The consumers spoke and the insurance industry heard them. And now industry executives are having nightmares featuring policy-stealing behemoths like Google and Amazon.
This is what LIMRA discovered when it asked 50 insurance industry financial executives about trends they are following that could transform their businesses. Short-term, those interviewed were bullish about business prospects. When asked to look further down the road, they expressed a fair degree of concern.
The LIMRA study echoes an earlier survey from Strategy&, which asked consumers whether they would consider purchasing insurance over the internet from a non-insurance source such as Amazon and Google. More than one in five said they would.
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Those who participated in the recent survey had apparently heard about the results of the earlier research. When asked if they foresaw a major disruptive force affecting the industry within the next five years, 57 percent cited consumers purchasing policies via a source such as Google or Amazon. LIMRA noted that currently no such outside source of policy sales exists.
This high-level, longer-term concern cast a bit of a pall over the other survey findings, most of which were pegged to what the respondents expect to happen in 2015. Highlights included:
Greatest 2015 challenges:
- 37 percent: Reaching underserved markets
- 35 percent: low interest rates
- 90 percent: the overall industry will be as good, or better, than in 2014
- 24 percent: 2015 business will be better than 2014
- 71 percent: 2015 will be equal to 2014 but not better
- 94 percent: My business will be as good, or better, than 2014
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
