A plea to D2C insurers: Stop boiling frogs. Start using your intelligence.

When I helped develop the brand portfolio strategy for Direct Line Group - a decade ago - I was naively appalled to discover that insurers don’t reward loyalty, but do punish complacency.  

The accepted practice was to raise renewal premiums with disregard for inflation or changes in circumstances. And this wasn’t because price-comparison sites were commoditising the market. Insurers themselves had taken a strategic decision to focus on customer acquisition, not retention. 

Has the model changed? Not in my experience. Last week, I was handed a 50% price hike for home insurance, despite having fitted burglar alarms. 

Naturally, I went back to an online aggregator and switched my supplier.

And ‘supplier’ is the keyword. Direct-to-consumer insurance businesses - I can’t call them brands - provide no service or value add. They are merely a means for me to tick a box. 

It’s different for B2B insurance, where customer intimacy, product expertise and sector insights are used to craft more considered solutions. And it could be different for us consumers. Service providers have access to oodles of data about our lives and lifestyles, likes and likelihoods. Why don’t they use it to generate an offer, not just a price?

Show me that you know me. Treat me like a prince, not a frog.

Written by Alec Rattray

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