Homepages shine in Insurance and Annuity awards
As we start a new year, CI is looking back on the firms that set themselves apart with our 2022 Monitor Awards for insurance and annuity firms. Now in its 24th year, CI’s Monitor Awards program highlights the best tools and features offered by firms across a variety of areas critical to customer experience. This year’s awards in insurance and annuity recognize best practices in UX features across the industry, including those that help clients become financial students. We distribute awards in gold, silver and bronze based on the quality of exceptional features and tools. These awards are solely about these features; we do not attempt to rank insurance and annuity firms overall.
In this blog post, we spotlight two winners in homepage categories: Farmers, in P&C Insurance Monitor, for public site homepages, and Lincoln, in Annuity Monitor, for account owner site homepages.
Public site homepages for P&C firms – Farmers finally wins
Farmers has long stood as a coverage group leader in this category, maintaining a spot on the podium for the past six years. However, this is the first time the insurer has managed to capture the gold medal over our long-standing winner, American Family. While Farmers has maintained a similar homepage layout since 2019, it has expanded page offerings to include additional promotions, new self-service quick links, and links to product and information pages, boosting the insurer’s score. Farmers has also made changes to design elements, rolling out updated graphic icons and differentiating page sections with alternating blue and white backgrounds, making for an attractive and easily readable offering.
The navigation menu is now made up of a mixture of flyout and static links. Like American Family’s site, as users scroll down, the main navigation menu remains anchored at the top of the page. Below the updated banner image, the insurer added links to the Policy Perks, Farmers Groupselect and Home Insurance pages, as well as a ribbon that links to the Farmers Careers page. The insurer continues to allow prospects to initiate a quote from the embedded quote tool in the banner image. The tool itself now features a dropdown product selection menu instead of clickable product tiles and highlights the potential savings a Farmers policy offers. Below, the Latest from Farmers section—previously titled See the Complete Picture with Farmers—is offset with a pale blue background and offers a selection of links to product pages, including Motorcycle, Car and Homeowners Insurance, accompanied by bright illustrated icons.
Key attributes considered in this category include:
- Design and usability
- Main navigation structure
- Content and promotions
- Login field location
- Quote tool positioning
Account Owner Site Homepage in Annuity – Lincoln
Lincoln Financial Group wins the gold medal in this category for providing an account owner site homepage that features pertinent policy and investment information along with quick links to critical account resources and processes. The main navigation at the top of the page features links for specific educational pages and a link to the Forms page while quick links for account processes appear directly on the homepage.
Policy number and product name appear at the top of the homepage, and a blue tile houses other high-level policy information, such as policyowner and financial professional names. Intrapage tabs allow policyowners to toggle between different policy information such as the account value table, a personal rate of return calculator and a table breaking down the contract’s death benefit.
Key attributes considered in this category include:
- Design and usability
- Main navigation structure and quick links
- Policy information and investment details
- Available account management processes
- Tools, education and promotional resources
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