Taylor’s Corner: Using Effective Insurance Data Visualizations

By Taylor Hill, Business Analyst at Cloverleaf Analytics

Hello insurance professionals! With Cloverleaf’s many features, you have various options to visually represent your data. Whether you’re deciding on a chart type, color theme, or the complexity of your visualizations, I want to help you understand how much impact choosing the right data visuals can have on your work.

Using effective data visualization not only ensures understanding and accessibility but also allows for more action and better decision-making from your end users or viewers. One question one should always ask oneself when designing a dashboard is, “What story am I trying to tell?” This becomes the main driver to creating a presentation that others not only understand but that also drives action and starts meaningful conversations within your organization.

Let me share some tips I’ve found helpful when building visualizations:

Select the Right Chart Type for Your Insurance Data

Cloverleaf offers a variety of chart options in the discovery module – from column and bar charts to pie charts, matrix grids, KPIs and more. Not all charts will be suitable for every scenario. Knowing which chart best displays your particular data is essential for creating a meaningful dashboard.

For instance, if you’re showing change over time for a measure, a line chart would be more beneficial than a pie chart. You want to select a chart style that allows your viewers to easily visualize how the data is moving through time.

If you have two variables, such as policy count and commission rate, and you’re looking for the correlation between them, a scatter plot would showcase this relationship better than other chart styles. A column chart wouldn’t be the best fit to show the correlated relationship between the two.

When examining the magnitude of multiple variables, such as policy count for different regions, a column, bubble or line chart would serve you best. These chart styles allow you to easily visualize the magnitude of each variable.

When you need to compare the volume of an individual variable to the remainder, you’re looking at a Part-to-Whole relationship. This chart style shows how much an individual part contributes to the whole data set. Chart styles that best represent this include tree maps, pie charts, circle packing charts, or area charts.

Keep Your Visuals Simple

When presenting your data, you want to capture your audience’s attention without overwhelming them. I’ve found that having too many reports on a presentation often results in clutter and confusion. To ensure your viewers don’t have to search for the story you’re telling, keep your dashboard concise and straightforward.

In my experience, having a few meaningful reports on a single page is often better than cramming in too much information when displaying your data.

Choose a Thoughtful Color Scheme

While we don’t want bland black, white, and grey presentations, I encourage you to choose your colors wisely to enhance rather than distract from your data. Use colors as a way to elevate your visual. I recommend selecting a color palette and sticking to a few shades of that gradient, with a separate color to highlight your key points.

Cloverleaf makes this easy by offering a helpful way to select a consistent and enhancing color scheme. You can select a set color theme to use across the discover, present, and publish modules. This ensures that your data colors coordinate and don’t distract from your presentation.

Maintain Visual Consistency Throughout

When using different chart styles, I find it’s important to remain consistent in other visual areas. Keeping your reports in the same color scheme, size, and format will make your data easier for end users to read and understand. This consistency ensures that different data points on your presentation are more straightforward to compare.

For example, the dashboard below shows reports with aligned formatting and consistent color usage:

When working on a presentation with multiple slides, I recommend keeping the slide layout and formatting consistent. Your filters and logos should remain in the same location. Coloring, slide size, and margins should also remain consistent throughout.

A Final Note

I’ve seen firsthand how applying these visualization principles can transform complex insurance data into clear, compelling stories that drive action. When your visualizations are thoughtfully designed, your audience spends less time deciphering the data and more time making informed decisions.

I hope these tips help you create dashboards that not only look professional but also effectively communicate your data story. Remember, the goal isn’t just to display information—it’s to present it in a way that inspires understanding and action.

Happy visualizing!