Are U.S. insurers catering to the needs of Spanish-speaking clients?
According to a report from Instituto Cervantes, the United States is home to the world’s fourth-largest native Spanish-speaking population.
Nearly 493 million people worldwide speak Spanish as their native language, making it the second-most spoken language after Mandarin Chinese. According to a report from Instituto Cervantes, the United States is home to the world’s fourth-largest native Spanish-speaking population – with the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. being 40 times larger than any other country where Spanish is not an official language.
As the number of Spanish-speaking people immigrating to the U.S. continues to grow, the latest Insurance Scorecard from Keynova shows insurers are beginning to provide much-needed Spanish-language services to their clients.
For the semi-annual scorecard, Keynova evaluated the websites of 12 of the largest insurers in the U.S. market – Allstate, American Family, Erie, Farmers, GEICO, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Progressive, State Farm, The Hartford, Travelers and USAA.
Of these carriers, they found GEICO was the first to provide Spanish content across the bulk of their website, and was the only carrier to translate auto policy quotes to Spanish.
Around 60% of these carriers explicitly listed Spanish-language customer support numbers on their website, but only 25% listed Spanish-language claims assistance lines. Half of the carriers, they found, offer public-site content about insurance products in Spanish.
“Insurance carriers are extending Spanish-language options throughout their online properties to accommodate the increasing number of Spanish-speaking consumers in the market,” Beth Robertson, managing director of Keynova Group said in a release. “In addition, these firms are improving the prospect and policyholder experience by building new tools into digital quoting and policy change processes.”
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The Instituto Cervantes report predicts 27.5% of the U.S. population will be of Hispanic origin by 2060, and that the U.S. will become the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking country.