If you want your insurance business to be as successful in the future as it is today, then you cannot afford to ignore the Millennial demographic and other digital natives as prospects and customers.
Who are Millennials?
Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 and they currently are the largest generational demographic. While Millennials are getting married later than previous generations, 80% of them own a car and 45% own a house (though 78% plan to buy a house in the next 9 years. (See: Understanding Millennial Insurance Customers.)
According to 2019 data published by Liberty Mutual Insurance and Safeco, these are the top factors for Millennials when making insurance purchase decisions:
- They want to work with an expert advisor who has a good reputation;
- They want to understand their insurance products and get good value, not necessarily the lowest price; and
- They want to make the purchase process easier.
How Millennials want to do business
Millennials want to do business with you on their terms in their preferred channels – and those are usually digital channels, like texting or emailing and (sometimes) by phone.
“I prefer if everything can be done over text or email. Not even a phone call. My agency was calling to set up an in-person meeting to go over my policy changes for the year. They asked me to come to their office for a whole discussion. I had to decline because why would I take time to go to my insurance agent during business hours?” (See: What do Millennials want from their Insurance Agency.)
And this doesn’t just apply to purchasing insurance policies, but to everything they do. How you interact with them, the total customer experience needs to be convenient and seamless. Millennials expect products to be delivered on-demand, and they are increasingly doing business using their mobile devices. They have little patience for paper-based processes, especially when it comes to payments.
More and more, Millennials expect invisible and frictionless payments. Think of the explosion of subscription-based services with easy, automated monthly payments. Think of how easy it is to ride in an Uber compared with a traditional taxi because the payment process has become invisible – there’s no need to settle up with your driver when you arrive at your destination.
“In this fast-paced environment, payments can no longer be an afterthought.
Whether you’re transitioning to an omnichannel model, upgrading your point-of-sale experience, or even eliminating your checkout entirely – letting your customers pay in a seamless and secure way will be critical for your success.” (See Revealing the Invisible: How next-gen payments tech is reinventing the shopping experience.)
Payments technology in the insurance industry is lagging behind the rest of the business world. By making it easier and more convenient for your customers to make insurance premium payments, you can increase your appeal to digital native customers, including Millennials, while also reducing the cost of tracking and collecting payments making you more competitive in the marketplace.
If you’re a Millennial broker yourself, you already know how frustrating it is to work in a business that lags far behind other industries in terms of technology and efficiency. Now you can modernize the systems you’re already using to place policies with your fellow Millennial customers using SimplePin.
Let’s say you’re on the phone with a Millennial customer who has accepted your quote, and you’re looking to bind the policy. You can invoice the customer in real-time from your mobile device, allowing them to pay the initial premium from wherever they are, while you’re talking to them.
Even better, your firm will receive the premium payment without the typical delay - no waiting for a check or PAC form in the mail.
If your brokerage requires you to request the premium by mail, you can still expedite the process by printing a custom QR code on the document, allowing your Millennial customer to simply scan the code and pay it as soon as it’s received.
Want to know more about SimplePin? Call our toll free number: 1 800 727-4136. You can also email us at info@simplepin.com, or contact us through our website at simplepin.com/contact-us or request a demo with one of our product specialists.