Using the economy as an excuse to hold off on investing in a direct channel for marketing insurance products could be costly to carriers–both in the long and short term. The slumping economy is dumping additional financial pressure on consumers, and so they are looking for the best premium, a survey conducted by Accenture in April discovered.

“The first thing that was striking to me [in the survey] is a significant majority of the people we surveyed were actively shopping for a new company to be able to replace their existing product,” says Michael Costonis, Accenture's executive director for the North American insurance industry.

“The second thing was the fact it's really all about cost–46 percent of the people looking to make a change were doing it because they wanted to decrease their level of premium,” he adds. “The fact the Internet is a good search medium and also the ability of the advertising to create awareness around cost make the direct channel the place to go to do that.”

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