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Insurance Carriers Emphasize Site Usability Over Bells & Whistles

Insurers focus on policy management functionality to retain clients and reduce operational costs, Gómez Fall Insurance Carrier Scorecard research reveals

Waltham, MA, November 27 - Amid challenging economic times, leading insurance carriers are dispensing with dazzle in favor of enhanced Web site usability and improved policy management functionality. The aim: to keep existing clients loyal and reduce operational costs, according to Gomez, Inc., the Internet Quality Measurement firm.

This assessment is derived from an analysis of 18 leading insurance Gómez Fall Insurance Carrier Scorecard. Property & Casualty insurer Progressive Insurance took top honors for the fifth consecutive Scorecard, with Allstate finishing a close second.

"Research for this Scorecard found continued commitment to the e-commerce channel, despite an overall slowdown in the pace of industry innovation," noted Greg Davies, Gómez's lead insurance industry analyst. "This commitment will need to continue if insurance carriers intend to meet expectations set by the Web offerings of other financial services leaders."

Gómez's Scorecard analysis revealed that insurance industry leaders are opting for minor front-end enhancements rather than adding significant new functionality. Echoing trends common among leaders in the online banking and brokerage sectors, firms such as Progressive Insurance, Geico, GEFN and Amica are maximizing the value of their existing site architectures rather than aggressively expanding the capabilities of their Web presences, Davies noted. Progressive, for instance, made minor adjustments to its auto rate quote platform, streamlining the method in which it questions quote seekers, he pointed out.

Among other findings, the Fall Insurance Carrier Scorecard revealed:

• Coverage change quotes, real-time processing of policyholder self-service requests and immediate enrollment differentiate insurers' policy management interfaces. Eighteen months ago only a handful of insurers supported policyholder self-service capabilities. Now, 12 of the 18 firms in the Fall Scorecard allow their policyholders to view and/or make changes to their policies via password-protected interfaces.

• Immediate access to policy self-service functionality is a key differentiator. Only five firms support immediate access to new self-service registrants. This is critical, Davies said, because insurance policyholders can rarely afford to wait five to 10 business days to check the status of a payment, initiate an endorsement request, or perform other time-sensitive service requests.

• Insurers turn to bank products in a push to control a greater share of consumers' wallets. Allstate and AIG recently joined State Farm as the second and third Scorecard insurers to launch online banks. This foray may provide opportunities for increased cross promotion of insurance products.

While carriers continue to deploy advanced policy management functions, many of these areas lack critical features that would make them easier for clients to use, Davies pointed out. "While 12 of 18 carriers offer customers a password-protected online policy management area, only two are pre-filling customer information in online claims forms," he noted. "Additionally, many of these 12 are requiring customers to use policy change forms that are not pre-filled and are outside of the password-protected policy management area."

About Gómez

Gómez provides customer experience measurement services to help firms build successful e-businesses. Gómez Performance Network (GPN) is a leading provider of Web page and transaction performance monitoring solutions to Fortune 1000 companies. GPN enables companies to measure the performance of their global Web sites in real-time, enabling them to continuously monitor site availability and responsiveness, worldwide. GómezPro provides actionable research and competitive benchmarking and industry insight to help companies optimize online customer experience relative to consumer expectations, competitive offerings and alternative distribution channels.

Gómez, Gómez.com, GómezPro, Gómez Performance Network, Performance Media and Internet Quality Measurement are trademarks and/or service marks of Gómez, Inc. Use this link for additional Fall Insurance Carrier Scorecard highlights, or contact us at aalper@gomez.com.

Online Insurance Reports from Gomez

Gomez has also published reports on:

• Online Vehicle Insurance: Reevaluating Purchaser Behavious;

• State of Online Insurance: P&C;

• State of Online Insurance: Term Life.

Each of these has a pdf overview of about seven pages on the Gomez site. For more detail, one can order a full report. These are linked from the page at www.gomezpro.com/public/research_overview.asp?AREA_PAGE=ins (or go to www.gomez.com then Business Professionals, then Research button (top), then Insurance (left) and links are from here).