Are Today's Consumers Satisfied with Brokers?

By Pat Durepos
President, Keal Technology
Originally published in Insurance West, Sept/2013

Canadian brokers provide a choice for their clients and prospects, in addition to being a trusted advisor. But is it enough to keep clients or attract new ones? I am of the opinion that, unfortunately, in 2013, it is not enough. What is lacking?

This past March I attended a presentation focusing on a Canada-wide IBM survey involving more than 1,000 participants. It concentrated, in part, on consumer buying habits for home and auto insurance and compared these buying habits with direct writers and broker company insurers.

The survey concluded that consumers value and choose brokers for choice and their advisory role; consumers choose direct writers for speed and ease of doing business. On the ease of doing business with broker companies, 70 per cent and more of consumers require the ability to do simple transactions with brokers, i.e. address change, billing change, policy change, report a claim, and all in real time.

Upwards of 65 per cent of broker consumers indicated they wanted to do these transactions 24/7 from the device of their choice – web, smartphones, tablets, etc. These days, unfortunately, most brokers are not providing this ease of doing business.

On July 19/2013 Canadian Underwriter magazine published a must-read article on this subject. Although restricted to Quebec and Ontario, and smaller in size than the IBM survey, the conclusions are the same. The article is appropriately titled "Serve them before you lose them." Here are a few excerpts:

• Deloitte suggested in the report that insurance customers want online capabilities to handle simple tasks that don’t require a live conversation with a representative of the carrier. Insurance customers, it said, "are starting to get used to the type of online capabilities provided by banks – the insurers’ financial-sector peers ... they are expecting the same level of capability, and it’s just not there."


• More than half – 52 per cent – of respondents would switch insurers if they could get "greater online capability, which should be a frightening number to some of the carriers out there that have no strategy around how they are going to go online or how they are going to serve their policyholders. As the direct carriers get more prevalence, they will naturally provide these capabilities."

• Carriers lag in their online offerings and are not meeting the expectations of customers younger than 40 with post-secondary educations, according to the report. "We feel a lot of insurance carriers have looked the other way on providing some of these capabilities, on the assumption that the brokers are responsible for it, but I think the overall theme of this survey shows that policyholders have an expectation of this capability. Brokers aren’t providing it, therefore carriers need to find a way to provide it."
 


• "The preferences did not vary as far as what people wanted based on their channel of purchase ... meaning if you were a broker-based versus direct ... it wasn’t statistically different, what you wanted from the carrier."
 


• But "virtually none of the respondents’ carriers provided the online services that the respondents wanted."

Brokers, insurers and broker software companies know exactly what is being requested by consumers. We know our market share in personal lines is dwindling steadily and surely. As president of Keal Technology, I know the technology is there and available today to answer consumer demands. As an owner of a Canadian brokerage, I know we can not only reverse the market share trend in personal lines, but turn this trend to our favour.

Brokers must lobby and demand from their major insurers a commitment to invest in real time mobility access for their consumers. I hope this short article becomes a call to action for brokers across Canada.

Fifty-two per cent and 70 per cent are large consumer demand percentages. Keal and Unica now have automated real time policy changes; soon this will be available to Unica insureds. We need more insurers to offer this service to their brokers. Brokers excel at lobbying, so I suggest you write to your provincial associations and to your insurance company presidents and representatives demanding immediate action and investment on real time initiatives.

Keal is dedicated to doing its part to make this happen – by making brokers more efficient and more profitable, by increasing their market share and ultimately by helping them stay in business.

But we can’t do it without you, the brokers.