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ajstudies
04-13-2007, 03:40 PM
2a says "Compares group vs. individual product vs. government financed markets". I have no idea what this means, exactly, but I thought I could at least include the group vs. individual list (a very short list) and talk about products offered by the govt (especially Canadian govt) and products offered by insurance companies. I don't know about "comparing" private products to govt products b/c for the most part there is no comparison. But whatever.

2b says "Describes common marketing channel to each major customer segment". A while back I made a combined list of distribution channels, for group, managed care, individual, and that seems to fit here. Plus the stuff that segments the market by group size and says, "This size group tends to use consultants," etc. So I think I have this one covered.

2c says "Describe the effect of the distribution channel on pricing and underwriting." I think I remember reading something about good/neutral/bad brokers (in terms of the business they bring to the table) and from personal experience I know that different brokers may get different PADs (to the extent allowable by rate regs), but I don't think I saw the latter in the reading. I've been all through the readings on Markets & Customer Segments and can't find much that fits here. Any suggestions?

2d says "Compares the relationship between different marketing channels and the underlying needs of the consumer." I really have no idea what they are looking for here. Is this another OOPS?

BuckyBadger
04-13-2007, 03:57 PM
Some quick (probably misguided) thoughts off of the top of my head.

2c) for the pricing part, group force field has high initial cost which will have to be priced in to the cost of the product... large companies can negate this somewhat by using a multi-channel model which uses brokers with a lower up-front cost. Not sure how distribution channels relate to underwriting, other than you can use some of the channels (direct to consumer comes to mind) to target certain groups of "good risks" (I don't know if that was in the readings though)

2d) One of the texts mentioned that certain products lended more to a relationship of a broker... I believe they were longer term things like LTC and LTD.... That is all I can think of.