In a competitive market where loyalty is increasingly challenging to foster, Canada Life needed new ways to add value to its relationship with advisors and, in turn, Canada Life customers.

New ways to educate and empower Canada Life partners

IFAs juggle a lot of demands on their time. From advising new clients to managing existing relationships, keeping up to date with new legislation and product benefits can be challenging.

Canada Life was already helping advisors stay updated and educated through newsletters, events, and blogs. However, delivery of this valuable content wasn't meeting the expectations of advisors or Canada Life's teams.

Hard to find, hard to consume, and hard to manage, Canada Life needed to reimagine the management of educational content and the digital experience for advisors.

Canada Life's support teams also had access to internal expertise that could elevate Canada Life's CPD content to a higher level, creating a compelling reason to partner with them as a financial advisor. We needed to find ways to harness the potential of these experts and showcase their knowledge to advisors.

Reinventing an online academy for Canada Life financial advisors

Over five months, I worked with Canada Life to uncover the motivations for advisors to seek educational advice and boost their knowledge of legislation and product changes. This groundwork would enable effective design work further down the road.

Facilitating customer research, user journey mapping, and feature exploration, I helped the team clarify a vision for advisor support: an online academy that would exceed existing advisor expectations. Our research also showed that improved content management and smarter platform choices stood to enhance internal content delivery by up to 50%, with significant savings through better platform choices, too.

Through blogs, podcasts, live events and on-demand video, a better advisor education platform would deliver value in formats that work best for advisors.

Getting to market at speed

Speed was a priority; migrating existing digital content's infrastructure had a tight timeframe. I led the scoping and design of the new digital platform, including shortlisting platform providers who could support the team's ambitious plans and timeframes.

This new experience needed internal buy-in. Alongside the core design and research work, I collaborated closely with key stakeholders and decision-makers to secure budgets and resources to ensure a successful launch. Designing vision concepts for the membership experience and iCan brand helped bring to life this valuable product and steer the direction that the wider team could build on as we entered the build phase.

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The new iCan Academy design prioritises strong positioning of the value proposition alongside easier-to-consume content. With a focus on improved information architecture, search and signup flows, the new iCan Academy presented a unique academy brand that distinguished the academy experience from Canada Life's other content.

iCan Academy launched in late 2023, with initial responses suggesting it has been embraced by Canada Life's advisor community and improved engagement with advisors. A more stable and simple to use platform is also helping internal teams deliver content and live events with more confidence and quality.