BCG Digital Ventures · MetLife
Finding where MetLife
could become a lifelong
financial partner
Quick Brief — for the hiring manager
Problem
Where can MetLife intervene in a person's life to become their lasting financial wellness partner? The brief was deliberately open — a strategic opportunity hunt, not a redesign.
My Role
Experience Designer in a team of 5 (3 experience + 2 strategic designers) plus BCG consultants. Owned product provocations, journey maps, visual frameworks, and co-designed the client presentation.
Impact
Strategic recommendations targeting 5× revenue growth and 29,000 new customers over 6 years. Full business case delivered to MetLife leadership in 3 months.
Approach
User interviews across 9 US cities. Synthesized into 3 behavioral archetypes. Created low-fi product provocations tested in a second interview round before committing to direction.
Outcomes
"Customer for Life Portal" — a 15+ feature vision mapped across life transitions. Business case validated through second-round user interviews with real participants across the US.
Learnings
Life transitions are the highest-leverage intervention points for behavior change. Behavioral segmentation beats demographic segmentation in financial services. Three months is enough for transformative strategic work.
Duration
3-month sprint
Research Scope
9 US cities
Output
Strategic business case
The Challenge
Three months to find where MetLife could become indispensable. This wasn't a redesign brief — it was a strategic opportunity hunt. We had to understand the full arc of a working American's financial life, find the moments where intervention mattered most, and design testable products for those moments — all before anyone had decided what the product would be.
The ambiguity was the challenge. And also the opportunity. We were given permission to look anywhere — which meant we had to develop a rigorous framework for choosing where to look.
North Star Question
"When is a person most open to changing their financial behavior — and what does MetLife need to offer in that moment?"
Design Process
Research & Insights — 3 Archetypes
"Make It Easy"
Retirees, freelancers, 1099 contractors. Income instability creates anxiety. They want simplification above all — fewer decisions, clearer guidance.
"Amp Me Up"
Full-time employees and business owners. Growth-oriented, motivated to maximize benefits and grow wealth. Want tools that match their ambition.
"Help Me Do It"
Part-timers, job jugglers, people returning to work after retirement. Need structured guidance through financial transitions they haven't navigated before.
Who
MetLife teamed up with BCG looking to evaluate its potential to become a "lifetime" partner in the Financial Wellness journey of its customers.
What
Open-ended Problem: Projecting to build a service or a product where MetLife can intervene in all stages of a user's life.
Why
To provide a unified one-stop solution for Financial Wellness during all the transitioning stages of a user's life.
How
Created a platform called "Customer for Life", that has services a user would need in every stage of life from Graduation to Post Retirement.
Key Design Decisions
01
Behavioral archetypes over demographics
We deliberately moved away from age/income segmentation toward behavioral segmentation. How people relate to money and financial decisions matters far more than how old they are or how much they earn. This reframe changed which features we prioritized for the portal.
02
Product provocations before commitment
Rather than designing complete prototypes, we created low-fidelity provocations — bare-bones ideas that could be tested in 30 minutes. This let us validate 8 ideas in the time it would have taken to build 2 polished ones, and preserved optionality until the second research round.
03
Life transitions as intervention points
Research showed that people are most receptive to changing financial behavior during major life transitions — a new job, retirement, a layoff, having a child. We designed the portal around these moments rather than around financial product categories.
Outcomes & Impact
5× Revenue
Projected growth from the "Customer for Life Portal" strategy over 6 years
29,000
New customers projected in the first 6 years of the portal strategy
15+ Features
Designed and mapped across the full employee life transition journey
9 Cities
User research scope — Boston, NYC, Philly, FL, Chicago, Ohio, Austin, SF, LA
Learnings
Major life transitions are the highest-leverage moments for financial product design. People change behavior at transition points — not at arbitrary product milestones.
Behavioral segmentation consistently outperforms demographic segmentation when designing for financial services. Age and income are proxies. How people feel about money is the real signal.
Three months of focused, ambiguous strategic design is enough to deliver transformation — if the team is structured to move fast and the process is designed to validate before committing.