Northwestern Mutual
160 Year Old Company’s Digital Transformation Journey
My Role
Director of Product Design
Why I Took the Challenge
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I joined LearnVest before it was subsumed into Northwestern Mutual to contribute to the creation of modern, innovative financial products tailored to the needs of younger generations.
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I wanted to leverage my expertise in eCommerce and enterprise solutions to work on multifaceted, complex, and interconnected products.
Committed to Bringing Financial Security for All
Northwestern Mutual, a leading financial services company, specializes in retirement planning, investments, and life insurance, with an annual revenue of $36 billion. Recognized by FORTUNE® in 2021 as one of the "World's Most Admired" life insurance companies, it is a benchmark for excellence. The company serves over 5 million clients through a dedicated team of more than 8,500 financial representatives, underwriters, and home office staff.
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During my time, Northwestern Mutual had embarked on its digital transformation but faced challenges adopting modern, user-centric design practices due to a siloed culture and outdated processes. This led to misaligned goals, redundant apps and features, and disconnected platforms, creating repetitive tasks and cumbersome communication for underwriters, financial representatives, and home office staff. These inefficiencies ultimately resulted in subpar satisfaction for modern users expecting seamless experiences and faster results.
To see full story including success metrics, click button below.
What I Accomplished
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Developed integrated platforms by consolidating 35+ outdated and disconnected apps, reducing application processing time from two months to less than 14 days. Contributed to surpassing $1 billion in new life insurance premium sales (an 8% increase over 2019), achieved the highest customer satisfaction in over 30 years with 97% of clients retaining life insurance coverage, and drove revenue growth to $31.1B.
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Co-led a design systems initiative, unifying redundant systems, reducing feature development time by 75%, and improving accessibility.
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Modernized and streamlined product processes by collaborating with product and engineering leaders, reducing redundancies, and enhancing alignment with company goals.
To see full story including success metrics, click button below.