Shopping for Car Insurance Shouldn’t Mean Starting Over Again and Again
By Ethel Rio Cohen, Founder & CEO of Ensurance
If you’ve ever tried to shop for car insurance online, you probably know how quickly it can turn into a project.
You enter your car information, your drivers, your address and your current coverage. Then you move to another website and find yourself entering much of the same information again.
Before long, your phone may start ringing. Emails show up. You’re trying to keep track of who you spoke with, what you submitted and who has your information.
Somehow, we’ve accepted that as a normal way to shop for insurance.
I don’t think it should be.
Most people aren’t shopping for car insurance because they enjoy comparing policies or filling out forms. Usually, something changed.
Maybe your rate went up. Maybe your renewal came in higher than you expected. You may have bought another car, added a driver or simply decided it was time to see whether there was a better price or better coverage available.
That should be a pretty normal thing to want to find out.
The process shouldn’t make it harder than it needs to be.
Why does shopping for insurance require so much starting over?
One of the things that has bothered me about insurance shopping for a long time is how much of the work gets pushed back onto the person looking for help.
You find somewhere to start, enter your information and submit it.
Then you may have to do it all over again somewhere else.
You explain your situation again. You answer more questions. You wait for someone to contact you. Then you try to figure out whether the options you’re receiving even make sense together.
There are plenty of good insurance professionals trying to help people every day. There is also a lot of technology in insurance.
But there is still a gap in the middle.
I wrote about that bigger issue recently in my Insurance Thought Leadership article, Insurance Shopping Has a Missing Layer.
The idea is simple.
There is a space between someone saying, “I want to shop for insurance,” and that person having a clear, organized request that someone can actually work with.
That part of the process deserves more attention.
Filling out more forms doesn’t necessarily give you more choices
When someone is shopping for insurance, there can be a lot happening at once.
Forms. Emails. Calls. Text messages. Different websites.
It can feel like progress because there is so much activity.
But the real question is whether the shopper is actually getting closer to what they came for.
Can I get a better price?
Can I get better coverage?
Is there another option that fits me better?
Those are simple questions.
A person shouldn’t have to create chaos around themselves just to answer them.
Filling out several forms doesn’t automatically mean better choices. A form can collect a lot of information without making the next step any clearer.
And sending someone’s information to more places doesn’t automatically improve the experience.
The process should make sense to the person using it.
You should understand what information you’re providing, why it’s being requested and what is supposed to happen after you submit it.
That seems basic.
In insurance shopping, it hasn’t always been.
We focus a lot on the quote. What happens before the quote matters too.
Price matters.
A lot of people shop for car insurance because they want to see whether they can pay less. When a renewal jumps, the natural question is whether there is a better rate somewhere else.
But price isn’t the only reason someone may want to shop.
Maybe the coverage no longer fits. Maybe the deductible feels too high. Maybe a driver was added to the household. Maybe the cheapest option isn’t actually the best option once you understand what it includes.
The quote is important, but a lot has to happen before a useful quote can exist.
Someone has to understand who needs insurance, what vehicle is being covered, who the drivers are, what coverage is being requested and what other details may matter.
That information needs to be organized in a way that makes sense.
The person reviewing it also needs enough context to know whether they may be able to help.
That middle part may not get much attention, but I think it is one of the biggest opportunities to make insurance shopping better.
What if one request could do more of the work?
This is one of the ideas behind what we are building at Ensurance.
Ensurance is a U.S. insurance-shopping company that helps people shop for better insurance prices and coverage options through one protected request.
A shopper should be able to start once, provide the important information and have that request stay organized as it moves toward available insurance options and licensed review where supported.
The shopper should also have a clearer understanding of what is happening along the way.
That doesn’t mean every request will result in a quote. Insurance availability depends on many things, including where someone lives, eligibility, which insurance companies are available and whether a licensed professional is able to help with that situation.
It also doesn’t mean technology should make insurance decisions for people.
Coverage matters. Eligibility matters. Licensed insurance professionals matter.
Technology should make the process around those things easier to understand and easier to move through.
That is very different from simply creating another form.
Personal information should be handled with more care
Insurance shopping requires people to share quite a bit of personal information.
Your address, your vehicles, the people who drive them, your current insurance and other details may all be part of the process.
People are used to entering this information online because that is how much of insurance shopping works now.
But being used to something doesn’t mean we should stop asking whether it can be done better.
A shopper should have a clearer idea of why information is being collected and what happens to it after it is submitted.
At Ensurance, one reason we focus on a protected request is to help keep the shopper’s information organized while reducing unnecessary repetition and unnecessary exposure as the request moves through the process.
For me, this comes down to something simple.
Asking for help shouldn’t mean giving up control.
A better insurance-shopping experience should actually feel easier
Most people are not thinking about insurance the way people inside the industry think about it.
They are thinking about their own life.
My insurance got more expensive.
Can I find a better rate?
Do I have the right coverage?
What else is available to me?
Can someone help me understand my options?
That is the person I think about when we work on Ensurance.
I don’t want Ensurance to become another place where someone enters information and then wonders what happens next.
I want the starting point to be better.
A person should be able to begin in one place, keep the important information together and move toward available insurance options without feeling like they need to restart every time someone new becomes involved.
Insurance shopping will never look exactly the same for everyone. Different drivers qualify for different coverage. Different insurance companies price risk differently. What is available in one state or for one driver may not be available to another.
That is simply the nature of insurance.
But the process of asking for help can still become clearer and more organized.
And the person shopping can have a better sense of what is happening along the way.
I believe that is worth building.
Because if someone is simply trying to find out whether there is a better insurance option available, the shopping process itself should not become the bigger problem.
Start once. Shop for better insurance options.
If you already have an insurance company in mind, see how major Auto insurance brands are sold, including the difference between direct, independent-agent, and exclusive-agent channels.
For deeper guidance on rates, coverage, switching, and comparison, visit the Ensurance Auto Insurance guide.
Start one protected auto insurance request and look for a better price, better coverage or a better fit through available insurance options where supported.
About Ethel Rio Cohen
Ethel Rio Cohen is the Founder & CEO of Ensurance, a U.S. insurance-shopping company building a clearer, more protected way to shop for insurance. She previously helped build and sell an insurance agency and is the author of The Room I Built.