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June 04, 2014 at 12:00 PM
Using the words shopping and life insurance in the same sentence is the first indication that the “sold not bought” paradigm is flipping. The notion that people care enough about life insurance to be proactive is a dream come true considering the growing number of uninsured U.S. households.
However somewhere along the way, the dream turns into a nightmare. Now we know more about why and what to do about it.
LIMRA and Maddock Douglas, Inc. joined forces and revealed some new research estimating that 18.7 million people are “stuck shoppers.” The stuck shopper is someone who agrees that “everyone needs life insurance,” yet they themselves do not have any, or is someone who has shopped in the past year, or intends to shop in the next year and doesn’t have any life insurance that they pay for themselves.
Is this a case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak, or is it something else? It is something else. And the problem isn’t them, it is us.
“It’s not me, it’s you”
The notion that life insurance is hard to buy isn’t new. For years insurance companies have been pulling certain levers to make it easier to take the plunge. These include reducing prices, simplifying underwriting and expanding distribution channels. However, there is another lever that has not been pulled in a meaningful way that is to change how we communicate with consumers.
Consumers expect that of us. Seventy-three percent say it is the industry’s job to help them understand products and services, and 83 percent say that it’s our job to help them understand how they would benefit from them.
While some may suggest these are the agent’s jobs, today’s consumers like to learn about all kinds of products and services on their own. In fact, 84 percent of consumers say they are “do it yourself” researchers. As it applies to life insurance, 45 percent say the research process is “like going through a maze.”
With all of the information that insurance companies make available to the public on their websites and in print, why is it still so hard? A big part of the answer is that the information, in all its abundance, feels “inauthentic.” Keeping it real
Authenticity is hard to define exactly, but you know it when you see it. It is about being real. To help companies get their arms around authenticity in a meaningful way, we have identified six elements of authentic communication that help us to unravel it. They are about being:
1) Easy to understand
