IPSWICH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2006--The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers, today released findings from its Second Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study of Insurance firms.

Insurance Industry

The report analyzed 52 health care, life and health, and property & casualty insurer websites. According to the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, 85 percent of people go online to research before purchasing insurance.

The insurance industry scored lowest in respecting website visitors - among the 12 industries studied by The Customer Respect Group in the past year -- overall and in every sub-index. The overall average CRI score for insurance firms was 5.1 against the overall average for all companies of 5.7. Property and Casualty companies scored an average of 5.3, Life Insurance 5.2 and Health Care companies, a disappointing 4.8. Findings from this research indicate that insurance companies need to respond better to online inquiries. Twenty-seven percent of email inquiries were completely ignored, over twice the percentage of the general list surveyed in the past year.

The top-scoring insurers and their CRI rating were:

1  Liberty Mutual Insurance Group    Property and Casualty     7.1
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2  AIG Direct                        Property and Casualty     6.8
   The Progressive Corporation       Property and Casualty
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4  AFLAC                             Life and Health           6.7
   GEICO                             Property and Casualty
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6  Kaiser Permanente                 Health Care Plans         6.4
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7  Aetna                             Health Care Plans         6.3
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8  Farmers Insurance Group           Property and Casualty     6.2
   Nationwide                        Property and Casualty
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10 Principal Financial Group         Life and Health           6.0
   The Allstate Corporation          Property and Casualty

The complete table can be found at www.customerrespect.com/default.asp?hdnFilename=BWINSQ206.htm

About The Customer Respect Group

The Customer Respect Group is an international research and consulting firm that uses its CRI and methodology to help companies improve their treatment of customers online. Through the expertise of its research team, together with data collected from over 2,500 website evaluations, it is ideally positioned to perform website audits, recommendation improvements and provide benchmark information. The Customer Respect Group is headquartered in metropolitan Boston. For additional information, visit http://www.customerrespect.com, call (617) 378-3173 or e-mail info@customerrespect.com.

Contacts
George Cohen Communications
George Cohen, 617-325-0011
george@gccpr.com

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© Business Wire 2006