Demographics and the Emergence of Robo-surance

 Ever since I entered the financial services business back in the 80’s, the Baby Boomer demographic has been the overwhelming driver of consumer behavior and how companies marketed their products and services. While it remains true that the majority of investable assets remain with the Boomer generation due to a lifetime of accumulation, what seems to be changing is their influence on purchasing behavior and decision making.  Why? After multiple decades of demographic dominance, it is estimated that as of last year, there were about 75.4 million Millennials, outnumbering the approximately 74.9 million Baby Boomers. The Boomer has been overtaken in sheer size for the first time in over six decades. Pew Research Article  

So far, 20% of Baby Boomers have retired. By 2020, it is estimated that 44% of boomers will have retired. While the Boomer is definitely where the assets are currently, guess who is going to inherit all that money in the coming decades? You guessed it…Millennials. And just as the size of the Boomer generation impacted how we marketed to them, Millennials are today shaping the business models for the future. To be successful for this segment, it comes down to one key word: Digitization. That’s why we’ve seen an explosion in FinTech investment for the financial services industry. It seems everything is going digital whether it’s going direct to the consumer over the web or enabling intermediaries to be more efficient and tech forward in marketing to the shifting demographic. As noted below where you can see the huge growth in FinTech, the clear laggard is in the insurance industry known as “InsureTech”. But that is changing. In this article titled  "The Insurance Tech Moment is Coming" , it states, “Insurance is the next FinTech” growing faster in the past couple years than FinTech itself, which includes the “Robo Advisor”. It appears that InsureTech lags the FinTech investment by about 2 years…but it's catching up.

Combine this phenomenon of industry digitization with all all the other drivers of change such as regulations (DoL today and likely the SEC soon), Advisor/Agent demographics on the decline and the demand for financial services products and advice on the increase, and you’ve got an atmosphere ripe for disruption. But not the kind of disruption where the robo will replace the advisor. As we in the business know, people do not make impulse purchases on complex products and services or as we often say, they're sold and not bought. That’s why we’ve seen multiple slick robo offerings struggle with gaining traction only to be bought out by well capitalized human advisor firms. But there will be some direct models that can replace the advisor/agent. Financial services and insurance products that are more straight forward and simple such as simple asset allocation, home/auto insurance, term insurance and health insurance will be easier to buy online in the future through B2C direct models. However, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Permanent Life Insurance and Annuities are more likely to be digitized through a financial professional rather than around them due to the complexities.

Not surprisingly, the majority of FinTech investments early on went towards B2C direct models trying to disrupt the space. Now that we’ve seen a couple of them crash and burn, we’re seeing a reorientation towards using technology to enable rather than replace the advisor. In InsureTech, we’re likely going to see the same. The majority of InsureTech investment is currently going towards B2C models but following the FinTech trend, I think within a couple years just as we’ve seen the robo-advisor shift, we’ll see the same with robo-surance. (Note: Insurance is so tech backward, there isn't even a "robo-advisor" like-kind term, so I made up "robo-surance")

Another emerging trend in insurance is the need to find alternative forms of distribution. With the average agent age at 60 and regulations causing manufacturers to drop their proprietary distribution models (as Met did recently), insurance carriers and BGA's have to find a way to open up sales to grow or else they’ll die a slow death. Coincidentally, the RIA and Independent B/D's are seeing their margins compressed like never before and similar to the insurers, need to find alternative lines of revenue or they'll also die a slow death. With the benefit of technology being able to simplify an otherwise complicated product and service (think Turbo-Tax), there are some technology companies entering the financial planning and insurance space to do the same. By taking a consumer focused approach which is leaning towards digital and reshaping the complexities of insurance products, not only will the traditional channels be more effective, but those who have typically referred this piece of business away such as RIA's may be inclined to keep it in house, particularly if the carriers reprice their products (from commission to asset based) which is the current trend. 

One company I've been advising in this space is Assurance. The firm is taking the Intuit Turbo-Tax technology and applying it to the complex life insurance business to format illustrations that not only help the financial professional comply with new regulations, but renders the proposals digitally in a graphic, easy to understand way, viewable on any device (computer, tablet, cell phone) rather than thump down multiple confusing 20 page illustrations on the desk. 

We are at the intersection of demographic change (Boomer to Millennial) and regulatory disruption where the natural solution is new technology. Just as it has been said that if you google yourself and nothing comes up, you really don't exist, likewise, if you are a financial services or insurance firm and don't have a digital consumer offering, the firm doesn't exist. It's time that the insurance industry play catch-up with a digital strategy. Assurance is one of a handful of firms that can show them how to do it. 

"A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace"

-Ovid