Life insurance providers embrace online customer access, finds report
Individual life insurance providers are shifting their approach from producer focused to end-customer focused by introducing more online access capabilities and more frequent customer touch points.
But they still have a long way to go to catch up to providers in other financial services and insurance industries when it comes to overall customer satisfaction.
This is according to a new report by consumer insights provider JD Power. The JD Power 2019 US Life Insurance Study found that the overall satisfaction score for providers of individual life insurance products is 761. These products rank near the bottom when compared with financial services and other insurance products measured by JD Power such as retail banking (807), full-service investor (835) and auto insurance (831).
“For many years, life insurance providers viewed their ‘customer’ as the producers that sell their products,” said Robert Lajdziak, senior consultant of Insurance Intelligence at JD Power.
“More recently, that focus has begun to shift to end-user customers in the form of better and more frequent interactions and the availability of online access to policy information. These are important steps for the industry because customer satisfaction with life insurance products is directly linked to the value customers perceive, and the more that value equation is reinforced through regular, positive interactions, the more customer satisfaction improves.”
The JD Power 2019 US Life Insurance Study is a syndicated benchmarking study profiling the experiences of customers of the largest life insurance and annuity companies in the United States. The study is based on responses from 6,249 individual life insurance customers and 3,586 annuity customers, and was fielded from June to August 2019.
To measure customer satisfaction, critical-to-customer experience factors are examined using an index model. The model identifies the dominant factors that impact customer satisfaction and behaviour and provides a benchmark of excellence for each. The US Life Insurance Study measures overall customer satisfaction based on performance in six factors (in alphabetical order): application and orientation; communications; interaction; price; product offerings; and statements.
Northwestern Mutual ranked highest among individual life insurance providers with a score of 810. State Farm (808) ranks second and Mutual of Omaha (795) ranks third.
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