Insurance P&C Lead Industry Poised for Growth

It’s no secret that the property/casualty insurance industry has struggled successfully against the economic woes of the past two years. In the P&C sector (which dominates insurance lead generation), premium income was negative between 2007 and 2010, although 2010 was a positive income year for non-commercial lines (Ernst & Young, January 2011).

This is important, notes Leads360, because the major focus for lead generation, especially auto insurance, resides with personal lines P&C.

Leads360, a lead management provider that boasts maintenance of more than 40 million leads per year across a variety of vertical markets, made its comments in a report due out March 4, 2011 that draws insights from a larger study that that measured the performance of 17 million online leads to spotlight trend-setters in 2010 and identified projections for 2011 in buying trends, demand and prices. In the report, Leads360 analyzed many aspects of lead management and conversion across four key vertical market segments: mortgage, insurance, education and debt settlement.

The report quotes a 2010 Comscore study that holds that for the P&C sector, despite the decline in industry revenues as a whole, the volume of quotes sought online has exploded over the past couple of years. This is not completely at odds with declining incomes, notes the report, since the major driver for declining incomes in the past couple of years has been falling premiums due to aggressive competition among insurance carriers.

The perfect storm of increasing quote volume and competition is actually good news for the insurance lead generation industry, notes Leads360.

Insurers are competing harder for consumers who are increasingly looking towards the Internet as the place to determine where the best deals in insurance lie, which compels forward-thinking insurers to pay extra attention to online lead generation and purchasing.

According to a 2010 Comscore survey of insurance buyers, of respondents who had never sought auto insurance online, only 39% thought that they would not do so in the future. This is validation of a trend that most of us probably already perceive, notes the report. The insurance lead industry seems poised for exceptional growth.

The report noted another significant trend within the insurance lead industry: the consolidations headlined by the purchases of the largest lead provider, NetQuote, by Bankrate as well as InsuranceCards.com by All Web Leads Inc., notes the report. Bankrate now owns two of the three largest insurance lead providers; NetQuote and InsureMe and the second largest provider, All Web Leads has grown through acquisition. In the insurance lead industry most leads pass through a wholesale process creating a clearer demarcation between lead generation and lead aggregation than in many other lead verticals. Although the impact of the Bankrate and All Web Leads acquisitions are yet to be felt fully, some economists would argue that when an industry’s retail sector becomes highly consolidated, prices tend to increase for the end-buyer. “We shall see if lead prices increase or if consolidation signals an emphasis on volume and market share in the short term,” notes the report.

The study will be available to the public on March 4. To preregister to download the report, click here.