January 1, 2009

Who’s Going Online To Shop For Health Insurance?

Posted by Rey Villar

Does it seem like you’re getting more women with southern accents through your online marketing? According to a recent report by Norvax Inc., there’s a 1 in 3 chance that your Internet-generated leads will connect you with a female shopper between 20 and 39 years of age — and living in one of the southern states.

That’s just one of the trends uncovered in a recent report that analyzed the demographics of almost half a million online health insurance shoppers over a three-month period this summer. Norvax reviewed the records of more than 446,597 leads generated by its sister company, ProspectZone, from June through July of this year, and found clear patterns that every producer must know.

Why is this such a big deal?

For starters, more than half of all individual health insurance plans bought today use the Internet in the shopping process. That’s expected to exceed 90% by 2011.

And if you want to dominate your share of this fast-growing marketplace, you need to understand who’s going online to purchase their health insurance — and how they’re shopping.

10 States Produced Half The Leads

The Internet makes it easy for an agent to get licensed and sell policies in almost every state in the country. This report makes it clear that agents have to expand their business beyond their own states if they want to grow and succeed.

Just as with the general population, ten states account for half of all the online leads generated in the study sample:

Florida, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, Ohio, & Massachusetts.

And the top 3 states (Florida, Texas and California) accounted for 1 out of every 4 online health insurance shoppers in the study.

The top 10 lead-generating states aren’t necessarily the most populous in the country, however. For example, Illinois and Michigan are ranked #5 and #8, respectively, in terms of population. But they’ve been replaced by Washington and Massachusetts on the top 10 list of online health insurance shoppers.

Producers looking for the biggest and most continuous flow of leads need to target these top states. This also means getting licensed and signing up with carriers who operate in those states — as well as using the right Internet and tech tools to serve those online shoppers.

Women Taking The Lead

Gender is behind the biggest trends uncovered by the report. Clear differences between the sexes show up across all regions and segments.

The most glaring difference is in raw numbers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women make up slightly more than half the U.S. population. Similarly, women make up slightly more than half of all Internet users, and are just as likely as men to use the Internet to shop for goods and services.

But the study discovered that nearly two-thirds (2/3) of the leads in the sample had women as the primary applicant.

When you go deeper into the gender statistics, more trends come up:

• Female difference across all ages.
Women health insurance shoppers outnumber men across all the age ranges. The only age segment men come close to equaling women is in the Medicare-eligible 65-plus segment of the lead sample.

• Lower rates of currently insured.
Whereas 28.16% of the men in the study currently have insurance, only 24.51% of the women are currently insured.

• More singles.
Only 13% of the women in the study declared themselves as married. By comparison, 28% of the male primary applicants identified themselves as married.

• Youth movement.
The youth movement is most pronounced among women. As mentioned at the beginning, women in their 20s and 30s together make up one-third (1/3) of the entire data sample. That “20 to 39” age group also accounts for more than half of all the female shoppers in the study.

These gender-based trends cut across all regions of the country. Taken together, they’re a clear signal to agents and carriers to keep women in mind as they develop and market their plans.

If you’re an agent or broker seeing this predominantly female trend, make sure you’re up to date on the programs that address women’s issues, such as pre-natal, maternity, expanded gynecology networks and related prescription drugs.

Regional Disparities

One region stands out when the 446,597 prospects in the data sample are analyzed according to which part of the United States they live in — the South. This may explain why more agents across the country are increasingly looking at the southern states when expanding their online business.

This region consists of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

According to the 2006 U.S. Census update, one out of every three Americans lived in one of these southern states. But nearly half of all the leads in the study sample came from the South.

Why the imbalance? It could be a reflection of the overall population trend of moving toward the southern, warmer parts of the country. An equally credible explanation is the higher levels of consumers without insurance living in the southern states.

The report also uncovered the following trends in the southern states:

• Southern women are twice as likely to be uninsured.
Two out of every 3 uninsured Southerners in the study data were women. It’s true that women are more likely to be uninsured than men in all regions. But the disparity is greatest in the southern region.

• Three times as likely to be uninsurable.
Nearly 3 out of every 4 the “uninsurable” prospects in the southern states were women. Again, although women had higher “uninsurability” levels than men in all regions, the disparity is greatest in the South.

The report labeled a prospect “uninsurable” if they disclosed a pre-existing condition or had a BMI of 39 or higher.

The good news for agents is that the study found that only 15% of online health insurance shoppers were deemed “uninsurable.”

Market Research For Your Strategic Planning

Every business planning guide on the bookshelves today advise entrepreneurs and business owners to research their market before planning their strategy. That’s often easier said than done.

This report solves that problem — at least for agents, brokers and carriers looking to succeed in the fast-growing Internet marketplace. This report is probably the most comprehensive review of online health insurance shoppers available. It provides helpful insights on which states you should target and the type of shoppers you’ll need to serve on the web. And the exciting trends highlighted here are only a few of the findings uncovered by this study.

Fortunately, Norvax is releasing this first-of-its-kind report to the public — at no cost. To download your copy of this report, just go to:
www.norvax.com/data_report_download.

The in-depth report is free, but the strategic intelligence it provides is priceless.