Business Chief April 2019

PLYMOUTH ROCK ASSURANCE
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“That’s the key to direct
distribution: how do
we make it easy for the
consumer to buy the
product, while still
feeling well informed?”
—
Tom Lyons,
Chief Operations Officer, Direct Response
Channel, Plymouth Rock Assurance
“In New Jersey, property and
casualty insurance market share has
evolved from being independent and
exclusive agent dominated to more
direct dominated,” Lyons explains.
For example, in 2003, New Jersey was
71% dominated by independent and
exclusive agents. Today those same
agents make up around 47% of the
market. In comparison, the Direct
market share in 2003 was 29% and
now stands at 53%. Plymouth Rock
has had to adapt to this transformation
in the industry while continuing to invest
in and support its independent and
Prudential exclusive agent networks.
Traditionally, the insurer distributed
its products solely through an agency
model. In order to step up and compete
with the evolution of direct writers,
a key element of Plymouth Rock’s
transformation was to build a direct
capability that complemented and
strengthened its agency distribution
offering. “Within our geographic
footprint, you’ll see that a lot of the big,
national direct writers entered our
markets and began gobbling up market
share from the agency channels,” Lyons
comments. “To combat that, we piloted
building out a direct-to-consumer
APRIL 2019