Banking Review

An exciting Saturday night

Insurance is fascinating; you pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a year in the hope that you never actually use the product you’ve bought. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Like many customers, I shop around each year to ensure that I’m getting value for money. This year the playing field has changed, as has the market. After the multiple insurance events across the country including floods, storms and fires, premiums have risen.

Despite knowing that premiums were going to rise, my home and contents renewal was more than I expected. Indeed it was 40 per cent more than last year. Granted, more inclusions and features are now standard but it was still a shock to the system.

Cynics may argue that adding new standard features, like automatic flood cover, now included with Suncorp and GIO, is a not so subtle way of filtering out the unwanted risks in a portfolio. Others will say it is designed to protect customers from underinsurance.

Why is the renewal price not top of the front page of the premium notice? Do insurers fear the shock of that single figure will send customers into a spin? Will reading through the introductory information, policy coverage and excesses somehow soften the impact of that single figure?

Online insurance quoting is more than just a convenient way for customers to get a premium quote. It is an extension of the brand and customer experience proposition. Only three insurers seemed to have grasped this: AAMI, Budget Direct and the newest entry to the market, Youi.

QBE has a limit on the amount of the home and contents values that can be quoted online. This was not declared before starting the quoting process. The customer, however, must accept a duty of disclosure about the information they provide. Yet there is no disclosure on the company’s part to allow customers to know if they’re wasting their time online and should just call.

It is a sub-standard customer experience to get to the end of a quoting process only to be told that you cannot get an online quote. Not only will customers not get a quote online, chances are they won’t bother calling the call centre either.

Allianz was broken at the second question. The auto-loading suburb feature returned nil result and then crashed my browser. NRMA was straight forward enough but required a lot of scrolling and screen refreshes which impacted usability. It took the longest of any quoting process yet did not have significantly different questions than other incumbent players.

AAMI had great customer experience and offered click-to-call every step of the way. Budget Direct was also able to deliver a quote quickly and efficiently. Youi was personalised, secure and stood out as a unique online customer experience after an hour of working through the same questions over and over on every site.

Good customer experience and sound usability make a lasting impression. Insurers need to deliver on these elements. Their brand and reputation depend on it.