Building Slovakia's first online life insurance

The problem

A major insurance company was finishing its digital transformation. But there was one giant roadblock: life insurance.

It's the ultimate product-design boss fight. Nobody wakes up wanting to buy it. It asks people to confront their mortality, wade through legal jargon, and pay for something they hope never pays out.

My role

I led the strategy end-to-end: who to target, what the product should include, and how the online experience should work. Then I led both the client's internal team and my consulting team through execution.

Figuring out the psychological barriers and decision-making process

Our first step was always the same: find the psychological barriers first. I spent hours interviewing customers, salespeople, and internal teams. Three myths kept showing up:

• "It's just death insurance." People had no idea what life insurance actually covered.
• "It's a rip-off." Because they thought it only paid out if you died, the price made no sense.
• "The house always wins." Salespeople were seen as pushy sharks chasing commission.

In parallel, I co-led workshops with the insurance team to nail down target groups, the competition, and our edge.

The big takeaway: life insurance is never something people come looking for. Almost everyone who owns it was cross-sold by an advisor in person. The online funnel couldn't pretend otherwise.

Stop asking people to buy

A standard online form was never going to work. The decision sat completely outside most users' "zone of acceptance" (the range of decisions someone is willing to make in the moment). But you can stretch that zone by asking for less.

So I proposed a step before the application form: a 1-minute, 3-to-4-question quiz to "find out if life insurance even makes sense for you." This low-stakes curiosity hook delivered personalized answers based on their life stage:

• Mortgage? Here's how it covers the loan if something happens.
• Business owner? Here's how it protects your income during a rough stretch.
• Kids? Here's how they stay financially covered if something happens to you.

It was a tiny ask, but a genuine curiosity hook. It funneled the right people straight into the next step.

Personalize the product, but keep people in control

People don't trust insurers and don't know what they need. Hand them a pre-packaged plan and they assume you're selling something they don't need. The solution was a hybrid: fully personalized recommendations, with every coverage adjustable.

To stop users from accidentally gutting what mattered, I split the screen into three labeled sections:

1. Crucial coverages — with personalized copy explaining why this one matters for their situation.
2. Important, but not essential — if they want a lower price, this is the part to adjust.
3. Optional add-ons — not pre-selected.

If a user lowered a crucial coverage, a friendly warning explained the risk. But they could still do it, the choice was theirs. The result: people felt guided and in control, not pushed.

Complications with compliance

I rewrote the copy across the landing page, the funnel, and every coverage description so a teenager could follow it. Next to every option, microcopy answered three questions: what does this do, why does it affect the price, and when would I actually need it? I also restructured the landing page to build the value story up front.

The hardest part wasn't the writing. It was defending it. Plain-language insurance copy makes compliance teams nervous. Instead of fighting via email, I sat down with legal, walked them through everything, and championed clarity. Where a phrase had to stay for legal reasons, we rephrased it together so it met compliance but still sounded human.

It meant compromises. I wasn't 100% happy with every line, but there was no other way to get it done. The upside: the final copy shipped with compliance fully on board.

What I learned

In a corporation, there's always one more stakeholder. You map everyone, you think you're covered, and then someone appears who still has to approve it, or who needs their own presentation first. So plan for delays you can't see yet. They show up right when you're about to ship.