How Insurance Brokers Can Win Millennial & Gen Z Clients in 2025

The insurance brokerage industry faces an existential crisis that most brokers are only beginning to recognize. While traditional brokers focus on serving their existing client base, an entire generation of insurance buyers is choosing to bypass brokers entirely—and the numbers tell a sobering story.

The Generational Shift Threatening Traditional Brokerage

Recent industry research reveals that 73% of millennials and Gen Z consumers prefer mobile-first insurance management experiences. Yet the average insurance broker's client base has an median age of 54 years old, and that number continues climbing year over year. This isn't just a demographic curiosity—it's a preview of an industry in crisis.

Neo-insurers like Leocare have captured 350,000 customers in just five years, while Getsafe reports that 90% of their 550,000 customers are first-time insurance buyers who never considered working with a traditional broker. These companies have raised over €2 billion collectively across Europe, and their entire business model is predicated on one assumption: traditional insurance distribution is obsolete.

But here's what the neo-insurers get wrong, and where smart brokers can win: younger consumers don't actually hate brokers. They hate outdated experiences. They value expert advice, personalized service, and having an advocate in their corner. What they refuse to tolerate is paper documents, business-hours-only phone calls, and waiting three days for a simple insurance quote.

Why Traditional Broker Models Fail with Younger Demographics

The gap between what younger clients expect and what traditional brokers deliver has never been wider. Consider the typical insurance buying journey for a 28-year-old:

The Modern Consumer Experience Everywhere Else: They open their banking app and instantly see their account balance, transfer money internationally, invest in stocks, and apply for a loan—all before finishing their morning coffee. They book travel, order groceries, manage their investments, and control their home security system from their smartphone. Every financial service they use is mobile-first, instant, and available 24/7.

The Traditional Broker Experience: They call during business hours and leave a voicemail. Two days later, they receive a callback asking them to email their information. After sending multiple emails back and forth, they finally receive a PDF quote that they can't easily compare with other options. To make a change, they have to call again. To add coverage, they wait for the broker to contact the insurance company. To check what they're covered for, they dig through their email to find that PDF they saved somewhere.

This friction is why millennials and Gen Z consumers are leaving brokers behind. It's not about trust or value—it's about meeting them where they live, which is on their smartphones.

The Real Cost of Ignoring Younger Clients

Some brokers dismiss this concern with a simple calculation: "Younger clients have less money and buy less insurance, so why should I prioritize them?" This logic contains three fatal flaws.

First, millennials and Gen Z represent the largest generation in the workforce and are entering their peak earning and insurance-buying years. A 28-year-old renter today is a 35-year-old homeowner with life insurance, disability coverage, and umbrella policies tomorrow. But only if you've built a relationship with them now.

Second, lifetime client value compounds dramatically. A client acquired at age 28 could represent 40+ years of premiums, referrals, and increasing coverage needs. Neo-insurers understand this, which is why they're willing to operate at a loss initially to capture these relationships. Traditional brokers who wait until consumers are 45 to engage them have already lost four decades of potential relationship building.

Third, and most importantly, your existing clients are getting older and will eventually age out of your practice. Without a pipeline of younger clients, you're building a business with a built-in expiration date.

The Digital Transformation Dilemma

Once brokers recognize the need to appeal to younger clients, they quickly encounter a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: they can't build the technology these clients demand.

Developing a consumer-grade mobile insurance application costs between €200,000 and €500,000 for the initial build, plus €5,000 to €10,000 monthly for maintenance, updates, and hosting. That's before considering the ongoing costs of app store optimization, user acquisition, customer support infrastructure, and the technical team needed to keep everything running.

For a small or mid-sized brokerage, these numbers are simply impossible. Even larger brokerages struggle to justify the investment when it's not their core competency. And the cruel irony is that even if you could afford to build an app, you'd be competing against well-funded neo-insurers who have already spent millions perfecting their mobile experiences.

This is where many brokers feel trapped. They recognize the problem but see no viable solution. They watch younger clients drift away to direct-to-consumer competitors while feeling powerless to respond.

The False Promise of Pure B2B Tools

In response to broker frustration, a new category of insurtech companies has emerged focused purely on broker back-office automation. Companies like Afori, which recently raised €4 million, offer AI-powered tools that organize broker emails and documents. Muffintech provides conversational AI for internal operations. These tools genuinely help brokers work more efficiently.

But they don't solve the fundamental problem: younger consumers still have a terrible experience. When your client wants to check their coverage at 9 PM on a Sunday, automating your email inbox doesn't help them. When they want to compare their current policy against alternatives instantly, your internal AI assistant is invisible to them.

Pure B2B tools improve broker productivity, which is valuable, but they do nothing to close the experience gap that's driving younger clients to neo-insurers. You become a more efficient broker serving a declining market.

