00 / Case study
Five years of tools
for one insurer.
Markel sells specialist insurance in Germany through brokers. For more than five years I was the developer behind its website and broker portal: a product finder that matches a trade to the right policy, the forms that run broker onboarding and annual declarations, and a pipeline that turns sign-ups into cyber risk reports.
-
1,900
Trades in the
product finder -
31
Insurance
products -
4,600+
Trade to product
matches -
05
Years as their
developer
- Client
- Markel Insurance SE
- Role
- Lead developer
- Stack
- Laravel
- Since
- 2018 to 2024
01 / Starting point
Specialist insurance is sold through brokers, and brokers need quick answers: which policy covers a roofer, a software consultancy or an adventure tour operator, and which documents go with it.
It started small, with a product search and two long questionnaires on Markel's WordPress site. A few months later the site moved to Laravel, and over the following years it grew a broker portal, an academy and an automated report pipeline.
02 / Constraints
- One search, the right product
- A broker types a trade and gets the products that cover it, with the documents for each. The mapping behind it had to be maintainable by Markel's staff, not by a developer.
- Forms that replace paperwork
- Broker onboarding and the annual declaration had to ask only the questions that apply to each individual case, and accept the files that go with them.
- Built to keep running
- Five years is long enough for framework versions, product lines and the people running the site to all change. None of that could mean starting again.
03 / What I built
-
B/01
Product finder
A broker types in any trade and gets the policies that cover it, most relevant first, with the documents for each. Markel's staff maintain the mapping, no developer needed.
-
B/02
Broker onboarding
The forms a broker fills in to work with Markel, from company details to the approval of the connection.
-
B/03
Annual declarations
A declaration form that grew with the business over four years: questions per sector, file uploads, and an embeddable version for partner sites.
-
B/04
Cyber risk reports
Customers redeem a one-time code, the site registers them with an external reporting service, and automatically sends the finished report PDF to both Markel and the client.
-
B/05
An academy for brokers
Webinars grouped by segment, with FAQs and feedback, synchronized with an external webinar platform.
-
B/06
One place for the wording
Legal notices and product descriptions live in one place in the admin panel. Change a disclaimer once and it updates everywhere it appears. For an insurer that is not a convenience.
04 / In their words
“Thanks to Webographen we managed to solve the bottlenecks in our website. Their strategic advice and development mean we can work faster and with more focus today. The design goes down well with our target audience, as the statistics tell us.”
Senior Strategy Executive, Markel Insurance SE
05 / Credits
This started while I was running an agency, Webographen GmbH, later Designbase Studio, and I kept supporting Markel directly after leaving it. In 2024 Markel's head office in the United States decided that group sites would be rebuilt in-house on a single platform, and the German site was replaced along with the rest.
06 / Next step
Your team knows the answer. Your website does not.
If the answers only live in a spreadsheet or in someone's head, your team answers the same question twice and three times over. Send over the questions your customers keep asking and I will work out how much of it can be automated.