Emerged patterns

In the current COVID-19 environment, it's even more important to understand where consumers are in their buying journey. The following patterns have emerged from our data:

Increased overall shopping activity: In the price comparison shopping ecosystem, we witnessed a meaningful increase in insurance shopping activity beginning mid-March. The trend persisted through May for all lines but life insurance. While auto insurance shopping activity ended the month of May slightly lower than early March, activity in May was 41% higher than May 2019. For homeowners insurance, not only was shopping activity well above normal, but we witnessed more homeowners insurance shoppers as a percent of total auto/homeowners shoppers (approximately 12%) than usual (7%). Therefore, we believe there were more preferred and standard risks seeking insurance from price comparison shopping websites than ever before.
Drivers of increased shopping: From March through May, most individual carriers reduced their advertising spend and, consequently, saw an overall decrease in prospective customers on their brand websites and call center activity. In the industry, there was significant excess capacity and overall sales softened. Many carriers and individual local agents — who, like consumers, were stuck at home — shifted unspent advertising dollars to the price comparison website operators to buy leads and calls. This phenomenon, combined with increased demand from consumers seeking ways to reduce household expenditures, fueled the performance marketing ecosystem to attract many more consumers than usual to their price comparison shopping websites. Other undercurrents causing increased shopping activity included: two interest rate drops in March (more mortgage refinancing led to more homeowners insurance shopping), massive layoffs and stay-at-home orders (more financially sensitive consumers at home with ample time to seek ways to save money) and auto insurance premium rebates (awakening some consumers to find out if they paying too much).
A lasting impact: Carriers and agents we speak with predict there will be a continued reliance on performance marketers for high quality leads and calls for at least the remainder of 2020. That, combined with more consumers seeking choice, means we are likely to see sustained growth in activity on comparison shopping websites.

How carriers are adapting

Identifying these shifts in consumer preference and behavior can save carriers and agents significant time and resources in the COVID-19 landscape as they adapt to being even more thoughtful in their outreach to both prospective and existing customers. Behavioral data — such as time spent on websites, frequency of visits, and which web pages were visited — delivers these valuable insights.

Special Reports /

How to identify and react to new insurance shopping behaviors

Related Stories

Recommended For You