Launching a new type of home insurance

From a cultural standpoint, we Turks love the idea that our destinies actively shape our lives. We take comfort from our destinies, rather than the idea that our lives are a series of unrelated events. Accidents happen, not because we did not obey the rules or failed in some way, but because it “was meant to happen”.
Partly because of this cultural belief, home insurance does not extend across the Turkish population. After all, if something is going to happen, it will happen. Why fight it?
So when Aksigorta, the insurance giant, approached us about the Turkish market, we knew it was time to find out what was missing in the Turkish insurance experience.

Moment of Truth

Using comprehensive ethnographic research over a period of two months, we questioned cultural and physical barriers that were stopping people from purchasing homeowners insurance. Research told us that it was mostly newlywed couples and new home buyers who were triggered by security emotions. For a common consumer behaviour, the need for insurance occurs when one plans  to stay away from his/her house for a limited time (Such as vacations).

Hesitations about Insurance:

• The buying process has far too many steps
• Quite often, the buyer is unaware of what to do next. They are rarely given information about how to proceed.
• Buyers were only able to interact via phone or email. This is a huge problem for a product that promises ‘trust’.
• The language of insurance websites and materials was long, old, and overly technical. To reach out, everything would have to be simplified.

Making Home Insurance “User-Friendly”

With the participation of the Aksigorta product team, we conducted a series of workshops devoted to creating a prototype that our target audience would love.
Our first challenge was creating an insurance product that was easy to use. If it was too complicated, our audience would just write it off and go without insurance.
For our first prototype we had several goals:

• Simplify the insurance language by using less text and more icons, pictures, and graphs.
• Change the Product Line Name to capture the culture of the target audience.
• Design digital paths for customers to communicate easily with the insurance company.

Results

We measured our results in 2012, one year after launching our client’s newly designed home insurance.
Aksigorta found a 4% increase in overall available house related insurance products, with their product’s branch share rising from 47% to 51%. Aksigorta was pleased with the results, and we were happy to provide protection to Turkish citizens.