TransUnion Finds Auto Insurance Shopping Steadily Declining Since 2012

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - May 13, 2014) - Consumers continued to curb their insurance shopping in the last year, according to the new TransUnion Auto Insurance Shopping Index. The latest findings were released at TransUnion's Insurance Summit in Chicago, a two-day gathering of insurance carriers from across the nation.

Shopping rates for auto insurance are down about 3% in the 12 months ending Feb 2014 relative to a year earlier. While 15.0% of the credit-active population shopped for new auto insurance policies in the 12 months ending Feb 2014, this was down from 15.4% for the 12 months ending Feb 2013.

"We are finding that despite billions of dollars being spent on advertising each year, the percentage of consumers shopping for auto insurance has been dropping for approximately the last two years," said Mark McElroy, executive vice president of TransUnion's insurance business unit. "This places additional pressure on insurance carriers as their pool of potential customers declines."

Similarly, declines for auto insurance shopping rates were observed for the full years of 2012 to 2013. While 15.2% of the credit-active population shopped for new auto insurance policies in 2013, this was down from 15.7% for 2012.

TransUnion's latest release also found that auto insurance shopping rates peak in March with another similar rise in August. Auto shopping is traditionally lowest in November and December.

"It's interesting to see such high incidences of auto shopping in March, though some of this could be attributed to people making new car purchases with work or tax return cash inflows received at the beginning of the year. It's also a possibility that there is pent up demand for auto sales in March as weather begins to improve in much of the nation," said McElroy. "We also observed more auto insurance shopping in August, which may be a result of students looking to purchase new vehicles prior to going back to school."

The TransUnion Auto Insurance Shopping Index information is being used to generate interesting new solutions for insurance carriers. These include:

1) Reporting - knowledge of market and company specific trends can help marketers and product teams.

2) Triggers - knowledge of shopping behavior can help with marketing acquisition, cross/up selling and underwriting for existing customers.

3) Segmentation - knowledge of specific consumers' long run shopping patterns can help segment consumers.

4) Price optimization - knowledge of consumer shopping patterns helps in understanding consumer price sensitivity.

Please contact John Ittner (jittner@transunion.com) with questions about these services.

About the TransUnion Auto Insurance Shopping Index

The TransUnion Auto Insurance Shopping Index is derived from TransUnion's extensive database of credit data, which includes information on more than 430 million auto insurance shopping transactions from 2009 to Feb 2014. The Index focuses on the credit population, highlighting TransUnion's unique data. It also explores for a subset of the full data shopping rates for insurance policy holders. The Index excludes data from auto insurance customers in California and Massachusetts, where credit-based insurance scoring information is not used for auto insurance rating or underwriting. For more information on the TransUnion Auto Insurance Shopping Index, please visit: http://transunioninsights.com/autoshopping.

About TransUnion

As a global leader in credit and information management, TransUnion creates advantages for millions of people around the world by gathering, analyzing and delivering information. For businesses, TransUnion helps improve efficiency, manage risk, reduce costs and increase revenue by delivering comprehensive data and advanced analytics and decisioning. For consumers, TransUnion provides the tools, resources and education to help manage their credit health and achieve their financial goals. Through these and other efforts, TransUnion is working to build stronger economies worldwide. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Chicago, TransUnion reaches businesses and consumers in 33 countries around the world on five continents. www.transunion.com/business