Google it: “online quote – business insurance” or your desired variant..what did you get?

“Business Insurance Quote – Online Quote Request – GIO Australia”

“Allianz Insurance – Car Insurance, Life Insurance, Travel…”

“Online Insurance quotes – Car and Home Insurance Australia – AAMI”

And so on. Irrelevant. Non-existent. Misleading. These are the words that generally spring to mind when I search for something and get fluff. We’re not sure about you but if we were looking to buy insurance for our business it would be great to get a couple of quotes online. Public Liability, Workers Comp, Professional Indemnity, Motor Vehicle and so on.

Now google the same thing in the UK. Ahhh..so many choices! In other parts of the world, insurance companies have accepted that not every customer wants to go through a broker or that perhaps customers just want choice. Unfortunately, the Australian market is at least a few years behind – in large part because historically, most customers have gone through a broker. Its kind of funny however, that historically customers have not been given a choice but to go through a broker anyway! So it’s a bit of a vicious circle – brokers bring business in to insurance companies and insurance companies generally only deal through brokers.

Of course, the likes of GIO and AAMI actually offer business insurance direct to customers, however this is still a manual (call-centre) process and the reality is that because your premium is probably on the ‘smaller end’, your negotiation power will also be on the ‘smaller end’. Of course, this still means that these types of insurance companies still don’t want to be open and transparent with their (potential) customers and therefore do not make their offerings available online, for example as with the UK. And good luck trying to read a 100+ page policy document!

Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that international insurance companies such as Zurich, Allianz, QBE and AIG actually do offer direct, online quotes in other parts of the world but not in Australia..life could be so much easier right?