Guardian’s head of direct to consumer talks about the opportunities and challenges of D2C
Shifts in workplace demographics combined with the emergence of digital self-service across retail and financial industries present opportunities for insurers. The challenge is how to connect with insurance consumers their way. To do so, insurers face organizational and systems hurdles.
Guardian is one insurer that accepted the challenge. I sat down with Peggy Maher, SVP and head of Direct to Consumer at Guardian, to find out how the nearly 160-year-old company, that focuses on life, health and wealth solutions and historically has served customers via broker and advisor channels, made the pivot.
Peggy explains how Guardian examined the trends and identified a new opportunity in the marketplace within the growing number of independent workers and retirees who do not have access to workplace benefits.
What is the best way to reach these forgotten targets? Guardian had to think about how consumers were engaging with other products today, says Peggy, and consider how to create an experience for insurance products where they could search, purchase and then self-serve their policies afterwards: “We took a look at our set of legacy systems, our communication channels, and realized that actually nothing we had was suitable for this new direct to consumer target.”
Watch the full 4-minute interview to hear about Guardian’s journey to direct to consumer and its partnership with EIS to achieve its goals.
Kevin Haydon is director of marketing and communications at EIS.
