AXA UK
Launching a challenger brand
A challenger brand under the AXA umbrella, built to do insurance differently — plainer language, simpler journeys, and a product people actually wanted to buy. New journeys, a new design system, and a way of working the wider business later adopted.
- Role
- UI Designer
- Year
- 2022 — 2023
- Focus
- Product designCustomer journeysPlain languageDesign systemAgile
Overview
Working across a multi-functional team, I helped launch a new challenger brand under the AXA umbrella. The brief was to do insurance differently: less jargon, fewer steps, and journeys simple enough for people who had never thought about buying insurance before.
The challenge ran on two fronts — how insurance is sold and presented to customers, and how the team itself worked. We brought compliance in from the start, so guardrails shaped the experience early instead of arriving at the end to slow it down.
After launch we worked in small cross-functional teams and tested with real customers regularly, so we could keep learning and improving. The journeys we redesigned have since been reused to launch further partnerships, and that way of working went on to inspire a shift across the rest of the business.
The challenge
Launch a credible new brand in a regulated market and make insurance feel simple and human — while proving that a better way of working is as much of a differentiator as the brand itself.
Preview
The approach
Challenging the defaults
We started by questioning the norm: what insurance actually asks of people, where they give up, and why. That set the direction for everything that followed.
Plain language, simpler journeys
We rewrote flows in plain English, cut steps that existed for internal reasons rather than customer ones, and made buying and managing cover feel short and obvious.
Compliance in the room from day one
I worked closely with compliance from the first sketch. Clearer wording and earlier sign-off meant fewer late reworks, and a journey customers could actually understand and trust.
A system built to last
I created and developed the brand's design system so screens stayed consistent as the brand grew — with accessibility and clean, buildable components baked in rather than bolted on.
A team built like a product team
After launch we worked in small cross-functional teams, prototyping quickly and testing with customers as a regular rhythm rather than a one-off milestone — improving the experience in the open.
The outcome
From scratch
Brand and journeys built new
Reused
Journeys adopted by later partnerships
Adopted
Way of working taken up across the business
- A challenger brand launched and live, with journeys simple enough to bring in a new customer base.
- The redesigned journeys became the template for launching further partnerships.
- A design system other AXA brands went on to adopt.
- The efficiencies of that way of working inspired a shift across the rest of the business.