Oktoberfest coverage App Highlights German virtual fashion

For some, being prepared for Oktoberfest means downloading an app that factors you to the nearest restroom or allows you decipher Bavarian dialect. A novelty at this year’s occasion is an online casualty insurance with 50,000 euros ($sixty three,500) in coincidence cowl.

Munich insurer Die Bayerische is selling the one-day policy for five.ninety nine euros, much less than the rate of a liter (0.26 gallon) of beer at the 2-week competition that has grow to be synonymous with the Bavarian capital. The offer, which may be bought on its app and covers injuries suffered below the influence of alcohol, is a “take a look at to look how that is being everyday as a income channel,” said spokesman Wolfgang Zdral.

Provinzial Rheinland, based totally in Dusseldorf, sold a similar warranty earlier inside the yr to visitors of Karneval, the pre-Lenten birthday celebration in which revelers dress up in costume and parade via the streets of Cologne and Dusseldorf, charging 9.70 euros for per week. as the internet and cell telephones displace conventional systems for promoting coverage in the U.S. and the U.okay., German agencies are simplest now waking up to the virtual age.

Allianz SE, Europe’s largest insurer, added an online car insurance ultimate week named “Mein automobile digital+” that charges the equal whether it’s sold over the internet or thru a broker, and may be controlled at the insurer’s internet site, in line with a statement by using the organization.

digital Age

“The better we are on the internet, the greater our customers may be glad,” stated Markus Riess, who heads Allianz’s commercial enterprise in Germany.

The 124-yr-old insurer has attempted various approaches to sell insurance thru the net. It halted a first attempt with a unit named “Allianz 24” in 2009 after tied affiliated agents complained that using the Allianz brand would lure too many clients far from the traditional product. The business enterprise has due to the fact that re-added the offer beneath the AllSecur brand.

The competitive panorama is converting. 20 years in the past almost all contracts in Germany had been bought by way of insurance agents. today, only approximately 1/2 are sold via traditional channels, in keeping with Allianz. One in two customers either buy their coverage immediately online or are seeking for statistics approximately it at the net before going to their broking, the insurer said.

Allianz is spending as tons as eighty million euros over 3 years via 2016 on ways for its eight,600-robust German sales force to make greater use of the net as new competitors floor in its domestic marketplace, Europe’s 0.33-biggest as measured by means of premium income.

internet Revamp

earlier in September, it made over its internet site and product imparting to facilitate net-based sales and offer clients its entire set of policies.

along the Mein auto digital+ product, Allianz additionally sells motor regulations thru its AllSecur arm, which competes with direct coverage offshoots which includes Ergo Direkt, a unit of Munich Re’s primary insurance division, and HUK24, owned by HUK- Coburg. HUK is Germany’s biggest motor insurer by using wide variety of clients.

Dusseldorf-based startup SituatiVe, which gives rules which include the Oktoberfest cowl through a phone app, has offered greater than 10,000 contracts because it started doing business two years ago, said founder Lennart Wulff.

“Our modern top-selling product is a short-time period coverage policy for additional drivers that aren’t included with the aid of a consumer’s existing policy,” Wulff stated in a Sept. 24 interview.

nonetheless Skeptical

Portals that provide tariff contrast over the net including Check24 or Verivox are seeing an growth in policy income.

Munich-based totally Check24 offered seven hundred,000 motor coverage policies inside the financial year ending in March 2014 in comparison with 620,000 a year ago, according to spokeswoman Eva Kollmann. Verivox, primarily based in Heidelberg, offered motor regulations in the “lower five-digit range” last yr and pursuits to triple this with the help of a brand new assessment tool this 12 months, spokesman Toralf Richter said.

whilst newbies enter the marketplace, Germans continue to be skeptical of online financial products. handiest 12 percent of cellular cellphone users in Germany use apps supplied by using insurers, consistent with a survey by way of Steria Mummert Consulting AG, a Hamburg-based consulting organisation with a focus on facts technology offerings.

maximum coverage apps, inclusive of those from Allianz, merely offer preferred records, tariff calculators and emergency contacts. The identical goes for purchases made on the internet, in which offers are normally restrained to simple merchandise together with motor and liability coverage. most people of Germany’s 470 insurers don’t but promote products through their personal internet site.

still, approximately 60 percentage of coverage clients in Germany see the internet as the maximum vital way of interacting with their carrier, according to a 2012 study performed by using control consultancy Bain & Co. Inc. about seventy two percent said that personal consulting is essential to them.