Celent has released a new report titled Simplifying Advised Protection: Adopting Digital Techniques to Accelerate Sales. The report was written by Jamie Macgregor, Senior Vice President of Celent's Insurance practice.
In March 2015, Openwork (a UK network of advisors) chose to implement a new digital solution designed to support the sale of protection products alongside mortgages. By mid-2016, Openwork experienced:
- An increase in new business client conversion rates by circa 8 percent, from 27.5% to 35.5%.
- An increase in income protection sales of circa 104%.
- An improvement in straight-through processing between the adviser and insurer by 30%.
- A reduction in time spent on modeling and quoting of 45%.
As has been seen in retail personal lines (within non-life insurance), comparative quoting and modeling techniques have been in existence by consumers for over 15 years, and have often been seen as the catalyst for rapid adoption of digital sales and servicing. However, within life markets, we are yet to see mass adoption of direct sales for what is still a relatively complex product with low levels of everyday engagement (albeit for a critically important product for those with dependents). Solutions such as Openwork’s go some of the way to removing some of these blockages in an advised world and pave the way to greater success in conversion.
“Openwork have started to apply many of the digital practices and techniques that we take for granted as consumers when shopping online for vacations, for products and services on platforms such as Amazon, and for financial services and utilities using comparison websites,” says Macgregor. “The only real difference here is that Openwork have created their solution for a specialist audience of advisors.”
