Reprinted with permission from the Auto Insurance Report by Risk Information
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Carriers are dusting off their desktop websites as more motivated shoppers look online for what, exactly, they’re getting for their dollar and whether they can find a better deal elsewhere.
Insurance company desktop websites stagnated for years as developer attention shifted to mobile apps, but that has begun to change as insurers invest in their sites to stay in front of drivers and homeowners.
Carriers made 48% more changes to their websites in the 12 months ending June 2024 compared to the previous year, according to a new analysis of 20 insurance company websites by consulting firm Corporate Insight.
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Carriers made three times the number of updates in 2024 compared to 2021, when the firm tracked 19 websites.
As insurance shopping has increased, carriers have invested in both the public portions of their websites by upgrading quote tools and features that show how to earn discounts and the pages that only policyholders can access behind a login screen, said Justin Suter, research manager for insurance at Corporate Insight.
Suter complimented Travelers for making the most significant and impactful changes to what had previously been a lackluster site.
“Travelers was long overdue for some changes,” he said. “They finally knocked it out of the park with their new customer website. We’re certainly now holding it up as a standard.”
Suter said that not only does the site have a modern design, “it has everything you’d look for in a website now, with the resources and links driving people to self-serve their policy with great educational resources about coverages.”
A recent consumer survey, also from Corporate Insight, shows that the recent investment by carriers in desktop websites is justified: This year, for the first time, the No. 1 reason policyholders visited their carrier’s website was to check their account information and coverages, rather than to make a payment, which was the top motivation in every previous survey.
The rising interest in account information pages suggests two behaviors, Suter said.
One, rising premiums drove consumers to be more curious about their current policies, motivating them to learn exactly what they are paying for and to look for ways to lower costs through higher deductibles or other changes. Two, “this person is shopping, and they need to just look up what their coverages are so they can do a comparison of their old policy to their proposed new policy,” he said.
The survey also showed that for a notoriously “low touch” industry in which policyholders are known to rarely interact with their insurers, once carriers do entice them to use the website or app, they do so regularly, report high customer satisfaction and are more likely to recommend the company to friends and family.
“There’s a clear ROI on digital investment,” Suter said.
The survey, which asked questions to policyholders who already use their carrier’s websites and apps, showed that 81% of users were extremely or somewhat satisfied with both auto and homeowners websites. Mobile users were even more satisfied, with 83% reporting satisfaction with homeowners mobile offerings and 92% reporting satisfaction for auto mobile apps.
In last month’s earnings call with investors, Progressive talked up the evolution of its website and how it pairs with efficient advertising to propel growth. As carriers reopen new business in states after receiving approval for higher rates, they are tweaking their websites to make sure that a poor experience doesn’t spoil the massive advertising investment that is required to attract customers.
Websites matter: today roughly 70% of Progressive’s direct auto sales are fully digital.
“There are over 100 million visits to progressive.com annually,” said Dave Krew, who oversees digital customer acquisition for Progressive. “These lead to tens of millions of quote starts and ultimately, millions of digital sales.”
Differentiating Progressive’s focus from many competitors, Krew said the company does not prioritize the fastest quote but rather providing the “optimal use of the consumer’s time.”
“An instant or quick quote generally implies assumptions in downstream rework,” he said during the earnings call. “Not to say we don’t experiment … but the science needs to include rate accuracy in a total end-to-end look at the customer experience from quote to purchase to onboarding.”
Progressive launched its first website in 1995, offered its first comparative rates online in 1996, and sold its first fully digital auto policy in 1997, according to Krew. Today roughly 70% of its direct auto sales are fully digital, according to the presentation.
Allstate highlighted the importance of improving the customer experience across all channels to retain more business as the company reported a rapid increase in new business but a slight decrease in total policies in force in the second quarter.
“We have a goal of growing 20 million customer interactions on an annual basis by next year, and we’re well along the goal on that,” Allstate CEO Tom Wilson told analysts in the earnings call. “We’ve got new tech tools out there, new products, all of which are designed around improving retention and growth.”
Progressive nearly doubled the pace of its desktop website updates over the past year, with 58 improvements overall, up from the 33 observed by Corporate Insight in 2023. Of those changes, the majority – 42 – were made to the public site, while 16 changes targeted the policyholder site. Of the top 10, only USAA and Nationwide made more changes to their website. USAA made the most changes overall, returning to the No. 1 spot after a brief spell in second place in 2023. Allstate ranked fifth in the number of changes noted in Corporate Insight’s report.
Overall, carriers made more “high significance” changes this year compared to last, and three times as many as in 2021. Most of these changes over the last year were to site design and navigation features.
Progressive prioritized changes to products and services features. Across the top 10 carriers, this category received the most updates, but 85% of the changes were considered “low significance.”
Suter said carrier websites still have two main areas of weakness: security and the ability to explain policy details. Insurance policies themselves are notoriously opaque documents, and carriers for years have experimented with cover letters or other ways of condensing the information without oversimplifying complicated legal contracts.
Websites should offer new creative opportunities to solve the problem, he said.
“It’s just so important to find ways to visually represent a user’s policy online,” Suter said. “That is such a critical aspect of the relationship. And that is such a gap right now in terms of how many people really understand their policy, and it really hurts insurers down the line when people don’t understand their policy the right way.
He said carriers have noticed this gap and are spending more time and money to bridge it.
“We observed that this year,” he said. “The survey data says that it is working, but I think that there’s a lot of room for improvement, and room to get creative – and dare I say innovative – while still making sure that it’s easily understood.”
As for security, few carriers currently require two-factor authentication to log-in. USAA, which also provides banking, already requires two-factor authentication. Geico makes it optional, Amica told policyholders that it will be required by the end of the year, Suter said.
“Insurers … don’t want more barriers to log in,” he said. “But it’s something they’re going to have to do.”
Reprinted with permission from the Auto Insurance Report by Risk Information
Justin Suter is the director of thought leadership at Corporate Insight.