Building modular content systems for vulnerable insurance customers

Background

Royal London's insurance customers struggled to compare product options and understand coverage decisions. 

Challenge

Leading content design for Royal London's insurance products. The core focus was creating comparison journeys that helped customers clearly understand and navigate their options.

CLIENT

Royal London Asset Management (part of the Royal London Group)

INDUSTRY

Financial services

MY ROLE

Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Project Management, Wireframing

Outcomes

✅ Reduced complexity across insurance product journeys, improving customer clarity in decision-making

✅ Designed Consumer Duty-compliant content patterns for vulnerable customers 

✅ Improved accessibility and findability across life insurance products

✅ Established modular content system enabling consistent customer experiences and product comparison

Strategy

I led a content-first redesign, working with product managers and researchers to define requirements, frictions, and constraints.

This included:

  • Auditing existing content, user flows, and customer comprehension patterns
  • Defining IA and modular content structures that supported product comparison and decision-making
  • Co-creating with subject matter experts, designers, and compliance teams to balance regulatory requirements with customer clarity

Research and audit

I began by auditing current product pages, usability research, and customer feedback to understand where customers struggled with insurance decisions.

This revealed that customers found it difficult to:

  • Compare product features and coverage levels
  • Understand pricing and value propositions
  • Navigate options relating to emotional subjects, such as illness or bereavement.

I redesigned content that was easy to find, navigate, and understand, aligning with FCA Consumer Duty standards. 

Workshops and co-creation

I facilitated workshops with product owners, subject matter experts, and designers.

These sessions surfaced:

  • Content gaps and customer comprehension challenges
  • Technical and regulatory constraints
  • Key pain points in product comparison and decision-making flows

Designing for customer outcomes

Royal London focused on customer outcomes first, particularly for vulnerable customers making difficult decisions.

I collaborated with compliance teams to define and codify FCA Consumer Duty requirements into how we structured content patterns and phrased our messages.

This included:

  • Designing clear product descriptions that helped customers understand what they were covered for
  • Highlighting price-to-value comparisons, so customers could evaluate affordability and benefits
  • Creating content patterns that supported product comparison
  • Improving information architecture to help customers find relevant products based on their life stage and needs

Reviewing order and flows

Discovery revealed that customers struggled to compare products and understand coverage options due to fragmented information and unclear visual hierarchy.

My information architecture and user flow audit, identified how business priorities were inadvertently creating barriers to customer comprehension.

I proposed new flows, templates, and content patterns that balanced business needs with accessible, customer-centered design.

Designing in modules

I introduced a modular design framework with defined content types and user outcomes that supported:

  • Feature clarity and value communication

  • Upsell opportunities through contextual guidance

  • Suitability checks and onward journeys

Visual and semantic hierarchy

I partnered with UX Designers to align components with our content patterns to improve:

  • Customer task completion and decision confidence
  • Readability and accessibility for diverse customer needs
  • Content clarity and findability across product pages

Aligning with design systems

I aligned our finalised hierarchies with the design system. This provided my cross-functional team with a clear understanding of:

  • Style guidance and tone of voice rules per module

  • A checklist of  FCA Consumer Duty alignment with content flows and page outcomes

  • Governance standards for reuse and iteration

Why it matters

This work helped vulnerable customers navigate difficult insurance decisions with clarity and confidence, from comparing coverage options to understanding their protection during life-changing events.

The modular content system I built enabled Royal London to maintain consistent, Consumer Duty-compliant experiences across insurance products.

The established patterns ensured customers always received clear, empathetic guidance.

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