Regional news: 
New iPhone app foolishly seeks to replace insurance agents
Bob Graham is executive editor at Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.
A new iPhone application seeks to become people’s insurance agent. Released by a North Hollywood, Calif., company, LifeInsuanceAgency.com, the new app offers life, health and property-casualty insurance quotes.
The app for people with iPhones focuses primarily on life insurance, with the intent of helping “people answer the at-times confusing question: What is the value of their life?” the company said in a statement. “LifeValue calculates the financial value of one’s life and leaves the philosophical questions to be answered by philosophers.”
The statement adds, “Consumers who are interested in calculating their life insurance needs without the assistance of an agent can simply input their information into the application. The LifeValue application will give suggestions on how much life insurance the consumer may want to consider purchasing.”
The application also provides as a “quote finder,” permitting users who own iPhones to “compare life insurance rates from a variety of competitors, [so] they can use the quote search function and receive unbiased, customized life insurance quotes in no time.” The app also can deliver quotes on annuities and auto, health, business, renters, cancer, burial, home, long-term care and disability insurance products.
Insurance purchases, especially life insurance and financial instruments like annuities and LTC products, are complicated, confusing and complex animals, requiring a great deal of thought and planning on the part of the buyer working in concert with a licensed agent or financial service professional.
To reduce the decision on what coverage is right – primarily based on cost and ease – to an on-the-go iPhone review, carried out at a traffic light or waiting for a cup of coffee, is silly, simplistic and wrong.
Perhaps someone needs to to build an iPhone app that unravels the errors consumers will make when going it alone. Yeah, there needs to be an app for that.
6 Responses
- iPhone Apps Says:
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:34 amSoftware should not replace real human insurance agents, but human insurance agents can use iPhone apps for advertising, promotion and staying in contact with clients. The Toy Lounge makes budget friendly iPhone apps for insurance agents, financial planners, and other businesses.
- tony o. Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 11:03 amIt’s sad that some people think buying life insurance is as easy as buying auto insurance. There are just too many variables involved with life insurance and estate planning, even for the “average joe,” and leaving it to an iPhone app is probably not the best way to do it.
Just as buying health insurance is often more complicated than the “exchanges” that some in Congress are suggesting, so is life insurance, and so should decisions on what to buy. - Frank Says:
September 24th, 2009 at 3:33 pmInsurance agents benefit from this app, because all prospects who fill out the quote request form inside the LifeValue app will end up speaking to an insurance agent.
- iPhone insurance Says:
October 7th, 2009 at 10:10 amWhen a new iPhone is purchased, you can be sure the new owner will treat it like a baby for a while, until the novelty wears off a bit, that’s when accidents may well start to creep in!
- Jack Mender Says:
November 30th, 2009 at 1:45 pmIt seems like business is still getting hit hard. Is anybody seeing an upswing in their respective niches? Health reform seems like a mess. I generate long term care insurance leads and annuity leads for the insurance industry, but volume has been terrible in the last two months. I am afraid the worst is yet to come, but maybe it is just my attitude.
- Seth Horner Says:
January 18th, 2010 at 11:52 amIf you can’t beat them, then join them. 20% of the world’s population has access to a PC, and 50% to a cell phone.
