A Global Design System Adopted in 145 CountriesGlobal CIO Award winner
QBE Insurance is one of the top 20 companies on the ASX (Australia), with operations across five continents.
While leading Design Systems at QBE, I architected a unified experience for 145 countries across 95+ teams, and products. What started as 4,000 pages of inconsistent UI became 80 reusable design blocks—accelerating delivery by 10x and dramatically improving consistency and scalability.
Results that matter:
• 10× resource savings
• Unified design, business, and development
• Accelerated time to market across regions
145
Countries
95
Global Teams
9000
Screens
5
Libraries
Key pillars of QBE's Atomic Design System
Key Results
• 9,000 pages consolidated into 80 reusable blocks
• 10× faster design-to-dev process
• Adopted across 4 regions, including Asia, Europe, and North America
• Reduced rework and simplified governance with Design Tokens
• Recognised in the Global CIO Award for impact and innovation at enterprise scale
• Winner of the Hackathon for Commercial Lines — awarded for strategy, speed, and business value
Customisable form components used across 145 countries. Our systemised forms adapt to a wide range of needs—reducing design time, streamlining dev handoff, and improving the end-user experience.
What made the difference
• Centralised Storybook integration for instant sign-off
• 1-click updates via token-driven theming
• UI components aligned with real business workflows
• Strong cross-functional adoption from product, brand, dev, and UX teams
A library of scalable layouts designed to support regional marketing needs—ensuring brand alignment while enabling local teams to move quickly. Each page was built to scale: a single source of truth powering websites across countries, products, and customer segments—no reinvention required.
Key highlights:
By adopting an Atomic Design System tailored for QBE, we drastically accelerated delivery without sacrificing flexibility. Instead of reinventing UI patterns for every project, we created a set of highly customisable building templates—enabling global teams to scale with speed and consistency. The system was never mandated, yet organically adopted by 95+ teams across five continents and used in a wide range of contexts—from internal tools to marketing sites and customer-facing apps.
• Supported delivery in 145 countries, with local variations handled via tokens
• Applied to internal software, sales platforms, B2B portals, and public websites
• Streamlined feedback and approval cycles
• Delivered consistency across all experiences
• Maintained flexibility to adapt for different brands, markets, and use cases
Atomic Link — QBE Design System Hub
A single source of truth tailored for each role, accelerating delivery and aligning teams at scale.
Key business benefits:
• Accelerates time to market
• Enables faster decision-making
• Reduces costs in design delivery
• Enforces brand consistency globally
• Figma, Storybook, and code repos
• Onboarding in minutes, not weeks
• Fast access to the right info
• Minimises errors and rework
• Improves collaboration across all teams
• Shared components and common language
• Clear visuals and business rules
• Self-service guidance for every role
• Built to scale with the org
EXAMPLES ONLY — not confidential or commercially sensitive.
All the examples below are for illustrative purposes only and were previously shared in public conferences and talks. These visuals show how we applied the design system in real product scenarios to improve consistency, speed, and scalability.
