27 February 2025

Insurance Across Multiple Touchpoints: The Key to Increasing Customer Lifetime Value

It’s often said that it’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to find a new one. Here, we have the cornerstone of customer lifetime value (CLV). Keeping a sustained customer relationship, over multiple engagement points, is significantly more valuable than a series of random one-time transactions. CLV is the foundation of strategic decision-making across sectors as diverse as insurance, finance, the automotive industry, and even real estate, but especially for insurance customer retention.

Enter the concept of multi-touchpoint insurance engagement. This means offering simple, accessible insurance solutions across your customer interactions. From banks and automotive manufacturers to real estate firms and mortgage companies, embedded insurance options let businesses transform their routine customer interactions into opportunities for deeper engagement and long-term value creation.

Let’s explore exactly how embedded insurance increases customer lifetime value, and how to make the most of your CLV across company channels.

Customer Lifetime Value in Insurance: The Challenges

As always, the concept is simple – though the execution may not be so. Insurance customer retention is complex, with factors from fiscal responsibility to the customer’s perception of your service muddying the waters. There’s no “magic bullet” that guarantees a specific CLV per customer. Instead, it’s a methodical process of shaping your entire customer ecosystem to encourage engagement and simplify key CLV challenges.

The Retention Struggle

It’s natural to prioritize customer acquisition over customer retention, despite the latter being the more formidable challenge. Banks face high account churn rates, mortgage companies struggle to maintain relationships post-closing, and auto manufacturers frequently lose customer engagement after the initial purchase. Similarly, insurers battle policy lapses and switching behavior. Simple human nature makes this a frustrating and unpredictable challenge.

The Customer Silo

Many businesses, especially larger entities, operate in departmental silos, making for fragmented customer experiences. A bank customer, for example, might interact with multiple departments – from personal banking to mortgage services – without any cohesive engagement strategy. To them, every approach is to the bank as a unified whole. To each department, however, they’re a separate customer accessing separate services. This disjointed approach fails to leverage existing relationships for cross-selling insurance and other value-added services that could significantly enhance customer lifetime value.

Curious about how much this siloing can impact a company? See how bolt was able to help a prominent insurance company re-unify its customer approach for an additional $4 billion in annual premiums.

Competition in the Digital Age

Digital-first companies have gained a significant advantage, and even revolutionized customer engagement, by integrating both financial and insurance services into their broader customer ecosystem. These newcomers have raised consumer expectations for convenience and personalization, putting pressure on traditional businesses to evolve or risk losing market share.

Offering embedded insurance solutions at relevant moments in the customer lifecycle becomes the competitive differentiator that can directly impact both customer retention and their lifetime value. Learn more about how digital insurance solutions helped one financial services company boost their revenue by 75% simply by leveraging bolt’s cohesive digital ecosystem.

CLV Solutions: Boosting Customer Lifetime Value in Insurance

Improving customer lifetime value in insurance needs a thoughtful and multi-faceted approach. You must understand when the customer would be open to value-added products and how they link meaningfully to the customer’s initial needs. Then, ensure they are presented with simple, easy-to-leverage opportunities at the right moment. If you’re ready to leverage embedded insurance solutions for improved insurance customer retention, here’s how to do so.

Omnichannel Distribution Allows for Seamless Engagement

Modern consumers rarely interact with a single company touchpoint. When businesses offer insurance options across web platforms, mobile applications, and in-person interactions, they create multiple opportunities to add value and strengthen customer relationships. Omnichannel distribution is essential for maximum CLV.

Consider a mortgage lender that offers homeowners insurance not just at closing, but also through a digital portal where customers can manage their loan and insurance together. Similarly, auto manufacturers can embed insurance options in the showroom experience, mobile apps, and even service reminders, creating continuous engagement points throughout the vehicle ownership lifecycle.

Note that these touchpoints are not just integrated, but also timed to the customer’s needs. You are creating multiple ways to show customers your value, yes. But, you’re also presenting relevant products at the right moment to meet their evolving needs. Stronger, longer-lasting relationships (and higher CLV) follow.

