Consumers don't want to shop around

An overwhelming proportion of consumers would buy all their insurance cover from a single company if they could, according to a survey from Consumer Intelligence.

The survey of 1,751 consumers found that 84% would put all their policies with one company if it was able to offer consistently good prices and good service for all their insurance needs.

Consumers have an average of 2.8 policies each. Only 14% have a single policy, 23% have two policies, 27% have three policies while 35% reported holding more than four.

However, most insurers are failing to capitalise on the consumer appetite to deal with a single company.

Research by Consumer Intelligence’s brand benchmarking team found that call centre agents only mentioned benefits such as multi-product discounts on an average of 1 in 5 new sales calls. One brand mentioned multi-product discounts to more than half of its customers, while several did nothing at all.

Consumer Intelligence CEO Ian Hughes said: “This study shows that consumers don’t want to have to shop around and talk to a number of different brands throughout the year.

“Insurers and brokers can suffer from being segregated into different internal reporting lines for motor, home, pet and travel. Having separate targets and P&Ls often means different customer strategies by product line, whereas starting with a single customer view leads more naturally to a more joined up approach to product and sales.

“The prize for a customer-centric insurer to work collaboratively across several product lines and scoop up a bigger premium from each customer is large.”