The B2B2C Revolution: Empowering Brokers with Consumer Technology

The solution lies in a fundamentally different model: broker-enabled digital platforms that provide consumer-facing technology while preserving and enhancing the broker relationship. This B2B2C approach gives brokers access to enterprise-grade mobile applications and digital experiences they could never build themselves, while maintaining their role as the trusted advisor.

Here's how it works: Instead of building your own app, you partner with a platform that provides the consumer technology as a service. Your clients download an app that's professionally built and maintained, where they can view all their policies, get instant coverage insights, receive personalized recommendations, and manage their insurance 24/7. But you remain their broker, your expertise is integrated into their experience, and you're alerted when they need guidance.

The platform handles the technology infrastructure, the mobile app development, the user experience design, and the ongoing maintenance. You provide what you do best: expertise, relationships, and personalized advice. Your clients get the modern experience they demand plus the expert guidance that neo-insurers can't provide.

Real-World Implementation: A Case Study Framework

Consider a mid-sized brokerage in Switzerland with 3,000 clients and an average client age of 52. They're writing €4 million in annual premiums but struggling to attract clients under 40. Here's how implementing a broker-enabled platform transforms their business:

Month 1-2: Onboarding Existing Clients They introduce their existing clients to a new mobile app where all policies are centralized. Older clients appreciate the convenience even if they don't use all features. Younger clients within their current base become more engaged, with 40% of clients under 45 actively using the app within 60 days.

Month 3-4: Marketing to Younger Demographics Armed with modern technology, they can now credibly market to millennials and Gen Z. Their messaging shifts from "We've been in business for 30 years" to "30 years of expertise, now with the technology you expect." They start acquiring clients in their 20s and 30s at twice their previous rate.

Month 6: Enhanced Service Delivery The app provides the broker with insights into client needs before they even call. When a client adds a new car to their household in the app, the broker is alerted and can proactively reach out with coverage options. Cross-selling opportunities increase by 35% because the broker has visibility into the complete client picture.

Month 12: Transformed Value Proposition The brokerage is now positioned as a modern, technology-enabled advisory firm. They're winning competitive bids against both traditional brokers (who lack the technology) and neo-insurers (who lack the personalized expertise). Most importantly, their new client age has dropped to 38, securing the next generation of their business.

Five Actions Brokers Can Take This Quarter

The competitive landscape is moving quickly, but brokers who act now can secure significant first-mover advantages in their markets. Here's your 90-day action plan:

Week 1-2: Audit Your Current Digital Experience Put yourself in a 25-year-old's shoes. Try to interact with your brokerage as a digital-native consumer would. How easy is it to get a quote? Can someone check their coverage at 10 PM? How many emails does a simple change require? Document every point of friction.

Week 3-4: Survey Your Existing Younger Clients You likely have some clients under 40. Ask them directly: "How could we better serve you using technology?" Their answers will be illuminating and give you concrete direction.

Week 5-6: Research Broker-Enabled Platform Options Investigate B2B2C platforms that provide consumer-facing technology for brokers. Evaluate them based on user experience, integration with your carrier relationships, implementation timeline, and total cost of ownership. Look specifically for platforms that position you as the trusted advisor while handling the technology.

Week 7-10: Run a Pilot Program Select 50-100 clients (weighted toward younger demographics) and implement a broker-enabled platform with this test group. Measure engagement rates, client satisfaction scores, and whether it creates new cross-selling opportunities.

Week 11-12: Develop Your "Modern Brokerage" Go-to-Market Strategy Based on pilot results, create messaging that positions your brokerage as combining the best of both worlds: cutting-edge technology and experienced expertise. Update your website, social media, and marketing materials to reflect this positioning.

The Competitive Moat of Early Adoption

Insurance is a relationship business, and relationships compound over time. The brokers who capture millennial and Gen Z clients in 2025 will service those clients for the next 40 years. Conversely, brokers who wait will find themselves competing for a shrinking pool of older clients while younger consumers have already established relationships with more modern alternatives.

The technology barrier that once protected traditional brokers has fallen. Neo-insurers have proven that younger consumers will buy insurance digitally, and they've raised billions to capture that market. But the neo-insurers' weakness—their lack of personalized expertise and limited product selection—creates an opening for brokers who can combine modern technology with traditional strengths.

The future of insurance brokerage isn't purely digital, and it isn't purely traditional. It's a hybrid model where brokers leverage technology to deliver experiences that meet modern expectations while providing the expert guidance that algorithms can't replace. The question isn't whether this transformation will happen—neo-insurers and market forces have already decided that. The only question is whether you'll lead this transformation or be left behind by it.

The brokers who thrive in the next decade won't be the ones with the most experience or the largest existing book of business. They'll be the ones who recognized that serving younger clients required meeting them where they are—on their smartphones, with instant access, using technology they trust—while maintaining the personalized expertise that makes brokers valuable in the first place.

The generational shift in insurance buying behavior is already here. The only choice left is how you respond to it.