Cake & Arrow Releases New Industry Report on Tackling Digital Friction in Insurance Through Design

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cake & Arrow, an experience design and product innovation agency focused exclusively on insurance, today announced the release of Tackling Friction in Insurance Through Design, a new industry report exploring why digital experiences across insurance are still fragmented, confusing, and difficult to use.

While the broader digital world has spent decades optimizing for “frictionless” experiences, insurance continues to grapple with complexity across customers, agents, brokers, underwriters, employers, and internal teams. The report draws on Cake & Arrow’s two decades of experience designing within the insurance industry to examine how friction shows up, and what to do about it.

Rather than positioning friction as a simple UX problem, the report outlines three systemic patterns that commonly emerge in insurance experiences:

• Role friction occurs when multiple user types share the same system, but roles, permissions, and responsibilities aren’t clearly defined.
• Offering friction emerges when related products and services are delivered through disconnected systems, making bundled coverage feel siloed instead of cohesive.
• Mission friction arises when a platform is pulled in competing directions by internal priorities, leaving users unclear about what the system is designed to help them accomplish.

“In insurance, friction doesn’t just slow people down, it compounds,” said Josh Levine, CEO and Founder of Cake & Arrow. “When platforms don’t reflect how people actually work, collaborate, or make decisions, users create workarounds. Email threads replace workflows. Spreadsheets replace systems. And complexity keeps growing.

“What we’ve seen in our design work is that meaningful progress comes from stepping back and understanding the people behind the process: clarifying roles, aligning around real workflows, and designing with intention instead of just digitizing what already exists.”

The report emphasizes that friction in insurance cannot — and should not — be eliminated entirely. In a highly regulated industry, certain safeguards increase transparency and protect consumers. The goal is not blind simplification, but intentional design: reducing unnecessary friction while preserving the kind that builds trust and clarity.

Tackling Friction in Insurance Through Design offers practical solutions and design principles to help insurers:

• Clarify roles and permissions within shared systems
• Organize products around user needs rather than internal silos
• Anchor platforms around clear user intent and end-to-end workflows
• Align teams internally before layering on new features

The report also includes a diagnostic quiz to help organizations identify which type of friction is most affecting their ecosystem.

Download the full report at: https://go.cakeandarrow.com/tackling-friction-in-insurance-through-design

About Cake & Arrow
Cake & Arrow is an experience design and product innovation agency that works exclusively with the insurance and financial service industries. We believe empathy sparks opportunity. Our human-centered design approach helps carriers, distributors, and insurtechs create transformative digital experiences that drive results. Since 2002, Cake & Arrow has partnered with leading insurance and finance companies, including MetLife, Aflac, Citigroup, Travelers, Chubb, Aon, and The General.

Contact:
Emily Cardineau
212-598-2800
[email protected]

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SOURCE Cake & Arrow