Repeating the truism that Australia has a chronic underinsurance issue is like a teenage boy saying he has a chronic lack of female company: that might be the outcome but it isn’t necessarily the problem.
Speaking at a recent Financial Services Council (FSC) life insurance conference in Sydney, futurist Tim Longhurst told delegates that the industry needs to take a close look at the way it operates.
“For the teenage guy, it might be the way he is presenting himself or the way he’s telling his stories. So focusing on the girls as if they just don’t understand is probably not going to serve him very well,” he said.
Abundance over scarcity
Longhurst argued that the modern consumer is increasingly looking through the “prism of technology” and seeing a world of abundance where once there was scarcity.
“On any given day we are consumers, entrepreneurs, investors and activists. The wisdom is in the group,” he said.
“Doctors are telling me that people are asking fewer and fewer questions about their health than they did 10 years ago. They think they are going to get better answers from the web than from their doctors.
“We now believe that high-tech is often better than high-touch: even when dealing with the medical profession, we’re backing our own ability to search and dissect the web for useful information about our health.”
In a world where consumers increasingly feel informed and supported at all times, Longhurst believes the life insurance industry is ripe for reinvention.
“Sometimes the life insurance industry focuses on old-school selling techniques like guilt or shame,” he said. “But I think that’s an odd way of doing things.”
Empowered and powerful consumers require a new approach and, as Longhurst puts it, million-dollar ideas no longer require million-dollar budgets.
“The opportunity for us is to ask how we are involving our customers in conversations about our product development? Are we bringing them in straight away before the product is even made and inviting them to buy in? Or are we waiting until it’s on the shelf and adopting a suck-it-and-see approach?”
An important question and a shrewd analogy.
Just as for the boy with the chronic lack of female company the girls are there, so to for consumers the risk products are available.
The issue, in both cases, is bringing them together. Because, further torturing the analogy, the insurers want to connect with the consumers just as much as the girls want to connect with the boys. As for both, the solution is communication and understanding.
As a risk adviser I am very interested in bringing insurance and consumers togethers.
As a father of two tween girls I am researching firearms.