Welcome to Insider Insights, where we dive into hot topics facing the financial services industry.
Today, we're diving into how carriers can unlock the young consumer market, engaging and converting the next generation of life insurance buyers.
Joining us are Severine Suski, assistant research director, and Steve Wood, research director from LIMRA, here to share key research and strategies.
Hey. Hello, Severine. Good seeing you. How are you doing today?
I'm good. Good to see you, Steve.
So today we just wanted to chat a little bit about LIMRA's most recent, research study focused on young consumers.
So, we'd conducted a qualitative study where we spoke to thirty three young people between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five, who half of them had coverage, individual life insurance coverage, that is, and half of them did not, but had some interest in obtaining coverage.
And those who were uninsured, we heard that their main barriers to getting coverage was having insufficient knowledge about life insurance. And so this looked like a number of things like not knowing what to look for in a policy, not knowing the amount of research they needed to do, being overwhelmed by the amount of information there is about life insurance, not knowing where to start, and not knowing whose information or sorry, not knowing who to trust, as the source of information.
Yeah. Right.
It's a big question. I was just in a, in a study group surrounding all of this, and the day ended with the question, what is education?
And I lost sleep that night because the task was for me to sort of address that the next day. And, really, it's a huge challenge. Right? Because people don't know what they don't know when it comes to life insurance.
And, you know, what a barrier it is for our industry who often is trying to market and sell a somewhat complicated product, to a bunch of younger adults who for whom life insurance is not a top priority in twenty five, and kind of convincing them the importance of life insurance, explaining how it works, and most and equally importantly, how affordable it can be is really just such a challenge, especially for the middle market.
And on top of all of that, where people are going now to get information about really anything, but since we're talking about life insurance, it has just changed dramatically. I'll just mention I was doing some research and reading some numbers from a research firm called SimilarWeb about where people go to get information on life insurance. And I was somewhat shocked, but I do totally believe it, that only 1.5 percent of consumers who are really interested in purchasing life insurance ultimately end up on life insurance company websites.
Compare that to 9.1 percent of people who go to property and casualty websites or closer to half of people when they want a product, they end up at a consumer goods website. So, the whole landscape has changed to where we're where we're educating people. It's not really just the dot coms anymore.
Yeah. It's definitely a challenge for the industry.
Within the study that we have done on young consumers, we heard that one of the ways that they would like insurers to kind of educate them and kind of start addressing this knowledge bear barrier is through leveraging social media.
And that's the thing. Social media. I've been doing what I do for about fifteen years now in very in different capacities and sort of the rise of social media, the differences across the different platforms and how they message certain things has changed just dramatically in really since the beginning of the pandemic, to be honest with you.
One of the stats that that we have put out here at LIMRA is that in twenty nineteen, only twenty nine percent of consumers were looking to social media for financial reasons to learn about financial products, savings products, protection products like life insurance.
And that's jumped to sixty two percent, this year in twenty five. So, again, that's where the landscape has changed. And it's really not, you know, necessarily just younger adults. It's kind of across the board.
And among the young people that we did speak to in this qualitative study, thirty one out of the thirty three individuals, when we'd asked them where they would, if they wanna learn more about life insurance through social media. Thirty one out of those thirty three had said that they would use, they would turn on social media to learn more.
Yeah. And that's to me; I'm a little bit older than you. That just still sounds crazy to me. But then I sort of step back and I think about it, and I have two teenage boys, and I think about where they go to get information.
And, you know, they're not necessarily using search engines. They're going to YouTube Shorts or somewhere else and, you know, sort of, I'll mention this too. We ask what platforms people use to access financial information, and our partner, in the study suggested we add TikTok mhmm, three years ago.
And, again, I sort of rolled my eyes, and TikTok has evolved to the point where there is information out there. Some of it good, some of it not so good, but people are using YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram to really access a lot of this information.
Yeah. So I think for putting this into kind of perspective for some of our members, I mean, the question is how can carriers make use of these platforms and reach young consumers, on social media? And so, when we're thinking about socials, as we all know, first impressions are critical and so it's a matter of getting engagement quickly and then also the manner in which they're engaging, these young people through their content. So when we were talking to, these young people in our recent study, we heard from them that they don't want to be scrolling through their feed laughing at a funny cat video or something like that just to continue, scrolling to find posts that are getting to them to think about death and what it would be like after they die. So that's just not something they tell us that they would find engaging. Right?
They when we ask them specifically what they want to be hearing from life insurance companies online, it's more about informing them and educating them through these channels. And, I mean, what better way to do that than maybe lightening the mood with a little bit of humor.
Which, as you just pointed out, isn't I can't imagine that's the easiest thing when we're talking about, life insurance, especially a fully underwritten whole life policy, fluid draws, health histories, and as you mentioned, people pass away. We all pass away. But, it can be done, and you and I have both seen examples of it. I know through our research.
And if you're like me, your algorithm is serving you life insurance content all the time, whether we like it or not, through the nature of our roles at Lymera.
