FWD Asia

How to disrupt giants

FWD, a fintech challenger, planned to be Asia's first fully-online, direct to consumer insurance platform.

In an industry full of long-established giants, FWD had to stand out with both its brand and its experience.

The problem?

Research across markets showed a widespread aversion to the insurance-buying process.

To put it bluntly, people hated getting insurance, even when they needed it.



The path to simplicity

Our first task was to create a brand vision and identity to guide our work.

We tried various approaches — edgy, cocky, cutesy, whimsical, tech-company-funny. They all tested poorly.

We realised we were trying too hard. We didn’t need to create the insurance brand people loved. We could create one that just shuts up and works.

Our guiding principles

Simple: Make complex products easy to scan, understand and act upon.

Reliable: Inspire trust in the new brand with a consistent user experience. 

Direct: Start with the point. Talk less. Be clear, not clever.

Our North Star CX metric

Let customers get any insurance quote in 60 seconds.


Conversations at scale

We defined guidelines to keep things coherent across 12 products and 15 markets. 

We created the new brand voice. One that worked from Hong Kong to Cambodia, across levels of financial and digital skills. 

We unpacked financial regulations, data privacy laws and underwriting processes.

And we worked closely with our user research and engineering teams to try and test a new conversational CX, breaking past practices and conventions with a first-principles approach.

Until a new user could zip through the prototypes in 60 seconds.


KPIs? Sorted in 4 weeks.

Within a month of launching in Singapore, FWD hit their sales targets. For the whole year.

We had a quote-to-conversion rate of 23%. 1 in 4 people who tried it, bought it — 8 times the industry average.

And our CX goal of delivering in 60 seconds? One customer set a record of 24 seconds. (We featured them in our launch campaign.)


Awards & credits

CX Asia Awards 2017 | Winner, Best Customer Experience (Insurance)

CX Asia Awards 2017 | Highly Commended, Best Customer Experience (Website)

Global Innovation Awards 2018 | Gold, Harnessing the power of technology

Agency: Dentsu Isobar Singapore

ECD: Stan Lim

CD Copy: Abhishek Prasad

CD Art/UX: Anushka Yadav

Design: Brenda Li, JM Tan

Copy: Samantha Tan

Technology Director: Fauzi R.