It’s a small incentive, but an online comparison site is betting it’s enough to lure away your auto insurance customers.
ShopInsuranceCanada.ca is the latest rate comparison website using a small but popular incentive to attract consumers on the hunt for lower auto insurance premiums.
The lure is 150 Air Miles for any rate shopper who uses the company's online quoting tool to troll for rates in Ontario. Once a user is presented with a quote, he or she will be asked to enter relevant information to redeem the reward – after, that is, an email verification process.
Brokers may think that’s too trifling an amount to encourage clients to defect. ShopInsuranceCanada doesn’t, pegging those 150 Miles at between $15 and $22.5.
Independent brokers are themselves heeding the call of online comparison sites and listing their wares as a way of going where consumers increasingly are. It’s also seen as a way to better compete against the growing number of consumer-direct carriers successfully capturing renewals online.
Still, the number of policies that comparison sites actually issue is miniscule, points out Brian S. Cohen, operating partner at Altamont Capital Partners.
“What’s happening is that individuals are visiting these sites to get a sense of a reasonable price, but they still want to go to a professional to figure out what’s best for them,” he told IBC earlier this year.
This is even true for millennials—those born after 1980—who are often characterized as a tech-savvy, and tech-exclusive, generation. While approximately one-third do purchase their auto policies online, another one-third use an agent, an Applied Systems survey suggests.
