How software innovation helped lift the veil on insurance to justify the value of NRMA Home Insurance Source: APG (AUS), Bronze and Best Use of Data, 2016 Downloaded from WARC
This case study details how NRMA Insurance, an Australian insurer, reframed the value of what an insurance brand can offer and found a core purpose: making the world a safer place. Being the most experienced and largest insurer in Australia, NRMA rarely competes on price; therefore, the brand would have to justify its premium price point across product offerings. After a number of in-depth interviews, the campaign identified the blockers, motivations and triggers of switching and buying, and, critically, at what points along the journey these happened. Safer Homes empowers consumers to demystify the insurance risk puzzle; using over 2m data points, the tool allows people to better understand the risk levels associated with where they live. The brand used high profile OOH, TV and digital placements to demonstrate the simple, unexpected value NRMA Insurance could offer. Of over 200,000 visitors to the site, 86,000 (43%) progressed from a registered sales interest through to a sales fulfilment opportunity.
Judge's cheat sheet This is the story of how we reframe the value of what an insurance brand can offer. We built a tool of genuine utility that demonstrated the NRMA Insurance core purpose, to make the world a safer place. As most people infrequently make claims, home insurance is a product that some struggle to see value in. In a category of, low interest and low understanding price comparison sites have grown dramatically, encouraging customers to make a decision on price rather than quality of cover. NRMA Insurance, a premium brand, were struggling to justify their price premium. By developing a piece of software that allowed people to better understand their risk, we were able to increase consideration levels and demonstrate the additional value NRMA Insurance offers.
Two challenges The insurance market is becoming increasingly more competitive – with lower prices driving lower coverage, however as a premium insurer, this is a game that NRMA Insurance refuses to play, We needed to find a new way to offer value. 1. Short term: Increase consideration of NRMA Home Insurance Along with car insurance, home insurance policies make up the bulk of the NRMA Insurance business. However due to sometimes being more expensive than both mid-priced players and cheap and cheerful brands – all appearing to offer a broadly similar product. And as NRMA does not pay to feature on price aggregators. All this impacted NRMA Insurance's brand awareness and consideration. 2. Long term: Build the NRMA Insurance brand Being the most experienced and largest insurer in Australia, few other brands could rival the expertise of NRMA Insurance This level of cover means they rarely compete on price, so we needed to help build the brand, justifying its premium price point across product offerings.
Confused and disinterested Trying to sell insurance is no easy task. People pay their premiums every year but rarely see any return, on average, claiming once every 8 years. It's confusing. No one really understands what they're paying for. And ultimately it's boring. Who really wants to spend hours trawling through price comparison websites, comparing levels of cover and through 60 page PDSs. All too often people simply renew their policy, or just opt for the cheapest option on a price comparison website. Fewer people were seeing the value in insurance – not at least until they claimed- and for a premium insurer such as NRMA, this was a real problem.
Customer first In the face of such ingrained barriers, we needed to get a deeper understanding of people's insurance relationship; if they research, how they research, their consideration criteria, and why they make their final decision. We decided we would have to work with new methods to better understand these customers so we turned to our specialist customer experience strategists to better understand the customer journey of home insurance. After a number of in-depth interviews, we identified the blockers, motivations and triggers of switching and buying, and, critically, at what points along the journey these happened.
Customer journey – current state for home, insurance & risk The Customer Journey is a document that illustrates the different stages customers go through, highlighting emotions felt, actions taken, and attitudes across multiple touch points and channels when interacting with a product or service. Business purpose and vision Our purpose at IAG is to make your world a safer place. Driven by the vision of becoming the most loved, inventive and profitable insurer in APAC. Project IAG10494 NRMA Good Homes Project objectives Determine key initiatives to action to help our customers better understand the risk profile of their homes and its real value. Prioritise the tools and education that will better protect customer homes, plus identify the right insurance product for their needs.
