Client
Coöperatie VGZ
Challenge
To prevent and solve health insurance payment arrears among young adults
Impact
2 concepts currently being tested for implementation and 5 on the backlog, which can potentially help reduce the number of young adults facing payment issues
Understanding how to prevent financially unhealthy futures
According to BKR (a Dutch organisation that gathers national credit data), debts, money problems, and payment issues are rising, especially among young adults. Lately, we have seen their debts grow, in contrast to a decrease among the entire population (although the current energy crisis is expected to result in debt growth among the whole population). A similar trend is visible at Coöperatie VGZ – the number of young adults with payment arrears and debts is rising, a symptom of a financially unhealthy future.
Together, we dove into the experiences and perceptions of young adults on this topic. By executing 11 explorative in-depth interviews, we empathised with their experiences and needs. We used our insights in a co-creative brainstorming day, where we collaborated with a multi-disciplinary team of experts and produced 500+ (!!) ideas. After further development and a critical selection with a multi-disciplinary team, this resulted in 10 promising concepts to improve the current services of Coöperatie VGZ.
A future-proof service delivery
To holistically convey the insights from our research, we created:
1) a set of main insights
2) three personas
3) a customer journey map
The main insights summarise our most essential observations supported by engaging quotes. Since we specifically focused on the needs of young adults for creating a future-proof service, we used personas to clarify and describe these needs. In our research, we mostly spoke to two personas. We learned that a third persona also exists through data from Coöperatie VGZ and our interviews. The experience of each persona is displayed in the customer journey map.
When I'm at the supermarket and I want to buy a croissant, I won't consider that I can't dig into the hundred euros that I need for my health insurance contribution. But then a couple of days later, I won't have enough to pay it.
Altogether, the set of research insights served as a rich source of inspiration to create opportunity areas, which we used during a multi-disciplinary, co-creative brainstorming session. During this session, 14 people with different expertise (internal and external) teamed up to create solutions to answer the needs of this target group. This effort resulted in 10 concepts to improve the current service, all of which aid in either the prevention of payment issues, help in getting out of payment issues or improve the experience in dealing with payment issues.
Looking forward
Looking into the future, we believe that both the generated insights and concepts are essential steps in the right direction to addressing payment problems and arrears. Coöperatie VGZ now has the ammunition to start improving the experience of their youngest clients with their insurance. Beginning with two design sprints, they are keen to implement the results and continuously keep improving the experience, thus aiming for a reduction of young adults with payment issues. Especially in these times of inflation and financial instability many young adults face, it is critical to collaborate closely and create meaningful services to prevent and solve their payment arrears. Thereby, we aim to head towards a financially healthy future.
