Building UX capability and digital-first proposition
How we scaled Covéa Insurance's UX team from 2 to 15 people, established best-practice disciplines, and launched a digital-first customer proposition that transformed conversion and satisfaction.
The Challenge
Covéa Insurance operates and underwrites various B2C and B2B2C brands in the UK insurance market. Historically a broker-focused business, they recognised the need to pivot to digital-first customer experience to compete effectively and meet changing customer expectations.
When we arrived, the UX capability was minimal - just 2 people trying to support digital transformation across multiple brands and product lines. There was no structured approach to UX research, no content design discipline, no optimisation function, and limited design capability.
💡 The problem: Ambitious digital-first strategy with insufficient UX capability to execute it. The team couldn't scale to meet demand or deliver the quality needed.
Specific Challenges
- Undersized team: 2 people trying to support all digital initiatives. Constant firefighting, no strategic work, massive backlog.
- No structured disciplines: UX research happened ad-hoc. No content strategy. No data-driven optimisation. Everything reactive, nothing proactive.
- Traditional mindset: Organisation still thought like a broker business. Digital was "the website" not the primary customer experience.
- Poor conversion: Online quote-to-buy conversion was industry lagging. Customers started online but dropped off or called to complete.
- Low customer satisfaction: NPS of 68 - good, but not competitive. Experience was functional but not delightful.
- Inconsistent experience: Different brands had different approaches, no shared design system, lots of duplication of effort.
The Approach
We took a dual approach: building the team and capability while simultaneously delivering transformation that demonstrated the value of UX investment.
1. Scaling the UX Team (2 → 15)
We built a structured, multi-disciplinary UX Organisation from the ground up:
UX Design: Senior and mid-level UX designers owning end-to-end journeys across quote, buy, manage policy, and claims. Embedded with product teams.
UI Design: Visual design specialists focused on design system, brand consistency, and production-ready UI assets. Ensured polish and accessibility.
UX Research: Dedicated research function running continuous discovery - user interviews, usability testing, ethnographic studies with customers in their homes and brokers in their offices.
Content Design: Content strategists owning tone of voice, microcopy, form labels, help text, error messages. Making insurance language human.
Insights & Optimisation: Analytics and CRO specialists running A/B tests, analyzing funnels, identifying conversion opportunities. Data-driven decision making.
Head of UX: Strategic leadership, stakeholder management, setting UX vision, and integrating UX into product roadmaps.
2. Establishing UX Disciplines
Building a team wasn't enough - we needed proper processes and ways of working:
- Research operations: Regular testing cadence, participant recruitment process, research repository, insight sharing sessions with product teams.
- Design system: Component library, interaction patterns, accessibility standards used across all brands. Efficiency and consistency.
- Content guidelines: Tone of voice framework, writing standards, content review process. Every word intentional.
- Optimization programme: Quarterly test roadmap, hypothesis-driven experimentation, tracking and reporting on conversion improvements.
- UX governance: Design reviews, quality gates, stakeholder sign-off process that worked with insurance compliance requirements.
3. Digital-First Proposition Development
We led the design of a new digital-first proposition that fundamentally changed how customers experienced Covéa:
Quote journey redesign: Simplified quote flow from 23 screens to 12. Reduced form fields by 40%. Prefilled data where possible. Clear progress indication. Resulted in 34% faster completion.
Smart recommendations: Data-driven product recommendations based on customer profile. "Customers like you typically choose..." Improved average policy value.
Self-service account: Customers could manage policies, update details, make claims, and download documents online. Reduced call center dependency.
Content transformation: Rewrote insurance jargon into plain English. Used customer language from research. Made complex policy information comprehensible.
Mobile-first design: 60% of quotes started on mobile. Designed for thumb-friendly interactions, minimal typing, smart defaults.
4. Continuous Optimization
We established a culture of testing and learning:
- A/B tested everything - headlines, CTAs, form layouts, imagery, trust signals
- Funnel analysis identifying drop-off points and friction
- Heatmaps and session recordings showing real customer behavior
- Quarterly "quick wins" sprints tackling high-impact, low-effort improvements
- Quarterly major tests validating bigger hypotheses
The Results
Business Impact
Revenue growth: The 47% conversion improvement translated to approximately £2.4m additional annual revenue from the same traffic. More visitors became customers without increasing marketing spend.
Operational efficiency: Self-service adoption reduced call center volume for simple transactions by 35%. Advisors could focus on complex cases and sales.
Competitive positioning: Customer satisfaction (NPS 77) moved from "good" to industry-leading. Digital experience became a differentiator, not a weakness.
Organisational capability: The UX team became a strategic asset. Product teams now started with research. Design quality improved across all digital touchpoints. UX maturity transformed.
"Having a proper UX function changed everything. We went from guessing what customers wanted to knowing. From fighting fires to planning strategically. The investment in the team paid for itself many times over." - Digital Director, Covéa Insurance
Cultural Transformation
The most profound change was Organisational mindset. Digital went from "IT project" to "customer experience." UX went from "making it pretty" to "strategic business driver."
Product managers started involving UX in roadmap planning. Executives referenced user research in strategy discussions. Engineers asked for design input early. The Organisation became customer centered.
Key Learnings
- Build teams, not just hire people: Scaling from 2 to 15 required establishing disciplines, processes, and ways of working. Team structure matters as much as headcount.
- Show value early: Quick wins (conversion improvements, friction reduction) built credibility that unlocked investment in bigger transformation.
- Multi-disciplinary UX is powerful: Research + Design + Content + Optimization working together delivers far more than any discipline alone.
- Insurance can be human: Plain language, clear processes, and empathy transform customer perception of insurance from "necessary evil" to "trusted partner."
- Data + Qualitative = Truth: Analytics showed what was happening. Research showed why. Combining both created actionable insight.
- Design systems accelerate: Initial investment in design system created efficiency that multiplied as team scaled. Consistency and speed.
- Mobile-first is table stakes: In insurance, most research starts on mobile. Optimizing for mobile drives desktop performance too.
What We Delivered
- Recruited, onboarded, and led UX team growth from 2 to 15 people across 5 disciplines
- Established UX strategy, operating model, and ways of working
- Digital-first proposition design across quote, buy, and self-service journeys
- Design system with component library and brand guidelines
- Research operations including participant recruitment and insight repository
- Content design framework and tone of voice guidelines
- Optimization programme with quarterly test roadmap
- Stakeholder management and UX advocacy at executive level
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