Case Study: Northwestern Mutual boosts digital adoption and advisor engagement with Alpha

How Northwestern Mutual is transforming the way 8,000 financial representatives work in the digital age

Northwestern Mutual, a 160+ year-old financial services firm with nearly 8,000 independent representatives, needed a better way to connect its digital product teams with advisors and clients across a B2B2C model. As the company expanded its web and mobile experiences, it struggled to gather timely feedback from a distributed field force and to keep advisors informed about product priorities and upcoming changes. Alpha helped support this need for a more structured, relationship-based communication approach.

Alpha’s solution was to create a dedicated product specialist team that acted as a liaison between product teams and the advisor network, supported by field engagement, roadshows, a Digital Experience Lab, and regular stakeholder coordination. This helped Northwestern Mutual align digital product development with advisor needs, speed up improvements, and drive adoption of new tools. In less than a year, the company more than doubled digital-experience clients from 500,000 to 1 million and enabled 1,300 financial advisors to adopt key technologies.

Northwestern Mutual

Lori Makinen

Director of Product Specialist Team