Study Says Insurance Web Sites Don't Measure Up To Competitors

Study Says Insurance Web Sites Dont Measure Up To Competitors

When it comes to attracting customers in the online marketplace, the insurance industry is getting its butt kicked by banks and other marketers of insurance products, says the 2001 eInsurance Study from Booz Allen & Hamilton.

“Despite explosive growth in traffic, many insurance Internet sites fail to measure up to competing bank and brokerage sites,” states an announcement on the study from the New York-based management consultant.

According to Gil Irwin, vice president and leader of the eBusiness insurance practice at Booz Allen, “Insurers need to recognize this and deal with it at a faster pace.”

Although visitors to insurance sites increased by an impressive 1,150% between 1999 and 2000, “insurance companies still attract far fewer visitors to their sites than other financial institutions,” says Booz Allen. The study notes that insurance Web sites–including company sites and aggregator sites–dont draw as many customers or offer the same extensive product mix or suite of services found at their non-insurance competitors.

Booz Allen says this study analyzes Internet usage data from Nielsen/NetRatings to determine how consumers use insurance sites–comparing them against each other and against bank and brokerage sites. The consultant adds that it surveyed both property-casualty and life and annuity providers along with “top financial institutions and financial intermediaries.” More than 200 Web sites belonging to carriers, banks, brokerages and online intermediaries were reviewed.

One reason that insurance Web sites tend to be visited less frequently than other financial sites, says Irwin, is that insurance sites generally offer fewer products. “Its not as if [insurance companies] have fewer customers,” he explains, “but people use the Web for immediate transactions and there are not as many transactions for an insurance product. Maybe youll go online to pay a quarterly premium or once in a while to check the status of a claim.”

With an online broker or bank, however, the activity could be almost daily, says Irwin. “What insurers need to do is make their sites richer.”

According to the study, the top 10 insurance sites were visited by 5 million users in April 2000, compared to 18.2 million visitors to the top 10 bank sites in the same month, and 11.5 million visitors to the top 10 brokerage sites.

In addition, the study notes, consumers spent less time at insurance sites (under 13 minutes per month), as compared with bank sites (22 minutes) and brokerage sites (35 minutes).

The study also points out that while some insurers have plans to add Web site functionalitycapabilities such as problem resolution, claims tracking, self-administration of policies, online account viewing and bill paymentmany have not yet done so.