Kaotim Customer Portal — Digitalising Takaful

A new end-to-end customer portal for Takaful Malaysia’s digital arm, Kaotim.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Industry

Insurance & Takaful

Year

2025

Overview

Kaotim is a subsidiary brand under Takaful Malaysia, created to modernise and digitalise the Takaful experience for a younger, more tech-savvy audience. Historically, many of Takaful Malaysia’s processes — claims, guarantee letters (GL), certificate reviews, updates, and payments — were handled manually. Customers often needed to print forms or visit physical branches to get things done.

In 2025, Kaotim set out to change this. They partnered with Naluri to design and build a fully digital Customer Portal — a central hub where users can manage their Takaful certificates, submit claims, track statuses, request guarantee letters, calculate contributions, and onboard into the Kaotim ecosystem smoothly.

I was the Lead Product Designer responsible for the end-to-end design of the Customer Portal, which successfully launched on 12 November 2025.

My responsibilities included:

Establishing the design system for the entire platform
Digitalising manual processes: claims, guarantee letters, certificate management
Designing onboarding, calculators, account settings, and document flows
Collaborating closely with PMs, engineers, Kaotim’s branding team, and project managers
Ensuring brand consistency while adapting to evolving guidelines
Delivering a scalable foundation for future expansion (mobile app, automation, AI)

Overview

I was the Lead Product Designer responsible for the end-to-end design of the Customer Portal, which successfully launched on 12 November 2025.

My responsibilities included:

Establishing the design system for the entire platform
Digitalising manual processes: claims, guarantee letters, certificate management
Designing onboarding, calculators, account settings, and document flows
Collaborating closely with PMs, engineers, Kaotim’s branding team, and project managers
Ensuring brand consistency while adapting to evolving guidelines
Delivering a scalable foundation for future expansion (mobile app, automation, AI)

DESIGN PROCESS: UNDERSTAND

To define what Kaotim should become, we first needed to understand what leading insurance players were already doing — especially those who’ve excelled in digital claims and frictionless customer experience.

Competitor & Market Analysis

I studied notable global players across insurance and digital health ecosystems, including:
Lemonade, Alan Health, Oscar Health, Root Insurance, Hippo Insurance, BIMA, ZhongAn Insurance, Ping An Insurance.

Key themes emerged

How top insurers modernise key processes

Speed = Trust
Fast approvals and transparent status updates directly drive customer satisfaction.
Frictionless UX as a competitive advantage
Clear guidance, fewer steps, and strong automation lead to higher conversion and fewer errors.

How insurers cut claim time by 90%

Auto-approve smaller claims
Visual-first guided flows
Deep integration with hospital networks
Live status tracking

Modern guarantee letter (GL) standards

Self-service GL downloads anytime
Auto-send GLs directly to hospitals (Oscar’s approach)
Future-looking: blockchain as proof-of-issue

Blueprint for speed in digital insurance

Chat > forms: conversational UX helps users articulate needs faster
APIs > manual checks: real-time verification through JPJ, MiCare, hospitals
Track everything: transparency eliminates anxiety
OCR & AI triage: scan bills, extract data, reduce human handling
Provider integration: hospitals receive GLs instantly
Analytics loop: continuous optimisation

AI use cases that actually improve experience

Instant, low-friction claims (Lemonade-style ~5 min approvals)
Multilingual conversational support (“Am I covered for dengue?” in Malay/Manglish)
Automated guarantee letters with countdown timers
Reduced call-centre dependency and improved first-response time

These insights set the foundation for a fast, trustworthy, mobile-friendly digital Takaful experience.

DESIGN PROCESS: INSIGHT

Translating the research into a design direction, a few core insights shaped the product:

1. Malaysian users equate speed with trust

Delays in claims or GL issuance are often interpreted as incompetence or avoidance. Reducing waiting time needed to be the north star metric.

2. The experience must remove “administrative fear”

Users often don’t understand insurance terminology or requirements.
→ Flows needed to guide visually, not overwhelm with text.

3. Self-service is the future

Users should be able to:

Download GLs instantly
Submit claims easily
View certificate details without calling an agent
Track everything in real-time

4. Automation is essential, even if not fully available at launch

Where integrations weren’t ready (MiCare, Merimen), we designed with the future in mind.
The portal still needed scalable foundations to support automation in future releases.

5. The portal must align with Kaotim’s evolving brand

Kaotim’s branding was still in refinement.
The design system needed to be flexible enough to adapt to future iterations.

These insights helped prioritise clarity, speed, and simplicity as the core product pillars.

DESIGN PROCESS: DESIGN

The design phase involved multiple rounds of ideation, stakeholder alignment, and component building.

