Accenture Multi-Channel Distribution Insurance Consumer Survey 2010

Accenture outlines the challenges for insurers, and proposes a way forward for those that see the need to develop a flexible multi-channel distribution strategy as a foundation for high performance in today’s business environment.

Find out how insurers are planning to respond to changing consumer behaviors by reading the Accenture Global Multi-Channel Executive Survey.

Insurers face a major challenge: how to remain relevant to a customer base that is in constant flux. One of the most direct consequences of this new customer landscape is a dramatic shift in the way consumers wish to interact with insurers. To achieve high performance in this environment, insurers need to have a deep and actionable understanding of their customers, and they need to develop an effective multi-channel distribution strategy.

To help insurers understand the challenges, Accenture commissioned research into the attitudes and behaviors of consumers regarding purchasing insurance, and the preferred channels for doing so. During early 2010, researchers interviewed 3,555 consumers in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Brazil.

• Only one out of two consumers who are planning to purchase insurance in the next 12 months intend to buy it from their existing provider.
  
  
• Forty-three percent of those who plan to acquire an insurance product in the next 12 months intend to do it online.
  
  
• Agents remain the largest channel.
  
  
• Banks are the third most-used distribution channel: one-third of all consumers own at least one policy bought from their bank.
  
  
• Price is not the dominant factor when it comes to choosing an insurance product.

Based on these key findings, it is clear that:

• The Internet is growing faster than any other distribution channel, and is currently the second-most-used distribution channel.
  
  
• The Internet is eating into the dominance of agents as the premier distribution channel.
  
  
• Bancasssurance—despite consumers’ attachment to their banks—is losing ground to the Internet.
  
  
• Consumers value three attributes above price: speed of problem resolution; transparency of prices and charges; and insurance products and services that meet their needs.

Insurers that wish to become (or remain) high-performance businesses must:

• Improve their use of data and analytics.
  
  
• Empower insurance agents with the latest technology advances and, wherever possible, merge agents’ capabilities with those of the online channel.
  
  
• Develop a clear Internet strategy, including an honest appraisal of current versus desired capabilities.

Perhaps the most important finding to emerge from the Accenture survey is not the relative strength of any particular channel but, rather, the growing complexity of distribution in insurance. Consumers are not choosing one channel, but instead are adding new channels to the ones they are already using. For insurers, the challenge is to develop an effective multi-channel strategy that capitalizes on the strengths of each channel, that delivers a seamless customer experience and that reduces costs.

Contact us to find out how Accenture can help your company develop a multi-channel distribution strategy that underpins the drive to achieve high performance.