Blog: How designers will take over the insurance industry

If you haven't noticed, designers are already taking over the business world, and that is truest at the point where digital, technology and innovation meet.

Apple, with its long history of innovative products and services is a stand out example. The Google Ventures team - with their ‘design sprint' - are having an increasing significant influence across the Alphabet portfolio. And then there is IBM, who have fully embraced the power of design thinking to unlock the potential of its big data capabilities in solving real world problems.

Bringing things into a sharper insurance focus, Oscar the health insurance ‘start-up' that is making waves in the US (valued at $2.7bn - £1.9bn - after this week's latest round of funding), addresses the importance of design directly in its tagline: "We're revolutionising health insurance through technology, data and design".

At this point, it's worth taking a moment to consider what a designer is. To me, being a designer is much more about having the right mindset than the right design ‘credentials'.  I work in a digital environment as a designer. But I also see the strategists, developers and marketers I work with as designers. And I realise what it takes to engender a ‘design thinking' culture in an environment.

It starts with one thing, a radical customer orientation. Ask yourself this, when was the last time you spoke directly to one or more of your customers? Why did you speak to them? Was it to listen, empathise and understand their needs, or to question them on a specific service or product that you had already created for them?

Taking this thought a bit further, how early do you involve your customers in the design of your services and products? And, might you agree that there could be benefit in including them as early as possible?

That is exactly what design-led organisations do. The most innovative (and, arguably, the most future-proofed) are constantly involving customers in the design process - understanding unmet needs and opportunities, co-creating solutions and rapidly prototyping so you can test with real people as soon as possible.

They genuinely aim to build their entire culture - vision, processes, resources, hiring - around this belief. That's what radical customer orientation is. It's not something that you can just pay lip service to. It's significant and fundamental and, as a result, it requires a mandate from the top of an organisation.

Fortunately, this is happening in the most forward thinking insurance companies. In the previous blog of this digital collective series, Stuart Booth, head of digital at RSA, said: "By giving power to designers and the users of our products rather than starting with off-the-shelf underwriting models we can make digital technologies work for us to solve real world problems in ways we have not yet imagined."

I couldn't agree more.

Kate Greenstock
Design Director, Pancentric