Insurance customers are changing. But the biggest shift isn’t simply that younger generations prefer applications while older generations prefer phone calls.
It’s deeper than that. Different generations are bringing different expectations about speed, trust, education, technology, and control into the insurance relationship.
At the same time, behaviors that started with younger consumers – digital research, self-service, quick comparisons, and on-demand communication – are increasingly becoming everyday expectations. For insurance companies, that means the goal isn’t to build a “Gen Z strategy” and a separate “Baby Boomer strategy.”
It’s about understanding where expectations differ, where they converge, and how to create an experience flexible enough to serve both.
Digital Convenience Is Becoming the Baseline
Customers have spent years getting used to managing banking, shopping, travel, healthcare, and entertainment from a screen. Insurance is being measured against those experiences, too. Consumers increasingly expect faster service, clearer information, and more personalized options, while mobile apps, digital assistants, automated claims tools, and other technologies are changing how customers interact with insurers.
The J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Insurance Digital Experience Study shows that expectations are translating into actual buying behavior. This study indicates that 47% of auto insurance shoppers purchased through digital channels, compared with 35% through agents and 17% through call centers.
The takeaway isn’t that agents or human service are disappearing. It’s that digital no longer feels like the secondary option.
A customer who wants to get a quote at 9 p.m., check coverage from a phone, or upload a document without making a call increasingly sees those capabilities as normal, not innovative.
Younger Consumers Want Education Before the Sales Pitch
One of the more interesting generational changes is how customers build trust before making a purchase. LIMRA research shows that 84% of Gen Z adults use social media for information and recommendations about financial products such as life insurance.
Reliable information, reviews and comments, access to financial professionals, and recommendations from family and experts all play a role in that research process. That creates an important opportunity for insurers.
Instead of treating marketing as the point where a company starts selling, think of it as the point where the company starts making insurance easier to understand. Explain the terminology.
Answer the questions customers are already searching for. Make comparisons clearer and show how coverage connects to real-life situations.
Clarity becomes part of the customer experience long before someone clicks “Get a Quote.”
Price Perception is as Important as Price
Generational behavior is also shaped by what customers think insurance will cost. The 2025 Insurance Barometer Study found that healthy adults aged 18–30 overestimated the median cost of a $250,000, 20-year level-term life insurance policy by about 10 times its actual cost.
The research also found a relatively low level of understanding of underwriting among Gen Z and Millennial consumers. That’s a marketing problem, but it’s also an experience problem.
If customers assume a product is unaffordable or complicated before they investigate it, they may never progress far enough in the funnel to discover otherwise. Sometimes the most effective improvement is a better explainer, a simple calculator, clearer pricing context, or a shorter path from curiosity to an understandable answer.
Being Able to Make a Quick Choice Matters
Younger customers may be accelerating demand for faster digital experiences, but insurers shouldn’t translate that into digital-only experiences. The smarter model is flexibility.
Let customers research independently and start an application online. Give them easy ways to ask questions.
And when the decision becomes complicated, make it easy to reach a real person. Even traditionally lengthy insurance processes are moving in this direction.
Accelerated underwriting uses external data and analytics to reduce some life insurance application processes from several weeks to just a few hours. That kind of change resets expectations.
Once customers experience faster, simpler processes in one area of insurance, slow and unnecessarily complicated processes elsewhere become much more noticeable.
Technology Should Remove Problems, Not People
AI is another part of the generational shift in insurance. Insurers currently use AI across underwriting, pricing, customer service, claims, marketing, and fraud detection.
Consumers using fast digital services, however, increasingly expect similar convenience from insurance providers. Today’s AI technology is highly capable of handling routine questions, organizing information, streamlining processes, and giving customers more control.
That frees people to handle the conversations where human judgment and reassurance matter most. The winning combination isn’t human or digital. It’s digital when digital saves time, and human when human adds value.
One Customer Journey Isn’t Enough Anymore
The practical lesson from generational change is that customers need different ways to move through the same relationship. Someone may discover an insurer through social media, research independently, request a quote online, and then want to speak with an agent before making a purchase.
Another customer may begin with a phone conversation but later prefer an application for billing, policy documents, or claims. Insurance companies don’t necessarily need more channels.
They need the channels they already have to work together. That means consistent information, fewer unnecessary handoffs, clear language, and the ability for customers to move between digital and human support without having to start over.
The Bigger Shift in Customer Expectations
Generational change is about recognizing that expectations are moving. Customers increasingly want insurance to be easier to research, understand, purchase, and manage.
Younger generations may be pushing some of those changes faster, but the benefits aren’t generational, since fewer issues save time for everyone. Clearer information builds confidence, and better-connected experiences make insurance easier to navigate.
For insurers, the opportunity is not simply to modernize because customer demographics are changing. Build a clearer, more flexible experience because customer expectations already have.
The insurance industry needs to adapt quickly and remain open to new ideas. Agility Holdings Group makes investments in InsurTech, HealthTech, and other companies that are aimed at improving care and outcomes.
If you’d like to learn how we can help your organization innovate, achieve your objectives, and stay ahead in the ever-changing insurance industry, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. Contact us today to start.