2024 • At-Bay • Lead Product Designer
Design & launch a scalable tool for monitoring and optimizing broker relationships
I partnered with a product manager to design an internal broker relationship management tool that empowers underwriters to track broker performance, surface cross-sell opportunities, and deepen strategic partnerships.
My work included mapping a scalable information architecture to support evolving business needs and designed a comprehensive dashboard that streamlined access to actionable insights.
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How might we build an internal broker relationship management tool that grows with business needs while improving broker engagement? -
Head of Broker Relations
Underwriting Managers
Underwriters -
1. Improve broker engagement quality2. Enable data-driven decision making
3. Enhance underwriting efficiency
4. Increase visibility into broker performance
5. Design a scalable, future-proof system
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Product Manager
Developers
Stakeholders (C-suite & Head of Underwriting)
Research
At At-Bay, a cybersecurity insurance provider, underwriters rely heavily on strong broker relationships to grow and manage a specialized, rapidly evolving book of business. However, key broker data was scattered across spreadsheets and reports, making it hard to track performance trends, identify cross-sell opportunities, or engage proactively.
My research process included interviewing underwriters to understand their workflows and data needs, identifying pain points, and conducting a competitive analysis of existing relationship management tools to uncover best practices.
Competitive analysis
Stakeholder interviews
Pain points from current process (presentation format)
Challenges
Unstructured workflows
Underwriters had informal, inconsistent ways of documenting broker interactions, making it challenging to define a standard workflow to support in the tool.
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Complex broker hierarchy
Tracking relationships across brokers, brokerage offices / teams, and parent networks introduced complexity in designing an intuitive information architecture.
2.
User adoption risk
Underwriters were already managing high workloads; the tool needed to add value immediately and fit seamlessly into daily routines to drive adoption.
3.
Select Explorations
To translate research insights into design, I created a series of low-fidelity mockups exploring different ways to visualize broker data, track relationship activity, and surface actionable insights.
These early explorations helped validate information hierarchy, identify usability issues, and spark conversations with stakeholders about what underwriters would find most valuable day to day.
My first mockups included mobile designs which were later scrapped due to limited developer resources.
Designs evolved over several conversations based on changing requirements.
Final designs
Solutions
To tackle key challenges (unstructured workflows, complex broker hierarchies, and adoption risk), I designed practical, integrated solutions: dynamic Tableau reports to visualize broker data; searchable rosters and hierarchy-based broker profiles; and an AI-powered notes tool with voice transcription and task summaries.
Together, these features streamlined daily workflows and empowered underwriters to engage brokers more strategically.
Launch / Impact
Action-oriented insights
AI-generated summaries and task suggestions accelerated follow-ups, helping underwriters respond to broker needs up to 2x faster.
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Time savings
Cut down data-gathering time by an estimated 45%, allowing underwriters to focus on strategy rather than manual tracking.
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Unified broker intelligence
Consolidated data from over 5+ sources into a single platform, boosting visibility across 1000+ active brokers.
Showcasing broker key metrics like book size and market appetite informed smarter targeting and reduced off-strategy outreach.
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