Friday, June 20, 2008

Aging and Your Insurance Agency

"As the estimated 80 million people nationwide born between 1981 and 20001 enter the work force and become active consumers, technology will play a critical role for insurance firms recruiting those in the so-called “millennial generation” as potential employees and customers...

...techonology appears to be a recruitment driver for the insurance industry, which faces a shortage of new workers; 60 percent of its current employees are older than age 45. In fact, 91 percent of millennials stated that being able to work with "newer, innovative technologies" in the workplace would make them more likely to consider a potential job opportunity.

While the insurance industry faces a challange recruiting millennials to replace retirees, a bigger issue might be recruiting them as customers."
Survey Results reported by Insurity and Microsoft Corp. at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum 2008, May 13, 2008.

2 comments:

Kevin McDonald said...

Is this a chicken or the egg puzzler? Is the independent agency system's waning appeal to potential Generation Y customers a result of our inability to attract the same group as potential employees? What do you think?

The Microsoft/Insurity survey seems to suggest that one avenue for attracting both younger customers and younger employees is to use technology the Millennials expect to use.

Has your agency given any thought to this issue, and would you mind sharing those thoughts?

Kevin McDonald said...

"You should be scared" - Plaxo founder Todd Masonis, addressing the 2007 Insurance and Technology Executive Summit.

Insurance companies have an age issue that is inextricably intertwined with how they view and use technology.

I was meeting with some insurance company people, in their office, recently and suggested they take a look at a YouTube video embedded in a article on the Insurance and Technology website. We couldn't do it because the company blocks YouTube from their network.

Following is the Insurance and Technology page with the video embed. How nefarious is a short video illustrating before and after the flood effects? Nothing wrong with interjecting a little emotional feel to the topic of business continuity planning...or is there? http://www.insurancetech.com/blog/archives/what_were_doing/index.html;jsessionid=E2BO01PPCAQ4WQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN

If I were a company marketing rep, I might suggest to some of my agents that they grab the free and open embed code, and add this video to their website when addressing BCP. Of course, I, as a company rep, would have to actually see the video first. That may not be able to happen at work. Sheesh