Penn Mutual
Financial professionals who can’t find what they need sell someone else’s product instead. Think gave Penn Mutual’s advisors a portal that’s intuitive and shaped around how they work.- Research & Product Strategy
- Product Design & Build
- Design Systems & AI Enablement
Overview
We started with research into Producers Place, Penn Mutual’s original portal for financial professionals selling their life insurance and annuity products. Producers Place was password-protected, and access required appointment: the formal process to become authorized to sell Penn Mutual products. But financial professionals needed that same product information to decide whether to pursue appointment in the first place. The gate was blocking the exact people who needed access most. We replaced the password with a simple attestation, opening Gateway to any financial professional who wanted to explore Penn Mutual’s products for themselves. Financial professionals research and work from wherever they are, not just a desktop, so Gateway had to hold up on a phone or tablet too. A rebrand landing around the same time gave the new site a fresh set of brand assets and styles to build with. The content audit and what we learned in research shaped a new content model, and we made a pattern library flexible enough to support the new brand. One redesign effort for Gateway grew into opportunities to redesign the other platforms financial professionals rely on to do their jobs.
About This Client
Penn Mutual has sold life insurance and annuities since 1847, carrying more than $347 billion of life insurance in force. More than 7,900 financial professionals across the U.S. rely on Penn Mutual’s software to serve clients.
Financial professionals used to work between three disconnected tools. Now Gateway, the Illustrator, and ACE work as one.
Results
- Problem
Financial professionals often couldn’t see a carrier’s illustration until they were already appointed with that carrier, exactly when they needed it most to help decide.
SolutionGateway gave any financial professional access to a version of Penn Mutual’s illustration tool, no appointment or login required.
- Problem
Comparing different term lengths or risk classes meant running and downloading a separate illustration PDF for each one.
SolutionThe redesigned Illustrator let professionals compare options side by side in one view, without running a dozen separate illustrations.
- Problem
Thousands of pages of product and educational content lived in PDFs. They were hard to search, harder to share, and slow to update.
SolutionThat content now lives on Gateway as structured, searchable web content, so professionals no longer wait on someone else to send it.
- Problem
Producers Place had no shared components, so every new page had to be designed and built from scratch.
SolutionThe pattern library we built into Gateway gives Penn Mutual’s team reusable components, so new pages stay consistent and go out faster.
- Problem
ACE was already an improvement over paper applications, but adoption lagged when professionals had to re-enter details they’d already provided in the Illustrator.
SolutionThink connected ACE directly to the Illustrator, so professionals could move straight into underwriting without entering their work twice.