Shocking results in J.D. Power’s 2015 U.S.Tech Choice Study released today – consumers want crash avoidance technology and are willing to pay for it! We discovered a similar view in our recent Celent report Targeting Innovation: How Your Customers Might Respond. The data pointed to the fact that consumers want to see innovation in service before sales. Consumers are saying: "Help me, before you try and sell me." So, why do many insurers continue to show a preference to innovate in the online quoting and the traditional product areas before service or risk avoidance? To be fair, customer experience is attracting much attention and investment. Also, some insurance providers are influencing the way their insureds drive, either directly (Ingenie) or indirectly through pricing (Progressive). But many of the efforts are not in line with the consumers’ wish that we hear over and over: “I don’t want to experience a loss and it would be very valuable to find a provider that would keep me (and mine) safe. For example, insurers know which roads are risky and which aren’t just from the frequency of their claim data. What if they provided this information to their customers to alert them to the dangerous routes? There is space here for leaders to innovate in loss avoidance, both in the commercial as well as the personal lines of business. The reputation for “the innovative insurer that helps its customers avoid loss” is still up for grabs.