State Farm tops website survey

The website for State Farm Insurance Co. took top spot in the first Canadian survey of p&c insurance company websites. The survey, conducted by Toronto-based UBER analyze tested the thoughts of consumers and brokers on 50 Canadian sites. Coming in behind State Farm are Allstate, TD Insurance, Royal & SunAlliance and Kanetix (a site that features a variety of insurers). Among the priorities for consumers were real-time quoting, information about company financial stability and information on company track record for claims service.Falling in the bottom five of the survey are Echelon General Insurance, PEI Mutual, The Economical Insurance Group, Gerling Canada and Kingsway General Insurance.Brokers, the survey notes, continue to feel threatened by the Internet. They continue to use it primarily for email communication. Brokers listed integration with broker management systems (BMS) and the availability of online policy manuals and information as their top priorities.Further research by UBER analyze notes that 70% of the top-10 sites have real-time quoting, but only 18% of sites overall offer this feature. The average time to obtain a quote was 9.5 minutes. On the other hand, a full 82% offer a “broker finder” feature. Claims reporting is available on just 16% of sites.Startlingly, 69.5% of inquiries made through websites were not answered within 24 hours.The survey used a focus group of consumers, brokers, web experts and insurance executives as well as a phone survey of 200 brokers and consumers.