CASE

Agile customer-centric product development drives real ROI for Prudential

Prudential harnesses an always-on community to gather better insights and be first in market with cutting edge products and campaigns.

Man carrying young child on his back
Man carrying young child on his back

 

How it started

Prudential Singapore has been serving the financial and protection needs of Singaporeans for 86 years. They are market leaders in Protection-, Savings- and Investment-linked plans.

With over 20 new products launched per year at an average cost of S$1.3M, Prudential wanted to make innovation more customer-centric, and use customer insights to drive product development.

Yet, the challenge was that traditional research could take up to six months to complete. Prudential was thus looking for an agile approach to conduct customer research before launching products, to limit the risk of a disconnect between the products launched and what their customers wanted. 

 

How we inspired change

We created the ‘PRU for You’ always-on customer community in 2016, which we have been managing to this day. It enables engagement with 4,500 customers and gives them a voice in developing new products and services. 

For example, to combat rising medical costs, Prudential needed to determine whether customers were open to claims-based pricing. Feedback from the community on pricing led to a revamped PRUshield plan. In 2017, it was a first-in-market approach to Medical claims for Private hospitals.

In May 2017, Prudential launched a new set of products called PRUman and PRUlady, covering illnesses specific to men and women. The community was instrumental in the ideation and implementation of both insurance products.

Engagement with the ‘PRU for You’ community concerning retirement preparedness also led to creation of the PRUActive Retirement plan – with focus on flexible premium duration and different pay-out options. 

 

How it lives on

With the ‘PRU for You’ community , the average turnaround time for activities is a few days, if not hours. Prudential is able to run more than 20 different activities for the price of one traditional research study. 

Agile customer feedback led to a 28% YOY increase in premiums revenue across all products. CSAT tracking showed 17% points improvement in overall CSAT benchmarking score, and brand tracking revealed almost 10% points increase in agreement with ‘Prudential offers relevant insurance products’.

“By harnessing the power of technology, we have been able to integrate community insights directly into our product development process, allowing us to create products and solutions that best meet the needs of our customers, improving their experience with us.”

Former Chief Customer Officer,​ Prudential Singapore

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