Company
Joyn Insurance
Year
2023
Type of Work
Product Ideation, User research, Product Management
Platform
Desktop
At Joyn Insurance, the operations team oversees the entire process of assisting the underwriter in tracking a quote and the steps required to bind and issue it. This process, known as the 'Binding and Issuance' workflow, is a tedious task that involves collecting information such as inspection contacts, billing contacts, coverage confirmations, legal state documents, and the official policy document.
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Initially, the company managed all of this manually, relying heavily on manual tracking on excel without an efficient way to store files, contracts, emails, and more. My bind checklist feature integrated this process into Spark, eliminating the need for Excel, Outlook, and memory-based tasks, and reducing the back-and-forth book-keeping communication between team members.
01
Binding & Issuing
What’s the binding process?
Binding a policy means finalizing the agreement between the insurance company and the insured. This involves collecting numerous required documents and ensuring conditions are met before the coverage is active.​
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How was this done?
The process was tracked using a large, cluttered Excel spreadsheet. Operations team members manually input information, sifted through emails for documents, tracked replies, and ultimately used the sheet as a comprehensive task-tracker.
02
Problems
Inaccuracy
Employees had to memorize document requirements, and the editable nature of Excel allowed significant room for human error.
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​Disorganization
Tracking sensitive state-regulated or tax documents required employees to store and upload them in various platforms, creating security risks and inefficiencies.
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Poor Work Prioritization
The long, scrolling template with extensive data made it difficult to prioritize important accounts, identify follow-ups, and address those at risk of cancellation due to incomplete compliance.
03
Goals
1. Bind Order Received
Track when the bind order was received, and which quote it’s for in Spark instead of Outlook.
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2. Bind Order Approved
Get live updates on when the bind order is by checking when subjectivities are satisfied.
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3. Document Collection
Render a dynamic list of required documents and store them in Spark.
4. Policy Draft
Know when the policy draft is generated and assign a user to edit the draft.
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5. Policy Review
Keep track of when the final policy is reviewed and store it in the files drawer.
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6. Policy Issuance
Track when the policy was issued and send it from the Spark email platform.
04
Sketch
The sketch below illustrates my initial concept for embedding a task tracker into the current Spark interface.
05
Final Designs
​Check out the final design images below. Click to enlarge them and read about the feature points. Don't miss the prototype video to see how the document collection step works in action.
06
Impact
The new centralized Bindchecklist has saved the company significant time and resources by reducing costs, speeding up the binding process, and securely storing important legal documents.
The implementation of the new bind checklist feature has led to a 32.59% increase in efficiency in the binding process.
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*Footnote: To analyze the impact of the new bind checklist feature, I compared the average binding process times before and after its implementation. Previously, I tracked the time from "quoted" to "bound" and from "bound" to "issued." With the new feature, I introduced additional statuses, allowing us to measure more granular steps: "quoted" to "bind order received," "bind order received" to "bind order approved," "bind order approved" to "bound," "bound" to "policy generated," and "policy generated" to "issued." I aggregated the new metrics to approximate the old status transitions. The average time from "quoted" to "bound" was reduced from 14.57 days to 10.69 days (a 26.63% increase in efficiency) and the time from "bound" to "issued" was reduced from 3.90 days to 1.76 days (a 54.87% increase in efficiency).