A leading research company has slammed insurers for ignoring the needs of their customers when developing products.
Gartner Financial Services insurance research director Kimberly Harris-Ferrante criticised insurance companies for not knowing what their customers wanted.
"They want to be the first in the market with a product but don't have any feeling for the customer to know if it is the right product," she told delegates at a Unisys insurance partners conference in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.
Harris-Ferrante said insurers should use brokers' knowledge of the market to better understand their existing customer base.
"Insurers should ask the advice of brokers more, as brokers are at the cutting edge of the market, listening to, and advising, customers all the time," she said. "Insurers should also look at which brokers they have relationships with: are they the right type of broker and broad enough to understand the market insurers are in?"
Harris-Ferrante said insurers needed to ask what their existing customers - as well as those who were not customers - wanted.
She added that insurance companies should undertake risk metrics on the products they covered to see if they supplied a proper solution.
