Could insurance go "Uber?"

First, the definition of group and work site has to change. Is there a work site for this growing constituent? Are they even a group? Some of them work from their couches and cars. Others are on skateboards. Their boss is the mobile device. “Ding,” time to go pick someone up at the airport, or deliver a dinner. What does that mean for insurance benefits? What does it mean for payroll deduction? What does it mean for portability? Maybe none of these constructs have much meaning in the future, but insurance still does.

Second, could the insurance agent be “Uberized”? I wouldn’t have thought so until a colleague passed along a Wall Street Journal article titled “Coming Next: The On-Demand Sales Force.” Could we train people to sell insurance products in their spare time? Primerica took a lot of industry criticism for having this idea decades ago, but financial success seems to have an inverse relationship to criticism.

We’ve all complained that the present model doesn’t lend itself to agents using time and gas on a small ticket prospect miles away. While we don’t like to think about disruption of our industry, the best way to avoid it is to imagine the absurd and use it as food for innovative thinking.

Here’s an absurdity appetizer. Imagine an app to connect people contemplating insurance with local experts who are available now, and who are rated by previous customers. Those experts could be veterans or part-timers. Think of it like Uber’s app, but instead of little cars floating around on a map, it is people. They could meet them face-to-face or even over the phone if someone is contemplating their finances in the middle of the night and can find an expert with insomnia.

Of course we would need to give it a meaningful one-word name. Perhaps we should spell it incorrectly on purpose, removing or adding vowels, replacing F’s with PH’s, Z’s with S’s, C’s with K’s and I’s with Y’s.

How about “Benyphyt,” “Kuverd” or “Ovrwyth”? Hmmm.