Multi-market platform design,
at the design lead level.

A separate account, a different kind of complexity

The Mapfre engagement at Flat 101 covered two legally distinct entities. Mapfre España — which included the AFIN financial app — operated independently from Mapfre Internacional, which managed the Verti direct insurance brand across European markets and digital properties across international territories. Both accounts ran in parallel at Flat 101, but with entirely different client teams, technical stacks, and design needs.

The Internacional work was conducted entirely in English, with Capgemini as the shared development partner across all programmes. Complexity wasn't just about the number of markets — it was about managing multi-agency delivery across teams that each operated under different organisational cultures and timelines.

Two markets, one convergence approach

Verti is Mapfre's direct insurance brand, operating in Italy, Germany, and Spain. The platforms had evolved independently per market, accumulating inconsistencies in UX patterns, design system components, and conversion flows — some differences were intentional (regulatory or cultural requirements), most were simply the result of independent development without shared standards.

The engagement began with Verti Italia: a full platform redesign migrating from a custom-built platform to the Mapfre corporate design system, while preserving Verti's distinct brand identity and adapting to Italian regulatory requirements. Verti Germany followed as a sequential project — same methodology, same design system foundation, applied to Germany-specific requirements, brand criteria, and technical constraints. My role on both was design lead, directly supervising two designers throughout the engagement. Daily responsibilities included client requirements alignment, progress presentations with the Mapfre and Capgemini teams, work plan definition and phase management, and maintaining coherence between the Mapfre corporate system and Verti's own visual identity.

Shared structure, localized surface

The audit work preceding each redesign was about separating two fundamentally different types of divergence. Some differences across markets were intentional — regulatory requirements, cultural conventions, or deliberate brand decisions that needed to remain market-specific. Others were simply the result of independent development over time without shared standards: inconsistencies that had accumulated by accident, not by design. The two types require completely different responses.

The shared design system became the operational foundation: components, interaction patterns, and conversion flows consistent across markets, defined once and adapted at the surface layer. For a brand like Verti — which has its own strong visual identity within the Mapfre family — this required careful work at the boundary between the Mapfre corporate system and Verti's own aesthetic. The goal was not uniformity; it was coherence without flattening the brand.

A public-facing feature for international markets

Alongside the Verti platform work, I designed a public-facing product feature for Mapfre Internacional: an Insurance Offices & Agents Directory enabling users to find nearby Mapfre offices and registered insurance agents. The feature comprised three interconnected components: an interactive map, a filterable directory listing, and individual profile pages per office and per agent.

Initial deployment covered Brazil, Peru, and Nicaragua, with a structured rollout to additional markets underway at the point of handover. Multi-market deployment required careful consideration of localisation beyond language: address format conventions, map provider integration per territory, regulatory requirements for displaying licensed agent information in each country, and country-specific page structures for local compliance.

Experiment design for international properties

A conversion rate optimisation programme ran alongside the platform redesign work, applying structured hypothesis development and experiment design to Mapfre Internacional's digital properties. The work covered the full CRO pipeline: data analysis to surface friction points, hypothesis formulation, design of test variants, implementation specification, and results analysis.

Performance data and programme scope for this engagement are subject to NDA and have not been published by the client.

Running three programmes from the lead role

Running concurrent programmes for the same client required clear workload management across the team. For the Verti work specifically, leading two designers meant defining task scope and priorities, reviewing output quality and brand coherence, and handling all client-facing presentations and requirements alignment. Work plans, phase definitions, and effort estimates were mine to define and maintain.

Daily communication with the Mapfre teams and Capgemini in English — across multiple markets and time zones — required documentation and status management rigorous enough that all parties stayed aligned without constant synchronisation. In a multi-agency environment, the cost of miscommunication lands on the design team first, and fast feedback loops between design, development, and client are the only effective mitigation.

What multi-market platform work teaches you

The most useful distinction in multi-market design is between divergence that serves the user and divergence that serves no one. Platforms that evolve independently tend to accumulate a lot of the second kind — inconsistencies that developed because nobody was watching, not because the local market required them. Identifying and eliminating that accidental drift is a design discipline in itself, and it's often where the most efficiency is unlocked.

Working as a design lead on an account with concurrent programmes — different teams, different timelines, different levels of client readiness — also clarified something about the role: the value of a lead isn't just quality control. It's maintaining a coherent picture of the whole engagement when each individual programme could easily become its own silo.

Specific performance data for this engagement is subject to NDA.