Rotman Design Challenge 2025
It was a design competition for Intact, the largest insurance company in Canada. The goal was to propose strategies for becoming a more user-centered brand, as requested by Intact.
To achieve this, we identified gig workers—a segment that reflects the unique characteristics of the Canadian workforce—as our target group, and designed a new insurance product that addresses their needs while positioning Intact as a more empathetic and attentive insurer.
Location
Toronto, Canada
Date
2025.2
Industry
Insurance
Teammates
My Role
Challenge
Based on Intact Insurance’s prompt, “How might we create a new and valuable service experience for Intact customers that will surprise and delight them beyond the traditional insurance journey, while increasing engagement with the brand?”, our goal was to develop strategies that enable the brand to approach its customers in a more human-centered way.
Results
In Canada, the gig economy makes up a major part of the workforce. Our research revealed that gig workers have a remarkably low rate of insurance enrollment. Many rely on their personal vehicles for gig-based sharing work, which allowed us to uncover key insights into their perceptions and pain points around commercial insurance. In response, we designed a new commercial vehicle insurance model tailored to the flexible nature of gig work and presented it to Intact representatives at Rotman Business School, where our project won first place among over 90 participants from 12 business schools.
Target Setting : Gig Workers with vehicles
This project began with the goal of helping Intact, one of Canada’s leading insurance companies, be recognized as a more human centered brand by defining a target that authentically reflects the Canadian context.
After exploring several possibilities, we focused on gig economy workers who use vehicles in their work. In Canada, the gig economy is a large and continuously growing sector shaped by the country’s economic structure and demographics. At the same time, vehicle based gig workers are closely connected to insurance in their everyday lives. At the intersection of industry scale and strong relevance to insurance, vehicle using gig economy workers emerged as a meaningful and appropriate core target for this project.
Gig Workers and Unmet Insurance Needs
Gig economy workers who use vehicles need commercial insurance in addition to personal auto insurance to do their work. Unlike people with regular jobs, gig workers often cite the flexibility of their work as a key reason for participating in the gig economy. However, traditional insurance products fail to meet their flexible needs due to minimum coverage periods and complex cancellation procedures. This is the main reason why up to 50 percent of gig workers in Canada remain uninsured.
Qualitative Research
8 interviews
2 interviews
Canadian
Personal Insurance Policy Holder
3 interviews
Canadian / Gig workers
Personal Auto Insurance & Commercial Policy Holder
Insurance is selected by price but kept through positive experience
Terminology causes confusion during sign up process
Bundling insurance is preferred due to discounts and ease of use
Worried about premiums rising due to accident reporting
Would like rewards for good driving behavior
Gig workers
Traditional insurance does not fit the flexible needs of gig workers
Language barriers contribute to underinsurance
Metric-based performance leads to higher accident risk
