In all my work in the insurance area, on both the broker side and insurance company side, we always come up against the same gnarly and intractable problem:
The customer experience is abysmal.
Buying insurance is like undergoing a colonoscopy. Or paying property taxes.
No matter how eloquent your copy, no one actually wants insurance, loves it or looks forward to shopping for it. Insurance never brings joy. It's a forced and begrudging purchase mandated by state law, by the bank or the leasing company. Or you're afraid of getting scolded for not buying it.
Worse still, owning insurance is mosly about writing checks, which constitutes 89% your interaction with the insurance company. (In twenty years, I have written some 240 checks to my auto insurer. In return, they sent me three checks and some swell calendars.)
For your car payment, you get a car. For your credit card payment, you get the dinner out, the HD TV, the new suit, the dishwasher. For your rent check, you get your apartment.
For your insurance check, you get some stapled papers filled with bullet points and legalese, which you throw in a drawer. (Yes, you get the warm glow of "peace of mind," which lasts maybe two weeks. After that it's about writing checks.)
You get a bill, you write a check. Write and repeat.
For maybe 7 out of 10 clients, that's all that ever happens. Only a certain percentage ever get to use the insurance at all, and only when something nasty happens. A tree falls on a house. A grandmother breaks a hip in someone's restaurant. Someone dies.
Even then, there's a 50% chance the outcome will be less than satisfactory. ("Seepage or water back-up is not covered. A deductible of $2500 applies.")
The agent or broker or insurance company that can improve this experience even a smidgen will get rich. (Mainly because most people in the business don't get this at all.)
No, I don't have breakthrough answers yet.
I'm working with some clients on bits and pieces of the issue, trying to remove the pain and nuisance a little at a time. Such as in finding better ways to communicate what clients get for all those checks, in a visual, graphic format sort of like one receives from an investment house.
Or in trying to make real and concrete what those 'coverage declarations' bullet points actually mean, in real life. With another client, we're coming out and acknowledging that insurance is a nuisance, and 'we're here to get that irritation off your back.'
The opportunity is huge. Most insurors and brokers only see things from their own side of the desk.
