Insurance and Online Dating

With today’s technology the world of knowledge, commerce, and even love, are at people’s fingertips. So Answer Financial asks, why not insurance? If 40 million people choose to find love online, maybe they should buy insurance the same way.

Answer Financial, which sells personal lines insurance online through its agencies Insurance Answer Center and Right Answer Insurance, offers eight reasons to think of insurance like online dating. Among them:

• People get to see if they are compatible before they commit.
• Technology does the work.
• Online services expand the pool of prospects and options.
• They can find the partner who wants them just the way they are.

Answer Financial is having some fun. Nothing wrong with that. At the same time, they and many others take online insurance very seriously.

So is online dating a good business model? Do insurance agencies and carriers want to be compared with dating services? What can insurance pros learn from the likes of match.com?

Independent agents and carriers have been criticized for being slow to adopt new technology. There is some truth there. However gradually, more and more have gotten into the online business and more will in the future.

While Answer Financial caters exclusively to online shoppers, most independent agents don’t do this, not because the agents themselves have anything against technology but because many of their customers do when it comes to buying insurance.

Just as most people do with dating.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans who are “single and looking” say they’ve used an online dating site, according to Pew Research. But only 10 percent overall say they’ve actually tried online dating.

While about half of auto insurance customers shop online, less than half end up actually buying online, according to market research. As with dating, those most active online are younger insureds.

There is some evidence to suggest that overall, there is actually less shopping around for insurance. Apparently, some people are happy in their current insurance relationships, or not unhappy enough to bother shopping around.

No doubt the numbers for both online dating and insurance are changing, and both will probably eventually increase.

Clearly, online dating, like many online experiences, is not for everyone. Neither is online insurance a perfect match for everyone. Thus, selling online may not be the answer for every provider.

The majority of insurance buyers – and lovers – still like a little human interaction before they commit to a long-term relationship. That’s where local independent agents come in.

Topics Agencies