Insurance trends for the online insurance industry will be changing rapidly over the next quarter. As it stands, the insurance industry still functions with an antiquated pen and paper backup system. Many insurance providers still rely on lengthy physical forms and paper duplicates to store client records. Additionally, insurance providers rely heavily on an outdated direct mail system of advertising to snare prospective clients. Both of these habits are slowly dying as insurance moves online.

We have all seen insurance trends that indicate increased online presence. We have seen marked progress in both the viability and reliability of online forms. Consumers who once needed a physical copy of insurance information are now comfortable with electronic forms as a means for doing business. This is a fundamental change in the mentality of the consumer. While paper backup is still necessary in some cases, the vast majority of consumers are happy with this trend. This means that insurance providers can dramatically scale back costs by discontinuing all or most of their physical billing or record keeping apparatus. To put it simply, customers raised in the world of online transactions feel less of a need for pen and paper. It is becoming a digital world. Modern companies must embrace that fact or be left behind.

This same principal applies to advertising for online insurance. Previous marketing campaigns focused on direct mail or even direct business to business marketing. Those practices are now commonly viewed as antiquated. It is standard practice for a modern consumer to view multiple insurance quotes online. It is also common for a customer who has become aware of an offer through other means to seek a better one online. Because of this, the most effective campaigns are the ones that eliminate the cost of mailing and offline marketing altogether. Such companies find themselves with increased capital to devote to online marketing resources. With the advent of third party websites which rate and compare insurance providers, it might not even be necessary to generate a bulletproof online presence. It might, instead, be more efficient to divert advertising capital towards lowering consumer costs. Providers might simply provide low quotes to indexing services and rely on them to advertise. The average consumer will seek the lowest end cost and highest coverage value when looking online. This is especially true in the political era of mandated insurance.

Modern insurance trends for online insurance have one watchword: Bottom-line. It is now becoming viable for an insurance company to slash or remove paper copy and off-line advertising. While such practices might have seemed to be heresy only one year ago, consumer mentality has changed. To survive, insurance will have to cut costs.