Case study

EMC Insurance

Converting an enterprise insurance underwriting platform, a mash-up of legacy designs, into a single modern business application built for stability, scalability, and clarity.

Role

Contract UX Design Consultant, via Apex Systems

Team

Me, the head of product, another senior designer, and two engineers

Timeline

August 2024 to November 2024

Platform

Figma
LucidChart
Angular Material

Underwriting Workbench proposals tab with quote options ready for release

The final Underwriting Workbench, guiding underwriters step by step through a quote.

Problem: EMC's underwriting team was quoting business insurance on a tool that had grown into a mash-up of designs, stitched together over years, with no single source of truth for how a quote actually moved from intake to decision.
Opportunity: Convert that existing platform into a modern business application: one underwriting goal path, one visual system, built for stability and scale.
Result: All four of the team's goals moved the right way. Time to quote fell about 20%, revenue per quote rose about 15%, new accounts grew the portfolio about 25%, and account rejections dropped about 20%.

The underwriting team set four goals: faster quotes, more profit per quote, more good business, fewer rejections.

Each had a real target, like cutting time to quote by at least 15%.

Every design decision got weighed against those goals, not opinion or precedent.

Brainstorms with underwriting stakeholders became affinity maps in LucidChart.

Each idea got tagged essential, nice to have, or blue sky, then mapped to its phase.

That surfaced real gaps: dead-end hard stops, unreliable fields, and phases nobody had defined.

Digital affinity map of sticky notes classifying underwriting workflow feedback by phase, from intake through completing underwriting

Affinity mapping the underwriting goal path, phase by phase, with the underwriting team.

The research became one "happy path" process diagram in Figma, the team's shared reference.

Happy path process diagram tracing a quote through Policy Center, BPP, and Underwriting Central systems

The very large process map - definitely a birds eye view.

A stepper guided underwriters through each phase, with a left rail keeping key data visible.

Wireframe of the underwriter status summary dashboard with priority lists and account cards — The stepper in the form of tabs.

Wireframe of the account 360 detail view with a five-step stepper, insured info, rating prep, and quote instructions — Experimenting with different layouts...

Engineering already used Angular Material, so final designs stuck to its components.

A rebuilt Underwriting Workbench, centered on a single account view.

It carries underwriters through cleanse, review analysis, risk selection, rating, and quote completion.

Issues, activities, and decision data live in one place, not a mash-up of tools.

Underwriting Workbench rating screen — Rating: quote instructions and a per-report review checklist.

Underwriting Workbench issues screen — Underwriter issues resolved, one decision away from a proposal.

Underwriting Workbench Account 360, full account overview — The account overview: profitability and confidence scores, driven by real underlying data.

Underwriting Workbench issues and activities tab with account details — Issue tracking, escalation, and account details in one flow.

Trade-offs

Major trade off was not using Figma, and using Sketch instead. Sketch was legacy tool and it hung around longer than necessary.

One deviation didn't survive: an early pass repurposed the left rail as an inspector/explorer widget. It reverted to a standard navigation element after real pushback from the team's established pattern.

~20%

Reduction in time to quote

~15%

Revenue growth per quote

~25%

Portfolio growth, new accounts

~20%

Fewer account rejections

Conservative estimates against the team's original targets; I left before final measurement.

Enterprise
Systems Design
Insurance