Apr 4 2024
The auto insurance market in 2024 is not friendly to consumers. Providers, perhaps in an effort to mitigate rising loss ratio, have increased premiums by 26% in the past year, with plans for these costs to remain elevated through 2025. Consequently, consumers have flocked to auto insurance shopping sites and quoting portals to hunt for the provider that will impact their budget the least, with TransUnion noticing a 12% increase in shopping rates year-over-year in 2023.
The question for auto insurance lead generators and comparative raters is, beyond investing heavily in your market outreach (which is not guaranteed to succeed), how do you stand out as an exceptional product in a market that is both in demand and heavily saturated? How do you make your leads more appealing than your competitor’s leads? These companies can start answering these questions by looking at the lifeblood of their platforms, their vehicle data. Selecting vehicle data feeds and toolsets that are aligned with the latest market trends and evolving industry standards provides an immediate advantage over other lead generators.
The industry-wide trend toward a huge variety in vehicle trims means that quoting portals and comparative raters need to ensure their data accounts for this trim variety in order to produce accurate and actionable leads.
Trim-level VIN decoding is an easily integrated data solution that can effectively address this “trimflation.” This 17-digit VIN decoding option reduces the vehicle down to a single trim which includes base MSRP, style, length, interior and exterior color, as well as factory-standard equipment and safety features. DataOne specifically leverages its engineered records within trim-level VIN decoding to identify the most common installed options for each trim, providing the data needed for precise quoting without relying on costly OEM build data. Quoting portals and comparative raters that can produce this information for their customers with a high level of confidence are more likely to cultivate a consistent, engaged user base.
Successful quoting portals and comparative raters need consistent access to the most up-to-date information on vehicle features and inventory, yet many only power their platforms with a static delivered database, also known as an XML “flat file.” This type of vehicle database requires ongoing manual, resource-intensive updates to ensure the data is current, and even then there is no assurance that it encompasses all of the most current vehicle marketplace.
Switching to an API-based vehicle database eliminates the need to devote resources to database updates, and ensures that your quoting platform incorporates the most recently available vehicle information. Additionally, API-based vehicle data sets leverage advanced 17-digit VIN decoding business logic and additional external data inputs (including manufacturer codes and raw DMS data) for a more robust VIN return. This upgrade in data integration can provide a value advantage over the glut of organizations in the auto insurance quote generation space.
Ryan Mathew, a founding partner of UX/UI design agency Neuron, which was recently profiled in Fast Company, noted that the user experience is the backbone of a product-led growth model. Mathew elaborates that “the key metric to chase in all of this is a short time to value, or TTV, which is the length of time it takes for new users to discover the “aha” moment of a product.”
Insurance quoting portals can be hamstrung by the need for a VIN to unlock the full value of the product. DataOne’s Reverse VIN Lookup tool bypasses that roadblock to help produce an intuitive, streamlined experience for end users. The Reverse VIN Lookup tool, powered by DataOne’s real-time vehicle database, enables end users to generate a VIN stub for accurate quote ratings using the fewest possible inputs needed for the vehicle. This tool is further supplemented by dynamic imaging that produces an image of the vehicle, ensuring both the end user and lead buyer that the portal produced the proper vehicle during the form submission process.
Current economic conditions will continue to drive demand for premium quotes for some time, which makes it the ideal opportunity for quoting portals and comparative raters to invest in their underlying data and make the best possible case for business. If you are interested in how DataOne is uniquely prepared to support your business’ platform, you can contact our specialized data expert below.
