This piece is by Conrad Persons, CEO, Grey London
Here’s a question: when was the last time you heard anyone talk about insurance? Not a one-off complaint about their annual renewal price or a lost no-claims discount, but as part of an important conversation about life, risk, or planning for the future.
I’d bet not recently, if ever.
It’s a curious paradox. People today talk about money all the time. The rise of fintech apps, challenger banks and open financial education has made money management part of daily culture. Banking is embedded in our smartphones, our language and our decisions. It’s debated in the media, discussed in WhatsApp groups, and gamified by fintechs who have made money management feel engaging and accessible.
Insurance, by comparison, lives in the shadows. It enters the conversation only when something has gone wrong. And that invisibility has consequences.
It’s no secret that insurance is a highly commoditised market. With little meaningful differentiation between providers, customers generally default to price. More than 60% of customers say a cheaper deal is their main reason for switching provider, and even long-time holdout Direct Line was forced onto price comparison websites last year.
It’s a race to the bottom – one that strips away loyalty, erodes margins and leaves scant room for long-term brand building. And that is especially problematic at a time when industry growth is sluggish (around 2.3% annually in the UK), mid-sized insurers are forced to consolidate, and insurtechs like Marshmallow and Lemonade continue to chip away at market share.
Escaping this spiral will not come from product tweaks or tighter margins. It demands a bigger ambition: making insurance more visible, more cultural, and more relevant in people’s everyday lives. In short, insurers need to define – and own – a conversation that extends beyond policies and premiums.
Banks have done this for years. Some champion financial literacy, others the democratisation of products or the growth of small businesses. HSBC UK’s Small
Business Growth Programme, for instance, provides early-stage companies with resources and confidence to scale beyond just lending them money. Starling’s ‘Make Money Equal’ initiative tackled gender bias in financial imagery, with a free photo library challenging reductive stereotypes and redefining how women are represented in money-focused conversations.
These campaigns are distinctive because they transcended product. They give banking brands a credible voice in shaping culture and public debate, and they inspire trust.
More broadly, by making money more relevant in cultural conversations, banks have helped make it less taboo. People are far more comfortable discussing money today than they were a decade ago. For brands, it’s not just about joining existing conversations – it’s about creating new ones.
Insurance has been slower to follow. There are some promising examples, but as a whole, the industry has yet to stake its claim. What’s the equivalent conversation brands can command in this space?
Perhaps it’s about prevention. Hiscox has invested heavily in cybercrime awareness, equipping SMEs to spot phishing scams so they never need to claim. Vitality has tied health insurance to healthier lifestyles, rewarding people for taking proactive care. In both cases, the insurers shifted from backstop to coach, enabling people to make better choices, reduce risks and in turn unlock more affordable cover.
And the opportunity is far bigger than isolated campaigns. Imagine insurers acting as personal advisers on climate risk, helping homeowners make smarter decisions about where to live. Or working with dating apps to highlight compatibility in attitudes to money and financial risk – two of the biggest causes of relationship breakdown. Or working with schools to teach young people about everyday risks long before they ever become policyholders. Some brands are beginning to explore long-term initiatives like these, but they’re still far from mainstream.
Importantly, these interventions aren’t marketing stunts. They are ways of embedding insurance into daily life, culture and public consciousness. But realising that potential depends on insurers identifying the right conversations to influence.
And that means triangulating three factors. First, is there a current conversation that authentically aligns with your mission and purpose, rather than simply the category at large?
Second, is it a conversation that matters to your audience, where your brand can play a concrete role – whether that’s solving a problem or raising awareness of an issue?
And finally, it’s about taking the creative leap that brings those answers together in a way that feels salient, distinctive and meaningful.
If the industry remains silent, it will remain commoditised, with price as the only differentiator. That’s a fragile and short-sighted position for a sector built on resilience.
So the challenge is simple, but urgent: step out of the shadows, claim the cultural conversation, and redefine what insurance means to people. Otherwise, insurers risk being remembered only as the cheapest option at the point of purchase – and forgotten at every other moment that matters.
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