Buying insurance - Which channel do consumers prefer?
You can perhaps get everything under the sun insured. Your health, home and car for starters, a pet, a loan and even your favorite gadgets. But where do consumers prefer buying their insurance from - online or from a physical retailer?
According to data from a recent YouGov Surveys: Serviced poll, insurance is among products/services consumers are least likely to prefer buying offline. Where less than a third would (31%) prefer this channel, half of those surveyed (51%) say they’d prefer buying insurance online.
Further, men are more likely than women (53% vs. 48%) to prefer buying insurance online than offline, YouGov’s demographic data reveals.
Insurance buying preferences by market
Market-specific data reveals that nearly half of all Italians (47%) prefer buying insurance from a physical establishment, the most likely across markets to say so. Equal proportions of Hong Kongers (44%), French (44%) and Mexicans (44%) would also opt for a physical retailer over an online one.
Brits on the other hand are the least likely to prefer a physical retailer for making insurance purchases (10%). Consumers in Great Britain (where prices of motor and home insurances have reportedly gradually increased in recent years) overwhelmingly prefer purchasing insurance from an online retailer (76%), the most likely across markets to do so. Swedes (67%), Australians (64%) and Danes (62%) follow Brits in their preference for online insurance retailers.
In the US (where “extreme weather events” are drawing attention to the nitty-gritties of insurance), nearly half of all consumers prefer buying insurance online too (48%), so do half of the Indians (48%) polled, Hong Kongers (48%), Germans (48%) and Singaporeans (46%) surveyed.
While Indonesians are split over their preferences (35% prefer physical retailers while 32% prefer online ones), they also see the highest proportion of respondents saying (21%) they don’t purchase insurance - a reflection of the “low penetration rates” in the market flagged in recent times. Mexicans rank second (17%) in holding this view, while Indians (11%) and Americans (10%) follow.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from
nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 505 and 2001 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in July 2024. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
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