Proactive, Personalized Communication

Let’s build on that timely concept. Instead of waiting for customers to realize they need a service or product, it’s about anticipating their needs at the right moment. Picture a bank whose customer has recently purchased a luxury item. Will you get the most value from waiting around until they maybe consider insuring it and possibly remember you? Something that may not even occur to them until after theft or damage occurs? Or will you get the value of your insurance coverage in front of them proactively, shortly after the purchase?

Personalization has become key to customer interactions in marketing, driving 40% improvements in revenue generation. It’s no different for financial products. Generically bombarding clients with random offerings wastes their time and yours. Instead, ensuring your value-adds reach the customer at the right moment is critical. With AI-driven analytics, it’s also easier than ever before to anticipate customer needs and deliver personalized insurance recommendations at that right moment.

This level of personalization extends to renewal processes as well. Timely, personalized renewal nudges with relevant policy enhancements can significantly improve retention rates. When customers receive communications that acknowledge their specific situation and offer tailored solutions, they perceive greater value in the relationship, directly enhancing CLV.

Embedded Insurance Solutions in Everyday Transactions

Embedded insurance solutions within your daily transactions, like mortgage insurance partnerships, work for you and your client. You’re creating natural opportunities to enhance their protection, while simultaneously increasing their engagement with you. It’s estimated that the embedded insurance market will top $700 billion by 2029, and there’s good reason for this.

When a real estate platform offers home warranty coverage during the property search process, or when an auto financing company includes car insurance options in loan documents, they create additional touchpoints that extend the customer relationship beyond the primary transaction.

They offer not only immediate value, but also a further customer relationship for long-term engagement. Embedded insurance solutions are a significant market disruptor you can leverage right now, by partnering with bolt.

The Rise of Self-Service Portals and On-Demand Insurance

Today’s consumers expect control and convenience. When a bank’s mobile app includes insurance management capabilities, or when an auto manufacturer’s ownership portal offers flexible coverage options, they create “sticky” ecosystems that customers are reluctant to leave.

On-demand insurance offerings enhance this further. Customers can activate coverage when needed, conveniently. Showing you understand their shifting needs creates loyalty. They feel empowered and in control, instead of passive consumers.

Offering digital-first insurance solutions customers can access on demand is a critical part of creating that enhanced CLV, no matter your industry.

Putting bolt to Work for You

Before you rush to expand your in-house infrastructure to better foster these CLV-generating activities, think again. Working with a partner poised to offer embedded insurance solutions in an easy-to-deploy, scalable, cloud-based digital environment keeps budgets tight while still adding significant customer value.

bolt’s embedded insurance solutions enable businesses across industries to integrate protection products directly into their customer journeys. Through bolt’s platform, banks, auto manufacturers, and real estate firms can offer relevant insurance options to their customers at multiple touchpoints – without building internal insurance expertise or technology.

Additionally, bolt’s flexible API architecture allows businesses to directly embed insurance options in their mobile apps, customer portals, and transaction processes. With these opportunities for value-added, CLV-improving interactions, you have access to multi-touchpoint engagement. And your customers get accessible insurance wherever and whenever they need it.

Boost Your CLV with bolt Today

Offering insurance products is no longer just for insurance carriers. All businesses that offer products and services in need of protective measures should integrate insurance solutions at multiple customer touchpoints. Doing so on-demand, through personalized digital experiences, is the key to building long-term customer loyalty, engagement, and retention.

By leveraging embedded insurance solutions partnerships with bolt, you can improve your customer engagement and retention in one. Businesses can embed insurance seamlessly into their customer journeys at low cost and with no expensive infrastructure overhaul. All while remaining a valuable, top-of-mind provider that serves their customers instead of “pushing product”.

Ready to learn more about how bolt’s digital insurance solutions can help you maximize customer lifetime value? Book a demo now.

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