Trying to prevent the “seepage” of online insurance business to direct writers, brokers in Alberta are adopting an online marketing solution now in place in Ontario, called myinsuranceshopper.ca.
“We needed to address the seepage in market share,” Insurance Brokers Association of Alberta (IBAA) Scott Treasure said of the new online quoting solution for Alberta’s brokers. “This is about the perpetuation of the industry, and it speaks to brokers who are younger.”
Ontario brokers first implemented myinsuranceshopper.ca in April 2008. The website is intended to provide consumers with an easy way to locate a broker and obtain an online quote from the broker of their choice. Visitors to the website can enter a city, a postal code, an insurer’s name, or a type of insurance, and the site will generate a list of brokers that consumers can contact based on the categories or keywords they have entered.
Ontario brokers have shopped the solution around to other brokers associations across the country for the past four years. So far, broker associations in Quebec, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick are adopting the technology for use in their areas. The IBAA expects to launch the site in mid-March 2013.
Historically, Alberta’s adoption of myinsuranceshopper.ca has taken a number of twists and turns. The IBAA established a project in 2009 to develop a made-in-Alberta online quoting solution, but the project was abandoned in 2011 with no new technology in place.
“It is clear that, whether or not it is the IBAO [myinsuranceshopper.ca] product or our own product, the holdback is funding,” IBAA’s president at the time, Mardene Watson, said at the association's annual general meeting in May 2011.
But the price is right now, said Treasure, noting that the cost to implement IBAO’s myinsuranceshopper.ca has come down since 2008. The solution offers four basic web pages that individual brokerages can use to customize their information and spell out their value proposition.
The IBAA has committed to spending $150,000 each year over the next three years to promote the myinsuranceshopper.ca. In addition, brokers are “very close to getting full matching funds” from insurers, Treasure said. Brokers are encouraging insurers to use the solution as a means to steer customers to the broker channel, he said.
One main selling feature is that the solution generates web traffic to broker sites, thereby increasing the presence of brokers on Google’s search engine. Brokers were concerned that online searches for insurance were not turning up any brokers unless the consumer drilled down several pages into Google’s search results.
With myinsuranceshopper.ca, brokers are now starting to appear higher in the list of Google search results. As more brokers adopt the solution, it is hoped that brokers will finally land on that illustrious first page of Google results.
