Case study
Shaping a flexible service design framework for one of the UK's largest retail banks and insurance providers, covering everything from simple digital self-service claims to complex colleague-managed journeys.
Client
Major UK insurer
My role
Project Lead
Type
Service Design
Duration
10 months
Design Leadership
Service Design
Insurance
Journey Transformation
Digital Self-Service
Colleague Experience
Overview
Processing an insurance claim is often one of the most stressful moments in a customer's relationship with their insurer. Customers need clarity, reassurance, and progress at exactly the point when they may be dealing with damage, loss, disruption, uncertainty, or vulnerability.
At one of the UK's largest retail banks and insurance providers, General Insurance claims journeys were still heavily shaped by legacy processes, manual handling, and operational complexity — with relatively low digital maturity compared with other major UK financial services providers.
I led the service design workstream for a 10-month transformation initiative focused on redesigning General Insurance claims journeys across the full spectrum of complexity: from simple claims moving toward straight-through digital processing, to complex claims requiring colleague guidance, supplier involvement, fraud checks, and manual decision-making.
The Challenge
The client needed to modernise its General Insurance claims experience. Existing journeys were outdated and manual, creating friction for customers during stressful moments and limiting the organisation's ability to compete with more digitally mature insurance providers.
But claims are not simple, linear service journeys. They vary significantly depending on the event, the product, the level of complexity, the involvement of third-party suppliers, the customer's circumstances, and the degree of operational judgement required.
"The challenge wasn't just to digitise claims. It was to design a scalable service model that could flex across different levels of complexity."
Why claims are complex
A one-size-fits-all digital journey would not work. Some claims could be handled with a high degree of digital self-service. Others needed human judgement, sensitive communication, or complex coordination between internal teams and external suppliers.
The design challenge was therefore to create a model that could flex according to the complexity of the claim — applying digital and human support in the right places.
Simple claim
Moderate claim
Complex claim
Digital self-service
High automation
Low colleague involvement
Straight-through processing
Low risk / low complexity
Assisted digital
Clear digital/human handoffs
Colleague guidance available
Supplier coordination
Moderate complexity
Colleague-managed
Case management led
Specialist input required
Fraud / vulnerable customer
High nuance / high risk
My role
I was the Project Lead for the service design workstream. I was part of the initial discovery team that scoped the transformation opportunity and helped quantify the benefits that supported the business case — contributing to approval for the subsequent delivery phase.
Once the programme moved forward, I led the design workstream end-to-end:
Scoped and planned the service design workstreams
Recruited and directed the design team
Briefed designers and reviewed journey design outputs
Maintained design consistency across workstreams
Reported regularly to programme stakeholders
Created the simple-to-complex claims framework
Kept the design work aligned with business priorities and operational constraints
A key part of my contribution was creating the strategic framework for how the team should think about claims complexity — giving the design team and wider programme a clearer way to make decisions about which parts of the experience should be automated, which should be assisted, and which required deeper colleague involvement.
Working within constraints
This was not a blank-sheet redesign. The transformation required pragmatic enhancement of existing journeys, working within a complex ecosystem of legacy systems, established supplier relationships, and operational processes.
Discovery & business case
The project began with an initial discovery phase to understand the current claims experience, assess competitor maturity, and quantify the potential benefits of transformation. A dedicated user researcher explored the competitive market, customer expectations, and current pain points.
This early discovery helped establish that customers expected greater transparency, simpler digital interactions, and clearer guidance during the claims process — and that the client's existing experience was falling short against major competitors.
The discovery work also helped build the case for the wider transformation initiative and gave the design team a clearer mandate for the delivery phase that followed.
Journey design process
For each journey, the team began by scoping the claim type with client subject matter experts. We then mapped the current state to understand pain points, operational dependencies, customer needs, colleague actions, system interactions, and supplier involvement.
The journeys covered the full claims lifecycle, accounting for both frontstage customer experiences and backstage operational processes:
Pre-claim
→
Enquiry
→
First notification of loss
→
Processing
→
Decisioning
→
Payout
→
Recoveries
My role was to keep the design activity structured and consistent across multiple journeys, while ensuring each reflected the specific complexity of the claim type being designed.
Stakeholder alignment
One of the biggest challenges was getting the right stakeholders into the right conversations at the right time. Claims journeys touched many parts of the organisation — without the right people in the room, the team risked designing journeys that looked good in principle but failed when tested against operational reality.
Customer experience
Claims experience, digital channels, vulnerable customer specialists
Claims operations
Claims handling, recoveries, supplier relations, operations
Technology & platforms
Solution architecture, PEGA case management, intelligent document processing
Risk & fraud
Fraud, risk, compliance, claims decisioning
Data & analytics
Data analytics, claims decisioning, performance measurement
Programme delivery
Business delivery, business analysts, programme leadership
Impact
The future-state journeys were taken forward into a subsequent implementation phase as part of the client's General Insurance transformation. Following the wider transformation, the organisation moved from 17th to a top-five position in a UK insurer digital experience ranking.
Beyond the ranking, the work helped align stakeholders around a more nuanced ambition for digital claims: not simply replacing human support with digital journeys, but designing the right balance between automation, self-service, colleague guidance, and specialist handling.
UK insurer digital experience ranking following the wider transformation
Moved toward a competitive position among major UK insurance providers
Reduced reliance on colleague intervention for simple and moderate claim types
Future-state journeys delivered into a subsequent implementation phase
Reflection
This project marked an important shift in my own design leadership. I was moving further from hands-on production into a role focused on direction-setting, team leadership, delegation, and senior stakeholder reporting.
I learned that when a service is this complex, the design leader has to work hard to communicate why the work needs time and care. There was pressure to deliver at speed within budget and timeframe constraints. If I were doing this again, I would invest earlier in communicating the complexity of the journeys, the dependencies involved, and the risks of moving too quickly.
For complex service transformation, design quality depends not only on design craft — but on stakeholder orchestration, clear decision-making frameworks, and protecting enough space for the team to understand the service properly.
My contribution
Design leadership
Journey framework
Team leadership
Stakeholder alignment
Business case input
Senior reporting
Collaborators
Operations
Claims handlers, recoveries, supplier teams
Technology
Solution architects, Enterise platforms
Business
Product owners, risk, fraud, compliance
Methods Used
Discovery research
Competitor benchmarking
Current-state mapping
Future-state journeys
Service blueprinting
Stakeholder workshops
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Oscar Choi
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