The volume of “fake data” being entered into comparison quote lead forms has nearly doubled, as more customers fear being pestered with calls.
Contact State, a firm endeavouring to regulate the lead generation sector, found the monthly average of leads rejected by its firewall after being identified as ‘fake data’ was 5 per cent last year.
But in the first month of 2023, this has almost doubled to 9.7 per cent.
The firm works with lead sellers and lead buyers to verify leads, and control how customer details are transferred, to ensure customers are not being ‘tricked’ into inputting their details through a misleading landing page.
It has also found that the number of certificate rejects – which is where the customer data is real, but validity of their journey has been questioned – has risen from 12 per cent to 18 per cent since last year.
Contact State founder, Alain Desmier, said the data suggests consumers are becoming much more savvy in the way they respond to online forms that claim to be offering instant quotes.
“They will respond with fake data if they think they are about to be collected as a lead for a call back,” he said.
In recent months, the advertising regulator has upheld a handful of rulings against the practice of life insurance lead generators misleading customers by promising them an online comparison quote only to feed their data to a third party.
Last week, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Swiss lead generator Digital Results Group on this basis, a firm which operates three UK-based websites for life insurance.
The regulator had already ruled against MPJ Invest Ltd earlier this month for the same reason.
This ruling forms part of a wider piece of work on lead generation marketing the ASA has been conducting, and which FTAdviser revealed the beginnings of back in 2021.
Desmier told FTAdviser that misleading lead generation happens because incentives across the industry are “misaligned”.
“It is allowed to happen because the regulators refuse to hold lead buyers accountable,” he explained.
So far, only lead generators have been called out by the ASA.
Last year, LifeSearch founder Tom Baigrie called on insurers to hold third-party agents to account for the sake of the protection industry’s collective reputation.
His focus was on non-advised life insurance sales, suggesting pressure sale tactics in this arena were bleeding through into the reputation of the advised protection world.
“How many people have fled from protecting themselves because of that experience; what must they think of a market that allows it?” Baigrie asked in March last year.
“Insurers need to accept that they are the gatekeepers to our collective reputation.”
Desmier said Contact Sate is working on new ways of remunerating marketing partners so that they share the upside and the liability of a customer journey.
“The message and implication of this is clear - if you generate or buy leads from a website that is promising 'quotes' but in reality, the customer needs to give their details before they get that quote, you are going to either have to change that messaging to make that clear, or create some sort of pricing platform or indicative quote engine so the consumer can see you are truly serious,” he explained.
“With consumers becoming more and more suspicious of the validity of the ‘quotes’ they are being promised, and the consumer duty clamping down on misleading advertising that pulls a customer into a journey they did not want or expect, the invalid rate for lead generation is only going to get worse.”
ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com