Starting with inspirations

Using insights from Lemonade, Alan, Oscar, and Ping An, I explored design directions around:

clean, lightweight layouts
card-based information hierarchy
conversational guidance for complex flows
strong use of iconography
a warm, friendly colour palette aligned with Kaotim

Core features designed

Claims submission flow
Guarantee Letter request flow
Certificate dashboard
Onboarding flow
Account management & preferences
Financial calculator

Stakeholder reviews

Throughout the process, designs were continuously shared with:

Kaotim Brand Team
PMO
Marketing
Product Manager
Engineering teams

This ensured alignment across branding, feasibility, and business requirements.

DESIGN PROCESS: VALIDATE

Because the platform had no existing customers yet, UAT (User Acceptance Testing) was conducted with Takaful Malaysia and Kaotim employees — the people most familiar with the processes.

Positive feedback

“The platform is easy to use.”
“Navigation feels straightforward.”
“I understand where to find everything.”

Key issues identified

Certificate status card wasn’t noticeable enough

Some users missed the renewal date
Solution:
- Added countdown
- Adjusted colours for clarity
- Synced with Kaotim’s updated brand palette

Claim document upload experience

Users wanted a faster, more frictionless method
Team agreed to use batch uploads instead of individual uploads
Tradeoff: the system can't auto-validate per document type
Decision: move forward with batch uploads for MVP
Addressed through clearer instructions & post-upload checklists

Overall outcome

The customer portal passed UAT with strong feedback, especially in:

overall ease of use
clarity of design
intuitive navigation
modern user experience

FINAL DESIGN

Refining the Experience Through Validation

Feedback from UAT directly informed key improvements across the platform. The certificate card was redesigned to better surface renewal and payment information by introducing a clearer countdown, more visible status indicators, and stronger colour emphasis on upcoming due dates. These changes were also aligned with Kaotim’s updated brand palette, finalised shortly before launch.

Simplifying Claim Document Uploads

The claim submission experience was simplified to reduce friction. Members can now upload multiple documents at once instead of individually. To support clarity, users can manually mark which documents they have uploaded, giving them a visual checklist to avoid missing any required files.

Virtual Agent for Self-Service Support

A Virtual Agent was designed to help members quickly find answers without navigating multiple pages. It supports questions related to certificate details, coverage, and locating nearby panel hospitals, clinics, or workshops.

Mobile App Experience

To support on-the-go access, I designed a mobile app experience focused on quick certificate viewing, simple claim submissions, and easy status checks—making key actions accessible anytime, anywhere.

Supporting Pages & Communication

To reduce reliance on support channels, I designed a dedicated FAQs page covering takaful coverage, onboarding, claims, and financial calculators. I also designed key system emails, including welcome emails, claim submission confirmations, and password reset emails, to ensure a consistent experience beyond the portal.

Establishing the Design System

All final designs were consolidated into a structured design system, defining foundations, components, and patterns to ensure consistency and scalability. This system now serves as the backbone of the Kaotim Customer Portal and supports future features and market expansion.

Challenges & Constraints

1. Branding changes late in the process

Kaotim’s brand guidelines were evolving throughout the project. Final colours and visual direction were only confirmed ~1.5 months before launch, requiring rapid adaptation and close coordination.

2. Cross-organisation alignment

Working across Naluri and Kaotim teams meant:

frequent syncs
fast decision-making
multiple rounds of approvals
maintaining design consistency despite shifting requirements

3. Limitations due to third-party integrations

Key integrations with Merimen (motor/vehicle) and MiCare (health/life) were not ready for launch.

This required:

building a temporary Admin Panel for Kaotim’s internal team
enabling them to process claims manually while the user experience remained seamless
designing with future integrations in mind so no redesign would be needed later

Despite these constraints, the project shipped on time and met all launch requirements.

What’s Next

The next chapter for Kaotim is to bring health and protection closer together. The plan is to integrate Naluri’s features—assessments, lessons, journals, and virtual consultations—directly into the portal so users can manage their wellbeing and their coverage in one place.

We’re also exploring a faster, smarter claims experience with mobile document scanning and OCR, allowing the system to read bills and pre-fill forms instantly. This will help reduce friction and remove one of the most stressful parts of the Takaful journey.

And as Kaotim grows, a dedicated mobile app is on the horizon. It will give users quick access to their certificates, guarantee letters, and claims—right from their phones—making everyday tasks simpler, faster, and much more intuitive.

Reflection

This project pushed me outside my comfort zone. Coming from a background mainly in health and wellness products, designing for Takaful required learning an entirely new industry — its regulations, terminology, and customer mindset.

I also gained experience:

collaborating with external organisations
building trust with stakeholders across different companies
designing for scalability across multiple markets
adapting to continuously evolving branding and requirements

The success of the Kaotim Customer Portal has led to Kaotim entrusting me with their next major initiative which is designing a Takaful community product for the Indonesia market in partnership with Takaful Keluarga.

This project reminded me how impactful design can be when it simplifies processes that once felt intimidating or complicated — and transforms them into experiences people genuinely trust.