Target Your Ideal Insurance Shoppers with Competitive Rate Intelligence

Want to attract more of your desired profile of insurance shoppers, especially those most likely to stick around? Start by understanding your competition and what consumers need. By harnessing competitive rate data at both the market and prospect levels, carriers can refine their targeting methods and make more informed acquisition decisions.

Fortunately, for the first time in 24 months, premiums are higher than losses and expenses.¹ With combined ratios edging below 100%, profitability finally flickers on the horizon. Insurance marketing spending has already surged by 50% in 2024²—a sharp rebound from the declines seen throughout 2023. These signs indicate that the market is ripe for proactive strategies to capture new business.

At the same time, consumer behavior is changing in ways insurers can't ignore.

Consumers are shopping for insurance and switching providers in record numbers (see Auto Shopping and Policy Trends chart below).³ This trend isn’t limited to new customers; even tenured policyholders are exploring their options. Consequently, you have a decisive window to regain market share and attract these new shoppers.

Source: LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Internal Shopping and New Policy Data, 2024

The pivotal step is to combine competitive rate intelligence with lead propensity models. Together these tools can help you target the right audience at the right time to drive better policy conversion, lower acquisition costs and improve overall marketing efficiency.

Power up your competitive rate intelligence

With competitive rate intelligence, it’s easier to know how your offerings stack up against competitors in real-time. LexisNexis® InsurQuote Direct enables carriers to consider geographic, demographic and rate-level data to uncover market gaps that are driving consumer shopping behavior. Incorporating competitive rating data not only supports targeted marketing campaigns but also informs strategic decisions regarding advertising placement toward the markets in which you have the most opportunity.

Being able to identify customers most likely to convert gives you an advantage in the market and ultimately improves profitability.

Conversion propensity models take competitive rate intelligence a step further. By understanding how prices compare for each customer, you can predict who’s most likely to buy and direct your time and money to those prospects.

LexisNexis® Prospect Qualifier offers prospect level competitive intelligence at the point of marketing, lead purchase and lead qualification. It is a dynamic carrier-specific model that considers carrier rate, competitor rate and prospect changes in real-time. Prospect Qualifier   buckets prospects into four quartiles based on competitiveness. Quartile 1 represents prospects who are most likely to convert or are most competitive versus Quartile 4; namely, those least likely to convert or who are less competitive (see Prospect Qualifier Landscape below).

Analyzing the significant and dynamic market rate activity during the first part of 2024, we observed fluid instances of prospects moving from one competitive bucket to another, presenting opportunities for carriers to attract new customers. The examples below show that conversion rates significantly differentiate the quartiles despite the distributions' fluidity. Quartile 1 is consistently around two-three times more likely to convert than Quartile 4

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The combination of both market-level and consumer prospect-level strategies allows carriers to craft personalized messages that resonate with potential customers. For example, if a carrier identifies that a specific demographic is particularly sensitive to price changes, they can tailor their marketing messaging mix accordingly, with value communications that will resonate with that demographic’s needs.

Driving toward greater ROI

The combined power of competitive rate intelligence and conversion propensity modeling can help insurers to:

1. Refine targeting: Identify and reach the right customers at the right time.
2. Optimize costs: Spend marketing budgets wisely and more effectively.
3. Segment strategically: Tailor marketing campaigns to match the needs and wishes of your shoppers.
4. Uncover conversion potential: Focus and capitalize on consumers who fit you best in a crowded marketplace.

While we can't control the road, we can steer the wheel. The horizon is full of opportunities to adapt your strategies and move forward. Insurers can thrive in a changing market by combining big-picture strategies, like analyzing market trends, with detailed customer data to predict conversions.

Competitive rate intelligence and predictive modeling pave the way for better short and long-term results.

Ready to sharpen your strategic focus? The winds of change are sweeping through the insurance industry, and carriers who take actionable steps to understand their competition and customers will position themselves to lead the market.

Learn more about how you can effectively use our competitive intelligence solutions, LexisNexis® Prospect Qualifier and LexisNexis® InsurQuote Direct. to optimize performance of your customer acquisition efforts

1. "Personal Auto Driving P/C Insurers to 2024 Underwriting Profit," Carrier Management July 23, 2024
2. Vivvix media platform, https://www. vivvix .com . Accessed June 2024 and Pathmatics Explorer platform, https://www.pathmatics.com/ . Accessed June 2024
3. Source: LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Internal Study, 2024.