Similar to electronic bill payment, online distribution of insurance has a promising future, but results so far have been disappointing, especially to investors. Witness the slide in share price at popular provider: InsWeb, whose stock has fallen from its July 1999 peak of $44/share to the $2.50/share (5/31/00). But also like electronic bill payment, the economic advantage of Web-based delivery make online insurance a sure winner. What we don’t know is whether it will be a few years or a few decades for it to take hold (Table 3).

Table 1

unique monthly visitors (thousands)

Source: PC Data Online www.pcdataonline.com ; Gomez Advisors Spring 2000 Insurance Scorecard; rank among 56 providers, www.Gomez.com ; 5/00 n.r.=not rated.

Table 2

application volume

Source: Piper Jaffray, 4/00

Table 3

$ in millions

Source: Forrester Research, 1999

*In comparison, total industry premiums were approximately $700 billion in 1999