- Life insurance is fundamentally hard to sell; it's morbid to think about, promises no immediate rewards, and often requires a lengthy paper application with minimal guidance.
- Despite the popularity of personalized products in other areas of finance and fintech, life insurance largely remains unchanged.
- A small, but growing pocket of insurtech startups are shaking up the status quo by finding ways to digitize life insurance and increase its appeal.
Life insurance is a fundamentally difficult product to sell; it requires people to think about their deaths without promising any immediate returns.
And, despite tech innovations and the development of personalized services in other areas of finance, life insurance remains largely unchanged.
Luckily, there is a small but growing pocket of insurtech startups looking to modernize it. These companies are finding ways to digitize life insurance to appeal to consumers - and they're giving incumbents the opportunity to revamp traditional offerings, either by partnering with them or using their technology.
Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has forecasted the shifting landscape of life insurance in the The Future of Life Insurance report. Here are the key problems insurtechs are tackling:
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The need for modernization in life insurance is clear: Overall sales are slowing and policy ownership is hitting record lows. And because it's such a tightly-regulated space, innovation from incumbents has stagnated - but they're not helpless. Consumer-focused and insurer-focused startups have emerged to offer new technologies and process improvements.
The Future of Life Insurance report from Business Insider Intelligence looks at the two main strategies life insurtechs are adopting to drive change in this market, for the benefit of both buyers and sellers. In full, the report discusses best practices incumbents and startups should adopt to steer clear of the risks attached to applying emerging technologies to such a tightly regulated product.
Insurtech startups will soon set new industry standards and consumer expectations around this complex product. That, in turn will serve as a catalyst for innovation among legacy players.
Companies included in this report: Ladder, Haven Life, Getsurance, Tomorrow, Fabric, Atidot, AllLife, Royal London, Polly, Life.io, Legal & General, Vitality, Discovery, John Hancock, Dai-ichi Life.