Innovation & Strategy

Enhancing Client-Financial Representative (FR) Relationships using AI

Skills

INtro

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to engage with potential clients and increase client retention rate.

Timeline

August - December 2022

Client

Northwestern Mutual

Setting

Founded in 1857, Northwestern Mutual is an American financial services mutual organization offering services such as Financial Planning, Insurance, and Investments.

User Need

A company's strategic planning framework typically divides its initiatives into three horizons:

Horizon 1: Core Business - This represents the current core operations of Northwestern Mutual, focusing on its existing products, services, and markets. The goal is to optimize and improve the current business.

Horizon 2: Adjacent Opportunities - This horizon involves exploring and developing initiatives that are related to the core business but may involve new markets, technologies, or customer segments. These opportunities are expected to drive future growth and expansion.

Horizon 3: Disruptive Innovation - Horizon 3 is about exploring entirely new and disruptive ideas that may not directly align with the company's current offerings. These initiatives have the potential to significantly transform the business and create new revenue streams.

Northwestern Mutual is actively seeking new and forward-looking ideas and technologies to stay competitive and relevant in the financial services industry, particularly in Horizons 2 and 3.

Constraints

When trying to foster innovation, Northwestern Mutual is met with some constraints:

1. Regulatory Constraints: The financial services industry is highly regulated, and compliance with various financial regulations can pose challenges to innovation efforts. Strict regulatory requirements may limit the scope of innovative ideas or require significant resources to ensure compliance.

2. Traditional Mindset: Northwestern Mutual, being a well-established financial organization with a long history, may face challenges related to a conservative or traditional mindset. Encouraging a culture of innovation and risk-taking can be difficult in such an environment.

3. Customer Data Privacy and Security: Given the sensitive nature of financial data, ensuring robust data privacy and security measures can sometimes slow down the implementation of innovative technologies and digital solutions.

Desired State

The desired state for Northwestern Mutual's digital transformation would be to successfully embrace digital technologies and innovations to achieve several key objectives:

1. Attracting New Clients: Attract new clients and expand its customer base by leveraging digital marketing strategies, data analytics, and online lead generation techniques.

2. Retaining Current Clients:Enhance client retention by offering personalized digital experiences and services.

3. Streamlined Operations: Automating manual tasks, optimizing workflows, and using data analytics for decision-making to streamline operations and free up resources for more strategic initiatives.

4. Innovative Product Offerings: Embracing digital transformation to develop and offer innovative financial products and services.

5. Seamless Customer Experience: A well-executed digital transformation, creating a seamless and omni-channel customer experience. Whether clients engage through online platforms, mobile apps, or in-person interactions, Northwestern Mutual should deliver a consistent and intuitive experience across all touch-points.

Solution

4 AI-Driven Concepts

With insights gathered from our research, we prototyped 4 concepts to improve client-FR relationships with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The concepts serves as an end-to-end solution in the customer journey.

Concept 1

AI-enabled on-the-job training for FRs.

By harnessing the power of AI, our innovative solution seeks to replicate and analyze real past conversations between Financial Representatives (FRs) and customers. Through this AI-driven approach, FRs can gain valuable insights into successful communication strategies and tailor their interactions accordingly, ultimately improving client-FR relationships.

Additionally, this AI tool enables FRs to efficiently attract new customers by optimizing their engagement techniques based on past successful interactions. By leveraging the wealth of knowledge hidden within historical conversations, our solution empowers FRs to enhance their customer interactions and drive greater efficiency in attracting and serving clients.

Concept 2

AI-enabled real-time assistance in client conversations.

Incorporating AI technology into the video call platform, remote Financial Representatives (FRs) will benefit from an AI assistant that assesses the emotions of potential or current customers through voice and facial expression analysis. By interpreting these cues, the AI assistant will provide real-time prompts to FRs, enabling them to effectively engage and maintain customer interest during the call.

This AI-driven solution aims to enhance customer interactions and communication effectiveness for remote FRs, ultimately leading to improved client satisfaction and stronger relationships.

Concept 3

Automating the underwriting process with AI.

By leveraging AI-powered mobile and tablet applications, the life insurance underwriting process becomes 50% more efficient, as the AI automates premium calculations personalized to each customer's lifestyle and health status. For swift authorizations, clients can use Face ID on their smartphones to validate documents and verify their identities, expediting the overall process.

This AI-enabled solution streamlines the underwriting journey, ensuring greater accuracy and convenience for customers while saving time for both clients and insurance providers.

Concept 4

AI-enabled client engagement through partnership with relevant services.

Northwestern Mutual enhances client engagement through AI-enabled solutions by collaborating with relevant lifestyle services such as gyms or yoga studios. This strategic partnership encourages customers to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Clients earn points for each health-improving action they take, which can be redeemed for lower insurance premiums. Leveraging AI algorithms, the system seamlessly tracks and rewards customers' health progress, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship where clients are motivated to stay healthy while enjoying financial benefits.

This approach to client engagement strengthens the bond between Northwestern Mutual and its customers, promoting overall well-being and satisfaction.

Process

01 Research

We began with a thorough exploration of Northwestern Mutual's core services, aiming to gain a comprehensive understanding of the organization's offerings.

We delved into identifying discontinuities, which encompassed trends, events, inventions, and transformative forces capable of significantly altering the fabric of societies, businesses, and environments. Through this analysis, we sought to unearth potential disruptive factors that could impact Northwestern Mutual's operations and strategies. By carefully examining these discontinuities, we were able to identify emerging opportunities and challenges, allowing us to craft innovative solutions and future-proof the company against potential disruptions.

Our approach entailed a holistic assessment that considered not only the present but also the evolving landscape, paving the way for strategic decisions that align with Northwestern Mutual's long-term vision and goals.

02 Define

In the pursuit of defining the opportunity area, our approach involved employing the Terrains & Territories framework in conjunction with Causal Logics. Navigating through ambiguity was a fundamental aspect of our process, as we recognized the complex and ever-changing landscape of the insurance industry.

To address this challenge, we proactively sought insights from Case Studies in other industries that bore similarities to the insurance sector. Analyzing these real-world scenarios provided valuable benchmarks and parallels, enabling us to extract valuable lessons and transferable strategies to enrich our understanding of potential solutions.

By combining theoretical frameworks with practical insights, we cultivated a holistic and informed perspective that empowered us to identify innovative opportunities and propose effective strategies tailored to Northwestern Mutual's unique context and aspirations.

03 IDEATE

At the final stage of our process, we conducted an intensive ideation session to generate innovative solutions. Bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise, the ideation session fostered a collaborative and creative environment where ideas flowed freely.

Through brainstorming and open discussions, we explored a wide range of potential solutions that addressed the identified opportunity areas. Our team actively encouraged out-of-the-box thinking, pushing boundaries and challenging conventional notions to uncover novel and transformative concepts. Leveraging the insights gained from earlier research and analysis, we infused our ideation process with data-driven and customer-centric elements.

The result was a rich array of ideas, each carefully evaluated for feasibility, impact, and alignment with Northwestern Mutual's strategic goals. From this collaborative ideation session, we emerged with a set of robust and visionary solutions poised to elevate Northwestern Mutual's competitive edge and enrich its client-Financial Representative relationships.

Gallery

Team

Organization

Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech

Collaborators

Arrenius Karunakaran
Brayan Pabón
Naomi Ito
Ran Konaka

Supervisor

Jeremy Alexis

4 AI-Driven Concepts

“The quality of your work is on par with that of top consulting firms. Several departments within the company would greatly benefit from this.”