I’ve not met anyone who loves their insurance. I’ve met plenty of people who complain about insurance pricing, claims, hassles, billing, coverages, self-centeredness, and arrogance. Consumers love businesses that love them back and insurance just doesn’t do that. I think it’s because there’s no competition.
There’s plenty of competition between insurance companies, but there’s no competition to insurance. Having some might influence how they do what they do for us. And the best competition I can think of is something that reduces the need for buying insurance in the first place. If consumers diverted 30% of their insurance budget to loss prevention and that lead to a reduction in insurance purchases by 50%, that’d be a win for consumers and a loss for the insurance industry, wouldn’t it?
We’re fortunate in 2022 that there are interested people with technology and data and products and services who see the opportunities of giving people a chance at winning like that. There really are ways of influencing your own exposure to loss and I think it’s realistic to hope for a small revolution to the paradigm that insurance is the only game in town. The appreciation for how much control we have over our own exposure to loss is growing with these steady advancements in what’s available to help.
There’s nobility in the lifeguard who pulls a victim from the ocean, but there’s more value in the lifeguard who stops someone from entering in the first place. Placing that kind of knowledge and prediction into the hands of the consumer will be the key. The possibility that we individually get to address the lack of competition to insurance exists like never before.
Darren McGraw & Mechelsen Private Client 