Can insurance be an
e-business opportunity?

The online market is booming, as digitalisation enables purchasing practically everything at a click of a button. Total web-based travel sales are set to exceed $694 billion, with e-commerce reaching a value of $3.5 trillion. Inevitably, more and more e-businesses are competing over consumers’ wallets, pushing them to find creative ways to stay ahead of competition and secure new revenue streams.

This reality calls for e-businesses to enhance their appeal by offering a delightful customer journey with a wide range of attractive products. Insurance is a great example of an ancillary product that can generate additional revenue, especially among travellers, who are naturally expecting to buy insurance as well.

Yet, can e-businesses successfully sell insurance without being certified or have expertise in the field?  Can they really build and deliver insurance products that improve the customer experience?

To do so, challenges have to be overcome, particularly closing the gap between today’s predominantly traditional insurance products and millennial preferences for personalised, transparent and hassle-free experiences. This means seamlessly integrating insurance products into the customer journey, abandoning the one-size-fits-all approach and creating a fast and automated service; similar to the way any other online product is purchased by millennials.

Great strides are already being made in these areas with the use of fully automated insurance-as-a-service platforms. Such platforms enable e-businesses to control the creation and distribution of insurance products offered in their customer journey, without having to worry about regulation, underwriting, policy management or even compensation when needed.

Furthermore, by using these platforms, e-businesses can easily test the performance and value of the insurance products they’ve created, making sure their consumers are getting a relevant protection, at the right time and for a real need.

By expanding their offering to include complementary insurance products, e-businesses can:

• Achieve market differentiation that places them ahead of the competition.
• Deliver superior-value insurance options that are likely to see higher uptake, thereby surpassing the relatively low conversion rates of existing ancillary services.
• Gain consumer loyalty by providing a delightful experience with protections that address consumers’ specific needs at critical moments.

This expansion of e-business offerings will enable consumers to purchase products in one place and streamline their shopping journey. It goes a long way to fulfilling the millennial requirement for simplicity and personalisation, creating enriched experiences that reduce customer churn and increase loyalty. And it bolsters the opportunity of tapping into millennial income, which is on track to top $4 trillion worldwide by 2030.

About the Author
Elana Marom is a full stack marketer who believes that marketing is about being present, relevant and adding value, alongside understanding how customers want to buy and helping them to do so. As Director of Marketing at Setoo, she’s leveraging her extensive marketing experience in start-up and enterprise environments to raise awareness about the paradigm shift evolving in the insurance industry and drive business growth.