FinTech, InsurTech, Marketplace UX
Tremor: Designing a Blockchain Marketplace for Reinsurance
A blockchain-driven risk-transfer marketplace for a reinsurance startup, taking a paper-driven industry trading hundred-million-dollar hurricane contracts into a live, customizable trading platform.
Tremor
- 01 Problem
Reinsurance ran on paper, and Tremor's early marketplace made traders re-enter complex filters many times a day and fight a calendar that didn't match how they worked.
- 02 Approach
New ReactJS design patterns: a two-step 'Superball' coverage filter, color-coded comparison dashboards, a redesigned calendar and a customizable widget library.
- 03 Outcome
A scalable marketplace with live blockchain trading tickers, on-demand weather forecasts and personalized dashboards that sped up decisions for reinsurers and cedents.
Project summary
Tremor is a risk-transfer marketplace with an algorithmic matching engine that connects reinsurers and cedents. Its focus was seaboard hurricane contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, in an industry that had always run on paper agreements. For a disruptive startup, the field was wide open. Tremor also offered pricing benchmarks, portfolio analytics and an issuance platform for insurance-linked warranties, retrocession treaties and catastrophe bonds.
The problem
Tremor needed a blockchain-driven marketplace built from scratch. The existing design patterns were cumbersome: traders had to enter complex filter combinations several times a day, and the calendar for setting dates and ranges didn't match their need for quick access to contract data.
What I designed
- The "Superball" coverage filter. A two-step, scalable filter in the main header that gives fast access to Industry Loss Warranty (ILW) contracts across many combinations of coverage, and leaves room for new coverage types.
- Comparison dashboards. Customizable, color-coded dashboards that put contracts side by side (Florida against Japan, for example), with summary bars that update as filters change.
- A calmer interface. A nature-inspired palette chosen to convey trust, and a calendar rebuilt to be quick to use as well as pleasant to look at.
- A widget library. New ReactJS patterns that let traders assemble their own views, designed responsively for tablets.
The result
The marketplace shipped with a live blockchain trading ticker for real-time contract pricing, on-demand weather forecasts to inform hurricane-season decisions, and personalized dashboards. Built with mentors from the Lloyd's Lab accelerator, the product saved insurance buyers 10-20% on price and cut placement time for complex facultative and treaty deals by a factor of three.
Skills: Product Strategy, UX Design, UX Research, Quantitative Analysis, Design Systems, Product Ownership.