The State of Voice in the Insurance Industry

A deep-dive report

John Campbell

Managing Director & Co founder

Last Updated : 25/05/21

Page contents

 

Introduction to voice in the insurance industry

By 2025, the digital voice assistant software market is expected to reach over a billion users. With increasing adoption of voice interaction worldwide, and 46% of insurance seekers reporting using voice search at least once a day, there is a significant opportunity for the Insurance industry to use voice apps to reduce friction and simplify the customer experience. Several well-known brands, including Aviva, InsureandGo and Cigna and more, have already built voice apps to take advantage of the increasing adoption of voice technology.


 Key challenges for the insurance industry:

  • High competition with lack of differentiation between providers
  • High load on call centres, with most major insurers employing thousands of people to field questions from customers
  • Lack of personalisation and low perceived value

How to optimise your website for voice

The first step in your voice optimisation strategy should be checking how your website performs for informational queries, e.g. “new driver insurance”, “what is international health insurance”, etc.


 

Voice Search Performance

The Google Assistant has recently become far better at answering queries about insurance, with its ability to answer improving from 61% to 75% between Q1 and Q2 2019.

This is mainly due to the Google Assistant returning more answers from standard Answer Box results.


 

Actions & Skills

Actions (on the Google Assistant) and skills (on Alexa) are voice-enabled apps which extend the built-in functionality of these voice assistants. While optimising your website for voice can provide a one-way snippet of information, actions and skills can allow brands to create two-way conversations with their consumers and can help them to perform tasks and activities.

Use case ideas

Use case idea 1: Policy FAQs

Allow users to query their insurance policy and learn about different types of coverage. For example, “does this policy cover damage to my car when driving overseas?”, or “does this travel insurance policy cover me for skiing?”. No account linking required.

Use case idea 2: Get a quote and purchase a policy

Adding onto the above, insurance brands can introduce account linking to allow potential customers to get a quote and purchase a policy via voice alone, and existing customers to upsell, in order to extend their level of cover.

Use case idea 3: Make a claim

To counteract long call queues, customers can log the details of a claim with Alexa/Google Assistant, with confirmation sent to their email. Users can also check on claim status via voice as it progresses.

Amazon / Google 1st party

Currently out the box Google or Alexa isn’t going to get an insurance quote for you. As mentioned in the voice search ranking report data above Google will answer some questions about insurance companies directly using answer box data.


 

Existing Alexa Skills

 

LV=


Car, home & breakdown cover policy information

Confused dot com


Car insurance quotes

“Car insurance”


Car insurance FAQs

Aviva


Check your pension (account linking required)

InsureandGo


Travel insurance FAQs

Answers by Cigna


Definitions for health questions

Insurance Advisor by Safeco


Insurance FAQs and risk quizzes

Deutsche Familienversicherung


Utilises Amazon Pay, allowing customer to seamlessly purchase insurance contracts via voice

UPMC Health Plan


Answers questions on the health plan, finding member ID card, Covid Questions.

Allianz Care

Answers common questions about the Allianz Care Service

iptiQ


The iptiQ insurance assistant can be used to learn more about iptiQ

Most of the insurance skills available on Alexa are also available on the Google Assistant

Progressive

Provides useful DIY tips for your home on curb appeal, smart home technology & moving.

Centraal Beheer


One of the first Dutch companies to launch an action, this allows users to check whether they need a green card to travel abroad

Kanetix


Get a quick car insurance quote from kanetix.ca


Voice and Insurance Insights

Using data from GWI we can see that Insurance Intenders (consumers who are looking to purchase an insurance product) are more likely than average to to be smart speaker owners.

Insurance intenders are more likely than average to own a smart speaker

UK Insurance intenders are 16% more likely than the average UK internet user to own a smart speaker, with 18.7% of UK internet users and 21.7% of UK Insurance intenders owning one.

31% of smart speaker owning insurance intenders increased their usage during lockdown

31% of smart-speaker owning insurance intenders claimed to be using their smart speakers more during lockdown, compared with 27% of all smart speaker owners

Home owners Insurance intenders are most likely to own a smart speaker

Home owners Insurance intenders are most likely to own a smart speaker (24.7%) followed by Pet Insurance intenders (24.2%), the least likely to own a smart speaker are Health Insurance intenders (20.2%).

Pet Insurance Intenders are most likely to have increased their Smart Speaker Usage during COVID-19

Pet insurance intenders who owned smart speakers were most likely to report increased usage at 52%, whereas only 29% of car insurance intending smart speaker owners said they were using their smart speaker more in lockdown

 


 

Policy Restrictions

There is no specific rules on either Google or Alexa around insurance. However if your skill was related to medical insurance and the skill gave tips or advice it would need to have a disclaimer when the skill is opened, for example “This tool does not provide medical advice, and is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, treatment”

 

Main Takeaways

  • At a website level, insurance providers need to focus on filling content gaps by gaining Answer Box results.
  • When it comes to creating two-way conversations through actions & skills, some well-known brands have entered the field, but there is still great opportunity to create useful voice apps. Some use cases include:
    • Insurance FAQs
    • Get a quote / make a purchase
    • Upsell from existing policy
    • Make a claim
  • A noticeable trend in the insurance industry is the shift from a product-focussed strategy to one that puts the customer journey first. To cater for this shift to a customer-centric model, we can expect more insurance carriers to make an investment in voice optimisation technology in the near future.

 

Want to learn more? Get in contact with the Rabbit & Pork team about voice strategy, workshops or building a voice app

 

Get in contact

John Campbell

Managing Director & Co founder

John founded Rabbit & Pork as the third agency and Voice Experience arm of TIPi Group. John has developed and launched several Google Actions and Skills, presented at several voice events around the UK, spoken on the VUX podcast and authored multiple whitepapers.