Erin Esurance: insurance
isn't what it used to be

Auto insurance e-servicing activity climbed 15 percent in the second quarter of 2007, more than twice the rate of growth in total visits to the auto insurer sites included in the analysis, according to a comScore study of online servicing of auto insurance policies, writes MarketingCharts.

E-servicing, which includes bill payment, viewing and changing coverage, adding or removing a driver, adding or removing a car, and changing an address, potentially saves time for the customer and cuts costs for auto insurers.

The study compared the number of visits to five of the top auto insurer sites in 2Q07 versus 2Q06:

• Customers visited the sites included in this analysis 6 percent more often in the second quarter versus the year-earlier period.
• Policy management e-servicing activities propelled much of the growth, with visits climbing 23 percent to the relevant sections of the selected websites.

Of the five insurers included in the study, the direct insurers (those that sell policies primarily over the phone or online) were more effective than the agent insurers (those that sell policies primarily through agents) at driving customers toward e-servicing online.

Among the direct insurer sites, 55 percent of visits to GEICO.com and 37 percent of visits to Progressive.com included e-servicing, whereas at each of the three agent insurers less than one-third of visits included e-servicing.

This finding is consistent, comScore said, with data reported in its 2007 Automobile Insurance Report, which demonstrated that customers who originally purchased their policy directly (over the phone or the internet), as opposed to through an agent, were more than twice as likely to have logged on to their auto insurance company's website to view or manage their policy.