Creditor insurance · UX research · Service design
Helping mortgage specialists navigate difficult insurance conversations
Using research to uncover friction and shape better creditor-insurance support at RBC
Mortgage specialists at RBC found creditor insurance one of the hardest topics to raise with clients. I led a focused discovery engagement — focus-group workshops and interviews — to understand their mindset, experience, and pain points, and to identify digital opportunities that could facilitate these conversations and positively drive enrolment.
Approached with the Discover phase of the Double Diamond
Overview
This was deliberately a discovery-only engagement — the first diamond of the Double Diamond. Creditor insurance is difficult to discuss, not only with clients but openly within a group, so designing the research itself was part of the work: the sessions needed to feel like a safe space before anyone would describe what actually goes wrong.
Research goals
What the discovery set out to learn
Three goals framed the engagement: understand the current process and workflow of mortgage specialists; uncover their mindset, needs, and pain points around the creditor conversation; and identify digital opportunities that facilitate it and positively drive enrolment.
Understand the workflow
Where the creditor conversation currently fits across the mortgage journey — and where it doesn't.
Uncover the mindset
The specialists' experience, needs, and pain points preparing for and having the conversation.
Identify opportunities
Digital initiatives that could facilitate the conversation and drive enrolment.
Method — focus groups & interviews
A safe space to talk about a hard conversation
A series of workshops brought together coaches, specialists, product managers, and UX designers. I opened with simple, open-ended questions and framed the room as a safe space, then moved through three arcs — current experience, tool effectiveness, and opportunities — so honest pain points could surface that a survey would have missed.
Current experience
How do you approach and experience creditor conversations? What makes them difficult to have?
Tool effectiveness
Where does the conversation start? Do you feel equipped? What guidance would help?
Opportunities
How would creditor conversations ideally fit your workflow? What would you change, and need to succeed?
Synthesis & direction
From discovery to a shaped roadmap
Workshop outputs — a current-state journey map and prioritized opportunity areas — fed directly into ongoing solution drafts for the advice experience and sales journey, shaping RBC Insurance's digital initiative roadmap. Three insights carried through: timing matters more than script, specialists wanted a shareable client-facing artifact, and better tooling would close a real confidence gap.
Reflection
This work showed how much value careful discovery adds before any pixels are drawn. Creating psychological safety in the workshops surfaced honest pain points that a survey would have missed entirely, and gave the team a shared, evidence-based picture of the specialist experience to design against.
Outcome
Shared understanding
A validated journey map of the creditor conversation.
Opportunity backlog
Prioritized digital initiatives aimed at enrolment.
Roadmap input
Findings adopted into RBC Insurance digital planning.