It seems plausible that there is causal relationship between “rate fatigue” and mistrust, and the CIAB indeed records one broker attributing mistrust “to the fact that clients still saw increases in their premium even if they had no losses, leading to frustration with the system.” But the connection would bear further investigation. More granular data relating to social media perceptions of insurance companies in the UK was published by PwC in 2022 2 ( see chart below ). The research was based on references on Twitter (now X) to 15 UK insurers that were deemed sufficiently plentiful to ensure a thorough analysis and fair comparison. (More than 330,000 tweets
mentioned these insurers in 2021). The balance of commentary was strongly negative, generating “net sentiment” of -19.2%. Just under a quarter of the comments were related to service or operational issues, and these were significantly more negative than the average (net sentiment of -59.7%). Other commentary, classed by PwC as “reputational,” was “driven by online press coverage and marketing efforts.” This category was also negative, although less so (-4%), meaning that even the insurers’ own marketing and brand building efforts were unable to generate a positive response.
UK Insurance Industry, Net Sentiment
-4.00%
-19.20%
-59.70%
Total Reputational
Operational
Source: PwC UK Insurance Sentiment Index, 2022 The poor reputation of insurance is acknowledged in the marketing of some major insurers. Progressive, the largest auto insurer in the US, which spent $1.73 billion on advertising in 2022, argued in a video that “behind our ads you’ll discover we’re more than an insurance company.”
2. https://www.pwc.co.uk/insurance/assets/pdf/insurance-sentiment-index-2022.pdf
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