More financially secure women spotlight L&A sales gap

Women make up nearly 47% of the U.S. workforce but account for a larger portion of high-income earners and are starting more of their own businesses. They are projected to be holding the purse strings for $30 trillion by 2030. That would represent 38% of all investable assets, which is more than four times what they controlled just a decade ago. 

Yet life and annuity (L&A) products are often overlooked among women, suggesting a major opportunity for life insurance agents, brokers and advisers to tailor sales strategies and messaging for this increasingly important audience. Consider, for instance, that just 49% of women own a life insurance policy compared to 55% of men. 

With International Women's Day fast approaching on Saturday, March 8, it's an important time to reflect on the growing financial firepower of females marked by a significant wealth transfer in recent years. As more women embark on a road to greater financial empowerment, their need for financial planning and strategic allocation of funds will mount as they take on more responsibility for household spending and saving. 

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Time on their side

The fact that women have time on their side should help close sales. In reaching out to more women, benefit advisers should highlight the fact that they have a longer lifespan than men, suggests Kenna Ulbinsky, operations director for Voluntary Disruption, a division of Silverman Benefits Group. 

Producers need to determine which products that they offer are having the best penetration with female customers or which new-product offerings they need to bring to market. "That's where data can come into play," says Katie Kahl, chief product officer at iPipeline. "From there, you need to be able to take those insights, and as you're in the selling process, use AI to match the right products to the right demographics and the individual needs that they express." 

She explains that it's important to spotlight what's meaningful to their families and be comfortable with transparent choices. It's also helpful to model scenarios to improve their understanding of what coverage is needed based on longer-term life expectancy and the fact that they've typically saved less in general for retirement than men, she says.

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Advisers or agents, of course, will want to communicate the value of L&A products in ways that are going to resonate with females and are personalized to their individual goals with tailored product recommendations, Ulbinsky notes.

Communications also may be tailored to certain dates on the calendar, like International Women's Day or Breast Cancer Awareness month in October. Her firm tries to make its messaging as simple, conversational and unintrusive as possible. "Everything is very straightforward on our open-enrollment system and factual based," Ulbinsky reports. 

Another consideration is to be mindful that women and younger demographics prefer to purchase multiple products from the same person. "If you can bundle life and annuities together, or even taxes or other services, and become that trusted professional, that's going to drive a lot of growth in this segment," Kahl says. 

From a digital perspective, Kahl says the purchasing process must be intuitive, fast and transparent to remove any friction such as avoiding having to wait for a callback. An ability to make instantaneous decisions will enable agents and advisers to upsell or down sell based on customer responses. "All of that is going to come into play in order to get the right placement ratios that the industry is looking for," she adds. 

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AI can help consumers ask questions along the way to matching them with the right products, but it also can be used to drive more advanced underwriting decisions. An ability to ensure that customers will be approved for personalized product recommendations will help close sales. "The last thing you want to do is recommend a product that then can't be underwritten," she cautions.

"The more you can start to personalize those product recommendations and even model out what's needed to meet those goals, generic assumptions are not going to be as valuable," according to Kahl.