Varying levels of knowledge While there were obviously a number of factors that influenced the decision, we had underestimated the extent to which people had been conditioned to shop on price. A lack of transparency, digestible information and poor tools made making informed decisions very difficult. However, people wanted to better understand what they were buying – as long as it could be made simpler. "I don't know about better understanding my insurance, I've got a pretty good understanding [...] but there's a couple things I hadn't thought of, and it is time I recalculated my contents to make sure I am covered." "Makes me think to check my insurance coverage" "OMG I am well under" "Transparency is great, good to know they are paying out money. Giving back." Source: One on one customer interviews Ultimately, people could discern little difference between most insurers, and expected all of them to behave roughly the same way should the worst happen. The problem was that this simply wasn't the reality.
Actions speak louder than words
We were confident that NRMA Insurance customers received more cover, more value, and had a better experience. We knew we needed a solution that worked hard for people. We wanted to give people tangible, transparent proof that NRMA Insurance was worth paying more for – in a way that was interesting for people and easy to engage with. So quite simply our brief became: Prove the value of NRMA Home Insurance.
A simple problem that was difficult to solve With our CX strategists, creative teams and innovation division Tricky Jigsaw, we quickly came to a solution. Not an advertising campaign, not an activation or piece of online content, but a brand innovation.
Introducing NRMA safer homes. Safer Homes empowers consumers to demystify the insurance risk puzzle one layer at a time, through innovation and market first partnerships. Using over 2 million data points (including the Google Maps API, intel from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service, Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Federal Police), the tool helps people better understand the risk levels associated with where they live. It highlights the most common claims; theft, water damage, home fire and bushfire with a measure of how likely they are to happen. Given how little time people like to spend with insurance brands, we ensured the tool gives a quick snapshot – so all users benefited from this unique category service. Shifting the conversation to 'risk awareness' as
opposed to 'remedy'.
Spreading the word. Safer Homes presented a unique opportunity for NRMA Insurance to separate itself from competitors. We used high profile OOH, TV and digital placements to demonstrate the simple, unexpected value NRMA Insurance could offer. Like with any piece of software development, Safer Homes was not an idea to 'set and forget'. Through continued customer research and data extensions, a more sophisticated version was in market within months. We applied the same approach to our current creative, understanding what was and wasn't working, and optimised. This included giving the tool itself more prominence in communications as people felt distracted by story elements and needed to understand the utility of Safer Homes better.
A carefully crafted success 1. Short term: We increased active consideration of NRMA Home Insurance Of over 200,000 visitors to the site, 86,000 (43%) have progressed from a registered sales interest (i.e. "I would like to enquire on a product/policy) through to a sales fulfilment opportunity (i.e. "I would like to purchase a policy with NRMA Insurance"). This sort of sales conversation is unprecedented with non-insurance products for NRMA. In fact, traffic through Safer Homes has even proved more effective at driving sales than direct traffic – demonstrating the value of 'added benefit products and services' in the insurance world. Enquiry completion rate: Safer Homes: 36.5% NRMA Insurance: 22.4% +14.1% difference in conversions Buy completion rate: Safer Homes: 61.9% NRMA Insurance: 54.8% +7.1% difference in conversions 2. Long term: Reinforced the NRMA brand Over the last 5 months, NRMA Insurance has offered a service no one else could. Customers and non-
customers alike are being empowered to learn more about their homes, insurance, risks and surrounding communities. The public agree: "Loved how it showed a map of the area, and how easy it was to navigate around the site, also how much good information given for my area." "Yes, it definitely will help me make a better informed decision‌ I will definitely look at the website next time my policies are up for renewal." "I liked that I only had to enter my postcode to find relevant local information, I also discovered renters cover for contents insurance." Early signs suggest it is starting to shift perceptions of the brand.
What we learnt: Better inputs, better solutions As a marketing industry we often promise creative solutions to business problems, but end up offering different versions of the same old thing. Planning has the opportunity to drive a different way of working, with different skills sets and different thinkers to ultimately offer different, and better solutions. We need to seize this opportunity to be the visionaries, pull in those brilliant minds that can make it happen, not just wait for the same old process to miraculously spit out a different solution. What was it that Einstein said about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results‌
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