Part 2: What’s in store for Performance Marketers in the Insurance Industry – Intelligence from the Property & Casualty Segment

The insurance industry continues to evolve as consumer trends, technology and compliance all impact the way that insurance is bought, sold and serviced. To help offer some clarity as to the trends and challenges performance marketers face in the insurance industry, I asked three experts to share their views and intelligence with us.

In this, the second of the three blogs in the series, I will share my conversation with Pat Sullivan, Account Executive at CarpeData, to get his thoughts on what is happening in the property & casualty insurance space.

Please tell the readers a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the insurance world?

“Like many in the insurance world, I backed my way into insurance. After a few years of post-college wandering, I started freelancing for Risk Information, the publisher of Auto Insurance Report and Property Insurance Report newsletters. It just so happens to be run by my parents.A childhood of stuffing copies into envelopes and listening to my dad talk about insurance seems to have rubbed off as quickly I found that insurance was far more interesting then I expected. Over the last 9 years I wrote for both newsletters, covering everything from state markets, demographics, international trade policy, startups, and beyond. I also helped program both newsletters respective conferences. I recently joined CarpeData as an Account Executive. After years of telling people what they should be doing, I decided that I wanted to actually provide solutions. Working with alternative data sets to push the envelope of what insures can understand about the people they insure.”

You have a very interesting perspective on the insurance space. What do you currently see as the top trends challenges facing of the property & casualty insurance industry? How do you see these impacting consumer behavior and insurance marketers?

“One of the exciting things about insurance is that there is always something new on the horizon. When it comes to P&C markets, the biggest issue has to be the rise of the autonomous vehicle. The very existence of a self-driving car means that at some point in the not to distant future auto insurance will no longer exist.For marketers, that means the need to at least begin thinking about looking at property, renters, and other markets as the sun sets on auto insurance. As I’m sure marketers are well aware, shifting demographics have proven to be challenging to incumbent insurers. So, finding ways to engage with millennial customers remains high on their to-do lists. That’s particularly true for those who don’t look like baby boomers with 2.5 kids, 2 cars and a house in the suburbs.To that end, I would say a third trending area marketers need to look at is the emergence of InsurTech. The flow of venture capital into the insurance space has done wonders for increasing the pace of innovation over the past 12 months. New companies are actively working to identify under served markets, something that should keep marketers busy for a long time yet.”

Given these changes, and the data that is being generated, do you think that P&C insurance marketers and their companies are taking advantage of all of the consumer data that is currently available?

“No one is ever taking full advantage of data, as new sources are continually being developed. I would say that the biggest hurdles to data usage for insurers and marketers are the ability to digest new sources and implementation costs. I’ve always felt that “big data” is a misnomer. The strength of a large and diverse data set is the ability to ask very specific questions and find answers. The goal is to be continually experimenting with new sources and new questions.

What is the number one thing that you recommend insurance carriers focus on from a marketing perspective?

“Studying demographics would be my main recommendation. With the changes in the US population, it is key to the future of marketing to expand beyond the boomers as the standard market. I’m sure that’s not a new idea to many reading this, but consider this a vote of support in that area.”

Jaimie Pickles is GM of Insurance at Jornaya.