But I mentioned our partner in in one of our studies here, the insurance barometer study, Life Happens. They partnered with humorous influencers called Dumb Dads, and they got great traction on it. I think I checked the other day preparing for this podcast.
Believe it or not, I prepared.
And it has been shared almost three hundred times.
So, a life insurance educational reel, it's probably on TikTok. I don't know. But to be shared that many times is pretty, it's pretty telling that that humor does work and really cutting to what life insurance is and what it can do for people.
Yes. It's clearly a way in which carriers can get engagement with this younger demographic on platforms that they're already spending time. And, in in the young consumer study, we heard that, you know, people are intimidated about purchasing life insurance. We had asked a series of questions on the emotions that they associate with different parts of purchasing.
So that would include how they felt without having coverage, how they feel, while moving through the process of obtaining it, as well as how they'd feel after obtaining coverage. And the area with the most contingencies is this kind of researching and purchasing their policies. And so particularly those who are uninsured associated it with negative emotions like anxiety and feeling stressed.
So, it's really up to insurers to kind of address this area and kind of leverage social media here, is one way to do that. And so what we heard from individuals on what kind of content they want to be seeing that could help with this is hearing stories about, other young people who have obtained coverage, reading testimonials about what it was like to kind of move through this purchasing process, what worked for them, didn't work for them, as well as just getting content and learning about how it all works.
Talking about the specifics of what policies look like as well as, how they can go about navigating resources.
That's what they turn to for socials in the first place, is to gain education around content. And so, if they're there and interested in learning about life insurance, those are some topics that insurers can cover.
So, do you think insurers can leverage humor in in this kind of messaging?
I do. I really do, and I do speak about this when I talk to some of our member companies.
And, you know, it's not the most humorous industry as we've mentioned, but, you know, we've seen these phrases like, I'm adulting now, and what does that mean? And you can make jokes about you know, it's I'll mention the dumb dads again. Do you know when your children's birthdays are? Can you take them to the doctor's appointment and answer all those simple questions about them?
I am a dad. I like to think I'm not that dumb. I do that. So, I'm out there adulting, and part of adulting is, you know, caring for those who you love and sort of leveraging that from a life insurance standpoint.
You know? What does that mean? Does that mean just having the savings account, just having other types of savings vehicles, or does it mean really providing, you know, generational wealth transfer through life insurance should something happen to you or your spouse?
So, I yeah. I mean, I happen to think you can use humor in in all situations, so I don't see why we should shy away from it so much, when talking about life insurance.
Yeah. So, it's really about lowering kind of levels of intimidation.
I think the goal is if we can get them to laugh, then maybe we'll be able to have them say, hey. This isn't so scary. Maybe I can figure this out. And it's really about not being overtly polished and connecting throughout authenticity and being real and organic and not sales pitchy on these platforms.
Well, I think we're proving right now that we don't have to be super polished to be, engaging. Right? But, yeah, that that sort of authenticity is totally key. People don't want actors.
They don't want perfect lighting. They just kinda want that message to ring true, and we've seen data saying that's, you know, that's what works now, through a lot of these sort of social media, the use of micro influencers versus, you know, super famous influencers. It's certainly something to think about. So that's the good stuff.
Do you think there's anything that, when we're talking about sort of marketing and getting content out on the social media channels, is there anything that insurers should steer away from to, you know, kind of avoid?
Yeah. So, as we've mentioned, kind of staying away from death and dying on socials as well as, away from unfamiliar terms like industry jargon.
Young people just don't know what they mean. And so, either kind of taking the time to explain these things, the terminology and as well as young people don't want to be scared into buying coverage. So social should really be used to educate, since that's what they're already using them for, to look into other financial products as well as just typical kind of consumer products.
Where do you think would be the best place to target young consumers with this kind of content?
Yeah. Through a lot of our consumer studies, we ask exactly that. And these days, YouTube is far and away the, the number one place. So, sort of targeted ads through YouTube shorts, having content on YouTube, again, lighthearted but authentic educational pieces when someone kinda searches up, you know, what is life insurance?
What's the best policy for me? That's where they're going. I say this again as a father of teenagers. When they want to learn something, you know, how did the craters form the moon?
My fourteen year old goes to YouTube. He doesn't go to Google. He doesn't go to chat GPT. He wants to see a little three minute video of meteors crashing into the moon, and that's how he learns.
So, YouTube, Facebook is still up there, and then Instagram, and believe it or not, TikTok, as I mentioned earlier.
Again, quick, short, entertaining, but sort of, authentic. And that word, we can't use enough when we're talking about everything that we're talking about.
Yeah. And so Humor might not be able to sell life insurance on its own, but it's something that we see as being able to help open that door for young people and get them to stop scrolling and make a serious topic feel a little bit less intimidating.
And in a world where we're drowning information but starving for connection, that might be exactly what this industry needs.
I agree a hundred percent. I gotta go, Severine, but this was a great conversation, so I will talk to you soon.
Yeah. It's great chatting with you.
Thanks for listening to LIMRA's Insider Insights podcast series. To hear future podcasts, subscribe at LIMRA.com/podcast.
