Life, annuity providers becoming more customer-centric, less producer-focused, J.D. Power finds
November 13, 2019 by Insurance Forums Staff
Individual life insurance and annuity providers have begun the process of shifting their approach from producer-focused to end-customer-focused by introducing more online access capabilities and more frequent customer touch points, according to the recently released J.D. Power 2019 U.S. Life Insurance Study.
But they still have a long way to go to catch up to providers in other financial services and insurance industries in which J.D. Power conducts studies when it comes to overall customer satisfaction. Overall customer satisfaction with individual life insurance and annuity providers still lags far behind that of most other financial and insurance providers, the study found.
“For many years, life insurance and annuity providers viewed their ‘customer’ as the producers that sell their products,” said Robert M. Lajdziak, Senior Consultant of Insurance Intelligence at J.D. Power. “More recently, that focus has begun to shift to end-user customers in the form of better and more frequent interactions and the availability of online access to policy information. These are important steps for the industry because customer satisfaction with life insurance and annuity products is directly linked to the value customers perceive, and the more that value equation is reinforced through regular, positive interactions, the more customer satisfaction improves.”
The 2019 study finds that the overall satisfaction score for providers of annuity products is 776 (on a 1,000-point scale) and the average score for providers of individual life insurance products is 761. These products rank near the bottom when compared with financial services and other insurance products measured by J.D. Power such as retail banking (807), full-service investor (835) and auto insurance (831).
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