Two thirds of insurance firms are now looking for new products or services to introduce to their distribution channels in the year, finds an industry sample conducted by the Inter-Company Marketing Group, a business-networking nonprofit organization.
According to the 53 respondents, the most common insurance products are life insurance, cancer or critical illness, annuities, Medicare-related products and property-casualty insurance.
Of the respondents, seven of 10 already offer noncore products and services to their distribution channel from either outside or in-house sources. Insurance firms primarily offer noncore insurance products because of product diversification, cross-selling and agent recruitment.
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Respondents find the independent agent distribution channel as the most promising distribution channel because it is seen as the best for distribution retention, product persistency and product placement ratios. Career agents, who scored highest for brand identity developement, and Internet distribution, which scored highest for return on investment, are the only distribution systems that ranked higher among respondents.
Independent agents, call center/telemarketing, broker-dealers, direct-to-consumer and the Internet are the most widely cited distribution channels presently used. Respondents mostly were made up from ICMG members who are executive, product, marketing, actuarial and distribution decision makers with their insurance firms.
A summary of the survey results is available here.
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