2025 · Product design

Manulife Financial Adviser new business experience

Helping Manulife Financial Advisers track new business and manage follow-ups more easily.

Manulife new business experience on a laptop and mobile phone

Overview

One place to manage new business

Submitting a new insurance case is only the beginning. Each case goes through review and may require further documents or follow-up, leaving Manulife Financial Advisers to navigate a fragmented, cumbersome process. This design brings that journey into one place in M365, giving Advisers a clear view of each case’s progress and the actions needed to move it forward.

Discovery

Disconnected systems made follow-ups cumbersome

Case details were held in legacy systems accessible only to Underwriting and Operations. To check progress, Advisers had to monitor emails or ask business development managers to chase updates. When additional documents were needed, each follow-up involved more manual handoffs, delaying client updates and case resolution.

A typical journey looked like this:

Manual follow-up journey: submit a case for review, check progress by email or phone, receive a request for more information, email client documents back, and wait for another review. Repeat the follow-up cycle as needed.

About advisers

Financial Adviser goals and needs

Our qualitative research showed that Manulife Financial Advisers needed to:

  • Respond quickly and confidently. Securing new coverage is exciting for both clients and Advisers. As with claims, promptness matters: timely updates and follow-ups are part of a professional service that maintains client trust and helps Advisers retain their business.
  • Keep cases moving. Because Financial Advisers earn primarily through commissions, they want to spend their time finding leads and advising clients, rather than chasing updates. Delays directly affect their income and postpone the start of clients’ coverage.

Design strategy

Make M365 the place to take action

Less time chasing updates means more time understanding clients’ needs and tailoring the right solutions.

To support this, the strategy was to bring the full new business journey into M365, so Manulife Financial Advisers could see each case’s status, understand the next step, and act without switching platforms. From the same place, they could manage follow-ups, submit documents, or withdraw a case at a client’s request—whether at their desks or on the go.

Designed for Manulife Advisers on the move

M365 supports post-sales servicing through a web app originally built for desktop use. Its mobile experience is evolving alongside upgrades to legacy systems.

Growing phone usage reinforced the need to support Financial Advisers on the move. After taking over design for the platform, I made the new business journey its first fully responsive experience, working within the existing technical constraints.

Larger devices

Mobile devices

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Outcomes

☑️ Less back-and-forth. Faster case turnaround.

The new M365 design gives Manulife Financial Advisers one place to upload documents, monitor cases and resolve follow-ups—eliminating cumbersome email exchanges and calls, simplifying case management and speeding up turnaround.

☑️ Full adoption. Zero complaints in three months.

All approximately 2,000 Manulife Financial Advisers adopted the platform. Emails and calls fell significantly in month one and reached single digits by month three, with no complaints reported during that period.