In reading recent
reports on
insurtech, it was heartening to see the number of insurers that have chosen to gain the market-leading capabilities and tools they need to succeed by partnering with innovators. Many of the major insurers on the list are seeking differentiation, focused on augmenting their product lineup with a new offering, such as State Farm’s and Allstate’s partnerships with Openbay to provide non-collision auto repair services.
Others are expanding distribution through a new channel
such as an app.
In our experience, insurers that start a partnership with an insurtech that focused on a narrow goal, such as gaining homeowners coverage to enhance their existing auto, inevitably expand the relationship, because the right insurtech partnership rapidly positions insurers for greater growth and prosperity.
Banking on the Power of an Insurtech Partnership
Banking on the digital savvy of an insurtech innovator can deliver powerful results, but in our experience focusing on the following three areas produce the greatest overall outcomes:
- Empower agents: In the initial talk about digital distribution, many assumed that agents would be ousted from their traditional roles and forced into a position of obscurity. We don’t see this happening, and neither do leading insurers, as 50% of consumers still want to speak with an agent when they have questions or concerns.
The problem is, when you put an agent up against the Amazon experience, the agent comes out as woefully inefficient, taking too much of the consumer’s time to manually plug reams of information into multiple back-office systems to generate a quote.
See also: What’s Your Game Plan for Insurtech?
Agents are still a powerful force in the industry, but to keep their competitive edge they need the ability to speed the quote-to-issue lifecycle. One leading insurer stands to improve premiums by $100 million to $150 million by the end of this year because it streamlined the agent’s tasks to offer seamless product bundling in a single transaction.
Overhauling legacy systems won’t get other insurers there fast enough, but partnering with the right insurtech will.
- Add product and channel choice: I mentioned the Amazon experience above, because it has shaped so much of consumers’ shopping preferences and expectations. As we see by following insurtech funding and partnerships, traditional insurers are realizing the direction that consumers are pushing the industry and, in an attempt to get ahead of the game, are differentiating themselves and the service they provide by partnering with insurtechs to add channel and product choice.
We see tremendous benefits for insurers that focus on meeting more of the customer’s needs. Consider a leading insurer that introduced coverage options by selling other carriers’ products to augment the insurer's auto lineup and added 72,000 policies in less than 10 months. Another gave agents access to additional home products and grew policies sold from less than 8,000 a month to 57,000 a month.
Of course, product choice isn’t complete without giving consumers the ability to engage with insurers through their channel of choice. One top-five insurer, well known for digital prowess, has been reported to own quote conversion rates of
35% through agent channels and as much as 53% through direct purchasing.
The problem for most insurers comes in attaining digital capabilities and the extensive range of products they need to acquire and retain customers. Developing products can take a year or more, and overhauling legacy technology to add digital channels of engagement and efficiently distribute new offerings is an arduous task. Neither course of action will make traditional insurers competitive before leading digital rivals pass them by. Partnering with insurtech innovators to bundle products from other carriers with their own and distribute them with top-tier digital capabilities, can.
- Streamline the quote-to-issue lifecycle: During a recent advertising campaign, one client generated 3,000-4,000 quotes a day, but not by simply cranking up advertising power or frequency. Instead, the client supported the extended marketing campaign by digitizing the quote-to-issue lifecycle for 80% of desktop traffic and 100% of mobile users. Smart app capabilities and automation allowed consumers to enter minimal information and automatically generate rapid quotes. The experience is similar to Amazon’s product purchasing environment, where customers search for a product, are immediately presented with options and click to buy the items they want. This is the future of insurance, and, by partnering with a leading insurtech provider offering a SaaS-based digital distribution platform, this insurer is providing the future today.
Coming Back for More
Insurers that focused on a simple goal, say of improving product selection or extending delivery channels, often expand the relationship to include more offerings and new distribution capabilities. One top-five insurer partnered with a leading innovator to enhance product selection for in-house agents by bundling products with those from other carriers through a digital distribution platform, and three years into a five-year contract signed up to offer additional product options, added 367 agents and extended the relationship to also offer the insurer's products and carrier appointments direct-to-consumer via digital channels.
See also: 3 Misconceptions on Insurtech
Why? Because within the first two years, the company found itself presenting 70% of customers with an offer, converting 35% of those quotes and doubling sales year-over-year. With outcomes like these, who wouldn’t expand the relationship?
To learn more about selecting the right insurtech innovator to power your growth, download our infographic: InsurTech Innovators Arm Incumbents to Meet the Customer-centric Imperative.
