To the extent that you open that up, you lose margin. The insurance industry has failed in selling insurance online for a variety of reasons, but most of them have nothing to do with technology. People don t like dealing with financial entities that are clearly adversarial and clearly out to take as much of the customer s money as possible. In most cases, people buy insurance because they have to , not because they want to. If that happens, consumers themselves will drive traffic to insurers and agents Web sites, and that may enable this industry to at last realize the promise of the Internet channel.
Insurers have a long way to go on that journey, though.
This is not a matter of faster hardware, cooler software, or lip service to the concept of customer relationship management. Nor is it a matter of more warm and fuzzy advertising slogans that are oddly dissonant with an insurer s standard operating procedures. Instead, it means a fundamental change in the way insurers view themselves and their customers. Companies that complete this journey will be those that have the courage to change their business model to one that is customer-friendly and value driven. They will be the inheritors of the fruits of the Internet technology channel in insurance.