Insurance Plans Comparison Site: The New Way to Shop for Insurance

How www.compare-insurance.com.my is injecting the interest back in insurance purchasing
By: N. Nathan

The first thing you’re thinking when you saw that headline must be, “how is insurance shopping different from any other shopping trip?” Well, here’s the answer.

In a typical consumer purchase cycle, a potential customer would decide to get a product, go to the mall, look over the rows of brands and then select one over the others to purchase. This applies from buying toothpastes to cars and houses. The typical purchasing thought process would look something like this;
Stage 1: Decide need mobility. Option of transportation; bike, car, public transport
Stage 2: Decide buy car. Option of car types; SUV, sports, MPV, sedan, coupe
Stage 3: Decide buy MPV. Options of car brands; Toyota Avanza, Nissan Grand Livina etc
Stage 4: Decide buy Toyota Avanza. Buy!

Yet in the insurance industry, the common selling method is to sell the brand first, and then sell the product. The idea is you are supposed to choose the company first, and then narrow down your choices to the products that they have. That’s akin to walking into a shopping mall, picking out one shop, and limiting your choice to the apparels available in that shop.

Or imagine if you walked into a grocery store, and instead of seeing all cereals arranged in a row of shelves, the store had arranged shelves according to brands of products so that all of Nestle’s products from chocolates to instant noodles are in one row of shelf. To compare a couple of boxes of cereal, you’d have to comb through the entire store for all the brands to see which one sells cereals!

Rerouting the insurance purchasing process

If you’re happy with that arrangement, you’ll be satisfied with the current way the insurance industry works. If you’re a picky shopper, or just want to know all your options without having to spend weeks talking to one insurance agent after another to determine which plan suits you best, you may want to take a look at www.compare-insurance.com.my, an original, independent site where you can find and compare insurance policies from a list of insurance companies.

This first-of-its-kind website gathers as many insurance plans as possible and lists them according to category, which the user can then select based on needs. This reverses the purchase process back to the normal process where potential customers can make a selection based on needs first and narrow it down to the brand of product at the tail end of the shopping quest.

For example, if you are looking for an endowment plan for your children’s education, you can list and compare all available plans in just two clicks from two dropdown menus. The first menu determines if you are looking for something for retirement, your child’s education, protection or wealth enhancement. The second filters according to product type such as endowment, term, whole life, investment-linked or takaful.

Now there are hundreds of insurance policies out there. By filtering it down according to these two functions, you will be able to shortlist it to a handful. It is now easier for you to glance through each or research them diligently to finalise your selection.

With www.compare-insurance.com.my, you can also check the estimate cost of insurance and calculate some basic personal finance matters besides look up the glossary for unfamiliar insurance terms.

The site is also adding a listing of insurance agents so that potential customers who found plans they’re interested to know more about can be matched to the respective agents. (If you’re an insurance agent, visit the site and fill out the contact form so you can be listed as an agent in the customer-agent matching service.)

With this method, users get fast response and agents get customers coming to them instead of having to tirelessly beat down doors for business. Everybody’s happy.

More services

www.compare-insurance.com.my is constantly expanding its database of products and refining its services, searches and online capabilities. To check it out for yourself, visit www.compare-insurance.com.my and start browsing for the insurance policy you have always been meaning to get.

If you support the idea behind www.compare-insurance.com.my and appreciate having the opportunity to assess products, please link this site as Compare Insurance Malaysia to your own website, blog or social media front. As this is the first time such a service has been created, this will help spread the word to the public who would likewise want to know that such convenience exists and is available to them.

The author is (usually) a diligent shopper who likes to research, research, research before whipping out the wallet.

Note: The author is also the founder of www.compare-insurance.com.my on a public service mission