Booking a flight online takes minutes. Ordering a taxi takes seconds. Even applying for a loan can now be done in a handful of taps. Buying insurance, by contrast, often feels like stepping back a decade. The process slows, the questions multiply, and what should be simple quickly becomes something to work through rather than complete.
That friction has consequences. Across life, health and other lines, insurance quotes are abandoned long before completion. Customers drop out early, hesitate at key moments, or disengage entirely when the process begins to drag.
This is supported in the data, as 84% of insurance leads abandon their quotes in the initial forays of the process. For insurers, this means that quoting has ultimately become a point of quiet failure.
The problem is not new. But the shift to digital has made it harder to ignore.
At its core, insurance has always depended on information. The more an insurer knows about an applicant, the more precisely it can assess and price risk. But that logic now collides with a different reality. Customers expect immediacy, relevance and control.
Thomas Dijohn, Senior Vice-President Asia-Pacific at dacadoo, says the tension between those two objectives sits at the centre of the issue.
“In a perfect world, an insurer would like to know everything about an applicant, so they have the highest possible understanding of the applicant’s risk and thereby the highest level of risk protection. But there is a trade-off: lead conversion rates. Because while the insurer would like to ask as many questions as possible, which takes time, an applicant wants to get it done with as quickly as possible,” says Dijohn.
That trade-off has sharpened as digital channels have become the default route to market.
“Digital is the de facto mode of engagement these days for the majority of the population. The experience must be digital, personally relevant, intuitive to understand, quick to access, and it must place the person in control,” he adds.
The form problem
For many customers, the friction appears almost immediately. Long, static questionnaires remain common, particularly in life and health insurance. They often follow a fixed structure, asking the same questions in the same order regardless of the applicant.
“That is not digital. That is just digitising the old ways of doing things,” says Dijohn.
The consequence is predictable. Customers disengage before reaching the point where a quote is even produced.
Adrian Mincher, Head of UK, Ireland and South Africa at Earnix, sees the same pattern across markets.
“Quote abandonment persists because insurers are still treating quoting as a data collection exercise, not a real-time decision. Customers come in expecting something quick and simple. Instead, they’re taken through a long, rigid process that often feels disconnected from their situation. By the time they see a price, they’ve already invested effort, and if anything doesn’t feel right, they drop out,” he says.
Drop-off tends to happen early, when the volume of questions becomes a barrier in itself.
“That’s usually a sign that insurers aren’t using available data upfront to simplify the process,” adds Mincher.
For Dijohn, the issue is not simply the number of questions, but their relevance.
“The next questions asked is always the most important question when it comes to increasing an insurer’s understanding of risk. Not all questions have the same contribution to understanding of risk, and the weighting will change depending on what else an insurer knows about an applicant.”
Dynamic questionnaires, which adapt in real time based on previous answers and available data, are one way to address that imbalance. By focusing only on what matters, they shorten the process without reducing the quality of risk assessment.
The moment of truth
Even when customers complete the journey, abandonment remains high at a second, more critical stage.
“The second, and more important, is at the point where the price is revealed. That’s the moment of truth. If the price doesn’t match expectations, or it can’t be explained clearly, customers lose confidence and leave,” says Mincher.
This is where the underlying structure of many insurance organisations becomes visible.
Pricing, underwriting and customer experience often sit in separate systems. Decisions are made in one place and presented in another. By the time the customer sees a quote, the process behind it can feel opaque or inconsistent.
“From the customer’s perspective, the journey is one experience. If the price changes late, if it feels inconsistent, or if it can’t be explained, trust drops quickly,” Mincher explains.
That disconnect is not primarily a design issue. It reflects how decisions are made and delivered.
“What that reveals is that quoting isn’t just a UX problem. It’s a decisioning problem. The experience and the outcome have to align, and too often they don’t,” he says.
Complexity behind the scenes
Part of the challenge lies in the structure of insurance products themselves.
Travel, motor and home insurance tend to be relatively simple. Life and health products are not. They often involve layered cover, exclusions and detailed underwriting requirements that make them harder to present clearly in a digital format.
“What insurers need to consider is to design products that are more modular so that applicants can choose what they need at this point with the option to add on later in life,” says Dijohn.
Complexity is also reinforced by commercial incentives. Historically, insurers have aimed to capture as much value as possible at the point of sale, which has led to broader cover, more questions and longer journeys.
“Insurers need to change this approach and consider the first sell ‘a foot in the door’ and then over time upsell and cross-sell,” he adds.
The limits of digitisation
Many insurers have attempted to address these issues by digitising existing processes. But that has not fundamentally changed how quoting works.
“Many insurers are still working with legacy systems that require structured data collection, manual validation, and delayed decision-making. That leads to long forms, repeated questions, and slow feedback,” says Mincher.
Other industries have already moved beyond that model, using real-time data to reduce friction and deliver immediate outcomes. Insurance has access to similar data and analytical capabilities, but struggles to apply them at the point of interaction.
“The gap is the ability to operationalise it in real time, at the point of interaction,” he adds.
Tools such as pre-fill, automation and embedded insurance can reduce friction at the start of the journey, but they do not solve the problem on their own.
“They can help, but only if they’re connected to decision-making. If pricing and underwriting decisions are still slow or disconnected, the core issue remains,” says Mincher.
Where progress is being made, the process looks different.
“Where it really works is when insurers can simplify the journey upfront, generate a relevant quote quickly, and then refine it in real time as more information becomes available. When it works well, there is no traditional quote journey. The decision happens instantly in the background,” he explains.
Rethinking the journey
Improving conversion, then, requires a shift in how quoting is defined.
“The starting point is to rethink quoting as a real-time decisioning process, not a form. Early in the journey, insurers should use available data to reduce the number of questions and get to a price faster. At the point of price reveal, they need to be able to explain that price clearly and confidently,” says Mincher.
That also means guiding customers through the final stages, rather than leaving them to interpret the outcome alone.
“Customers and agents get clear answers, recommendations, and decisions in real time,” he adds.
Dijohn sees a similar shift emerging from a different angle.
“Goodwill will lead to preference and trust, deep relationships will lead to access and implied permission to engage, and the data will enable risk segmentation even before an acquisition process has started.”
Closing the gap
The persistence of quote abandonment suggests that insurers have yet to fully adapt to how customers now expect to buy. The issue is not a lack of data or analytical capability. It is how those capabilities are applied across the journey.
For Dijohn, the direction of travel is clear. “Insurance needs to stay in touch with how people buy products and services and currently they are not.”
Mincher’s view is similar, but more direct. “Improving quote conversion involves a lot more than simply making forms shorter. Instead, the process needs to be viewed through the lens of making decisions faster, clearer, and more relevant at the exact moment the customer needs them.”
Until that shift happens, the gap between what insurers need to know and what customers are willing to share will continue to define the experience and potentially continue to drive them away.
