Talisa — Insurance, Credit & FX
SHIPPED
FINANCIAL SERVICES
SELF-SERVE QUOTES
RESPONSIVE WEB
TL;DR
Role
Product / UX Designer (end-to-end IC)
Team
Tools
Timeline
Round-two usability testing moved every tracked metric: service identification 62% → 91%, quote completion 68% → 88%, time-to-quote down 38%, and commitment anxiety 47% → 9%, the largest shift of all. Brokers stayed a first-class user throughout, and engineering shipped with a starter design system they could extend without new design cycles.
Unclear offering
The site never plainly explained what Talisa actually offers.
Hard to compare
Exploring and comparing options across services took more effort than it was worth.
No path to act
No clear route to a quote or a person, so visitors called agents instead.
Competitor landscape
Where Talisa sits against five Nigerian financial providers across digital maturity, service coverage and the broker-versus-carrier split.
Company
Digital Maturity
Insurance Brokerage
Credit
FX
Broker vs. Carrier
Direct Axis
High
Limited credit protection
Yes
No
Carrier / Direct lender
Tangerine Africa
High
No (Carrier)
Limited (via savings/loans)
No
Carrier
Hogg Robinson
Low - Medium
Yes
No
No
Broker
Access Bank
Medium - High
Insurance (bancassurance)
Yes
Yes
Carrier (bank)
Coronation Merchant
Medium - High,
Yes (group)
Yes
Yes
Carrier (financial group)
Six weeks
To ship a clearer services experience on existing infrastructure, without changing pricing or fulfilment.
Full breadth
Insurance, Credit and FX all had to be supported without confusing users.
Pre-quote only
Marketing and pre-quote experience. The logged-in portal was explicitly next.
Brand fixed
Early-stage brand guidelines were already in place and could not be reworked.
The bet
Services-first navigation would only work if users already had a rough sense of which category they needed. If that bet were wrong, a journey-based structure “I want to protect my stuff” would have served vaguer intent better, at the cost of the clarity brokers needed. Round-one testing is where it got resolved.
Services-first navigation
Credit, Insurance and FX sit in the top-level nav rather than under generic menu labels.
Guided hero panels
Every page opens by naming the user’s goal, how Talisa helps, and one focused CTA.
Step-light quote flows
Short quote requests and call-back forms that ask only for essentials, not full applications.
Product and policy cards
A name, a short description and one next step, so catalogues stay scannable.
FX rates and calculators
Rate cards plus calculators, so users can see approximate outcomes before they enquire.
How might we support the full breadth of services (Insurance, Credit, FX) without confusing users?
Discover & Align
Interviewed customers and brokers; audited credit, FX and insurance flows.
Explore & Define
Set the problem statement, refined user types, mapped the new architecture.
Design & Iterate
Tested low-fi wireframes, then built high-fi responsive designs for key flows.
Ship & Learn
Delivered prototypes, specs, a starter design system and next steps.
Telephone interviews
3+ users across different persona types, ages 25–50.
Face-to-face interviews
4+ users across different persona types, ages 30–45.
Observation study
3+ users, contextual inquiry in their own environment.
Insight
Decision
Customers felt overwhelmed by jargon and risk
Plain-language summaries up front with progressive disclosure, “good for / not good for” sections, and short forms
Users weren’t sure if Talisa was an insurer, a broker, or something else
Services-first homepage with three cards Insurance, Credit, FX and navigation that mirrors the same structure
Brokers wanted a single source of truth for client conversations
Each product page doubles as customer education and broker reference, with clear “talk to us” and “share with a client” CTAs
Both groups said step one wasn’t “buy a policy” but “get a quote or talk to someone”
Quote-request and call-back made the primary action, placed consistently across every page
How might we help customers and brokers understand Talisa’s insurance, credit, and FX offerings and confidently start a conversation without needing an agent to explain everything first, so Talisa can scale its digital presence and reduce reliance on purely offline sales?
Product grid
Rejected. Read as a generic catalog and did nothing to signal Talisa’s category breadth.
Services-first (chosen)
Best resolved the “which category do I need” hesitation while staying legible as a broker reference. Source of the 29-point jump in service identification.
Journey-based
Rejected as the primary structure. Its language (“Need a personal loan?”) was folded into hero copy instead, where it helps without costing brokers clarity.
Brand attributes
Trustworthy & professional
Reads as a regulated financial institution, not a startup experiment.
Warm & human
Lifestyle imagery, soft blues and peaches rather than black-and-green bank cues.
Clear & educational
Typography and layout prioritise legibility and scannability.
Experience principles
Reassure first
Hero zones and forms lead on reassurance rather than on features.
One decision at a time
White space, simple cards and short forms.
Same patterns everywhere
Header, hero, CTA and card styles repeat across Credit, Insurance and FX.
Cross-functional partnering
Scope and metrics with the PM, feasibility with engineers, tone with marketing.
Launched as a learning release
Core flows first, advanced features such as calculators deferred to phase two.
Documented for handoff
IA, key flows and components in Figma, with a concise implementation guide.
Design outcomes
Services-first architecture, guided flows that let people request a quote without an agent, and a visual system matching Talisa’s digital-first positioning.
Business impact
Projected, not measured: more quote requests, higher service-page engagement, fewer basic enquiries reaching agents.
Early feedback
Stakeholders felt the value landed; brokers valued one centralised reference during client conversations.
Round-two usability testing
Measured across two moderated rounds: the first validated direction, the second measured improvement. One real limitation is that I had no visibility into post-launch conversion analytics after handoff, so these are tested results rather than production figures.
Service identification
62% → 91%
Share of participants identifying the right service within 10 seconds.
Quote completion
68% → 88%
Share of started quote requests carried through to submission.
Average quote time
3:40 → 2:15
Minutes to complete a quote request end to end.
Commitment anxiety
47% → 9%
Share reporting hesitation before committing to a product.
Broker navigation
70% → 95%
Broker success rate locating product and policy references.
Reassurance over autonomy
Anxiety moved further than any usability metric: feeling supported mattered more than full control.
Designing for brokers helped everyone
Serving the broker case strengthened the experience for everyone, not just a secondary audience.
Structure beats polish
Clarity and structure built more trust than polish in a category that must feel regulated.
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