Survey Shows Sizable Opportunity for EBPP in P&C Insurance

Some 73% of homeowner-insurance and auto-insurance customers would be willing to pay their premiums online, yet most of them pay with cash or check and nearly all of them still receive their bills in the mail, according to a new survey. The survey, which points to a significant opportunity for both electronic bill presentment and bill payment in the property-and-casualty insurance market, indicates that 93% of holders of homeowner polices receive paper bills by mail; some 88% of car-insurance customers do. The survey of 503 North American households, selected at random, was sponsored by Computer Sciences Corp., an El Segundo, Calif.-based company that among other things sells electronic bill presentment and payment processing to insurance carriers. CSC says a separate canvass of 350 attendees at a recent conference it sponsored for property-and-casualty professionals backed up the results of the consumer survey. “These surveys prove that customers are willing to pay and be billed electronically for their insurance,” said Ray August, president of the property and casualty insurance division in CSC's financial-services group, in a statement. According to the survey, 56% of auto-insurance customers pay their premiums by cash, money order, or paper check. The remaining 44% pay electronically by some means, with half of this proportion paying by automatic funds transfer from their accounts. Just 10% pay via a Web-based bill-payment service. Among holders of homeowners' policies, nearly three-fourths pay by cash, paper check, or money order. Just 28% pay electronically, with 9% paying via an Internet bill-payment service CSC cites figures from TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass.-based research firm, indicating that billers using electronic bill presentment cut their total billing costs by 20% to 50%, after allowing for the investment in the technology.