SALAMA Islamic Arab Insurance Company needed to digitise how Takaful life insurance policies are started. Onboard is the distributor portal I designed so that a complete policy application, from choosing a plan to a generated quote, takes minutes instead of paperwork sessions.
Takaful UX case study UAE: Salama Onboard
The challenge
Life insurance onboarding is where good intentions go to die. Applications ran on long forms full of underwriting jargon, so every policy needed an expert to translate. Salama wanted the opposite: a flow so clear that an agent could complete it live with a customer, and the customer could follow every step, understand every choice, and walk away with an illustrated quote.
The promise we designed around is written on the very first screen: get a life insurance quote in under 5 minutes.
The approach: one question at a time
Instead of reproducing the paper form on screen, I broke the application into a conversational wizard. Each step asks one plain-language question, “Which currency would you like to pay your premium in?”, “Do you consume tobacco?”, and answers are big tappable choices, sliders and steppers rather than blank fields. Info icons sit beside every question for the moment someone wants the fine print, and nothing is buried in it.
Why takaful UX needs its own approach
Takaful is Sharia-compliant insurance built on contribution and mutual protection, and its vocabulary goes beyond conventional life cover: contribution, fund value, encashment value, riders. Many customers in the UAE meet these terms for the first time at the point of sale. Good takaful UX explains each term in context, at the moment a choice depends on it, instead of in a glossary nobody opens.
That is why every step in Onboard pairs one plain question with an info icon, and why the benefits illustration became a chart the agent and the customer read together.
My role
End to end UX and UI flows, wireframes, visual design, interaction design and strategy.
Platform
Web portal for distributors and agents, built to be simple enough for end users.
Client
Salama Islamic Arab Insurance Company, a takaful provider in the UAE.
A friendly face on a serious product
A mascot guides the flow, speech bubble first, celebrating progress and softening a product category that usually feels intimidating. Light illustration in the background keeps the tone warm while the interface itself stays disciplined and data-first.
Making the numbers make sense
The heart of any Takaful sale is the benefits illustration, and it is usually a spreadsheet nobody reads. Onboard renders it both ways: a grid view for the detail-minded, and a chart view where fund value and encashment value are plotted across plan years with tooltips on every point. The agent adjusts the contribution with a slider and regenerates instantly, turning the illustration from a printout into a conversation.
“A policy application an agent can complete live with the customer watching, and understanding, every step.”
From paperwork sessions to a five-minute guided flow
The delivered design covers the complete journey: login, guided quote wizard, joint and multiple policy holders, optional riders, interactive Takaful benefits illustration, quote generation and the full application and client management workspace around it. Every screen keeps the three anchors constant, one clear question, a live policy summary, and a next step.
By replacing form fields with choices, sliders and plain language, the flow removed the translation work that used to sit between the customer and the product. The same design serves the agent at a desk and a customer following along beside them, which is exactly what an assisted onboarding journey needs.
Lessons from this takaful UX case study
One question per screen beats one screen per form. Splitting the application into single decisions made each step quick to answer and easy to revisit.
Show the summary while people decide. The live policy summary kept every earlier answer visible, so nobody lost track of what they had already chosen.
Make the numbers interactive. A slider that regenerates the illustration turns a static quote into a conversation, which is where an assisted sale is actually won.
Want a flow like this for your product?