Insurance Customer Behavior

Triggering moments

A common misperception is life events are point-in-time when, in fact, they are small journeys in a consumer’s life: “marriage,” for example, may begin with the decision to propose and may end with thoughts on future financial decisions (e.g., family planning), with the wedding itself as a step in the journey. Similarly, homeownership may begin with the decision to purchase and potentially end with the resale of the home itself.

To buy or not to buy

The decision to buy or not to buy life insurance goes well beyond life events and the helpfulness of advice. Non-buyers cite a variety of reasons for not purchasing insurance, including unclear benefits, complexity, and lengthy application process. There is a clear disconnect between prospective buyers’ views on short term financial goals and priorities and the potential longer-term financial benefits associated with purchasing life insurance.

Loyalty is good for business. Carriers that win the loyalty of their customers find that they stay longer, buy more products and recommend the company to their friends and colleagues. Higher loyalty means lower churn, and that can help companies reduce costs and expand margins.

Insurers have made concerted efforts in recent years to build customer loyalty. They’ve embraced digital platforms, retrained employees and started to redesign customer episodes. These initiatives can pay off. Our survey shows that insurers that concentrate on building loyalty can gain considerable ground as much as 20 percentage points in Net Promoter Scores over a three-year period. Conversely, insurers that lose focus can find their loyalty scores slipping by similar margins.

Insurer have to adapt the operating hours to service consumers specially in digital channels since users are “always” online and it is minutes of winning, the faster with adequate information respond wins.

Some organizations implemented Chatbot to interact with customers as first tier, some organization has dedicated team who support online customers with all enquiries. This is really depends on interaction and transaction volumes of each company to consider whether it is worth to invest on the dedicate team to support online consumers 24/7.

All these 3 keys behavior has definitely impact and affect insurance company especially at the pre-purchase stages. Moving forward, insurers do have to think ahead in offering products and services specially for online consumers which might also involve KYC, automate-underwriting approval, modular products for consumers to drag and drop, digital identity verification, and etc.