Hayah

How do you purchase life insurance in under two minutes?

That was the challenge when we first met David Howard, the Head of Strategy, Digital & Customer Experience at HAYAH, in late 2022.

Spun out of the AXA group by its forward-thinking CEO Mohamed Seghir, the company was rebranded to HAYAH (meaning ‘life’ in Arabic) in 2022.

Set against the backdrop of life insurance in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) typically being paper-based, with policies written by established corporations, and the usual purchasers being high-earning expats sold through brokers, we realised this was a significant and exciting challenge.

It was not only the challenge to create a digital-first vision for life insurance, but the company’s mission to offer savings, medical and life insurance to underrepresented communities within Dubai that resonated strongly with us.

Replatforming the digital insurance experience

After conducting an initial audit of HAYAH’s internal infrastructure and vendor ecosystem, we recommended a site rebuild to create a solid foundation to scale the future product aspirations, and unify the brand experience across all touchpoints.

After a rapid discovery phase, we selected Next.js (a React-based web framework) to build the marketing site, coupled with a Storyblok CMS. This allowed us to move quickly — creating a purposeful editing experience for content editors — whilst remaining scalable to future needs. The initial site deployment launched within 10 weeks from our first conversation.

Once the refreshed site was launched we worked closely with Lumera, a leading software vendor for policy administration in insurance, to unify the user experience and interface to ensure early customers had a seamless customer experience.

Personalisation and product discoverability

From our initial meetings with the HAYAH management team, their philosophy of creating a community with existing and future customers was the springboard to launch a direct-to-consumer (DTC) offering in future.

However, as HAYAH had adopted a lean startup methodology with a small head office team — limited by resources but not by ambition — we quickly formed a strategy team around HAYAH to run an in-depth discovery process to unearth the viability of a community-building platform.

Over 6 months, this ambition turned into an application, culminating in Tribe by HAYAH. Tribe’s mission was to solve the financial literacy problem within a nascent community of blue-collar workers and offer a gateway into the HAYAH ecosystem of products.

Step one in that journey is now complete, and Tribe will expand its community-enhancing features and help build trust in a market not typically associated with compelling digital experiences.

The ultimate goal is for Tribe by HAYAH to be the DTC vehicle over the coming years, helping build long-term revenue for the business.

An evolving insurance market in the UAE

Through working in Dubai and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council over the last 15 months, we have seen major changes in the regulato ry environment with exciting opportunities for HAYAH to capitalise on.

Our work together has enabled the HAYAH team to pivot and create tactical software developments quickly, helping to mesh together an ecosystem of vendors faster than competitors, and remaining true to their commitment to customer-centricity.

This includes the launch of Health Protect, the first totally digital health insurance product in the UAE. This was based on the insight that existing processes for health insurance were incredibly cumbersome. Our relentless focus was based on offering a seamless buying journey that puts users in control, allowing them to conveniently purchase their cover in just a few clicks.

Our agile, scalable and supportive partnership with HAYAH allows them to go to market quicker than incumbent providers, and will ultimately manifest in speed to revenue for one of the most exciting FinTechs in the Middle East market and a partner we’ve been excited to work with since our first meeting.