities of the existing product set? As a starting point I designed an interactive application called the "Asset Protector". Focusing specifically on Healthcare and Insurance, this tool guides an online consumer down a simple path towards a tailored protection plan that will ensure future financial security. In order for this tool to be successfully applied online, Life, Protection and Healthcare products had to be stripped down and rebuilt in such a way that they could be first and foremost easily understood and then sold as individual components of a complete protection package. By applying this thinking to two different areas of the group, Healthcare and Insurance, we began to see product relationships springing up across the group as a whole.
By enhancing and optimizing existing products and stripping out irrelevant features we were able to isolate and draw on emotional triggers and allow users to find products that were relevant to them without 3rd party assistance. The "Asset Protector" allows users to come to their own conclusions about the usefulness of product features and benefits and can discard elements that will not add direct value to their financial wellbeing or growth. This case study will illustrate my journey from trying to understand the peculiar way in which financial services products are currently sold, to stripping products down and rebuilding them using a series of isolated product features to form simple clean propositions that could be sold online, and leveraging all the unseen opportunities that arose along the way.
