Insurance can be one of the hardest subjects for an advisor to raise.
It touches on death, disability, caregiving, retirement, and what might happen to a family when life does not go according to plan. Even clients who know they need insurance may struggle to answer a basic question: Do I have the right amount?
The tools available haven’t made that easier. Most are disconnected, technical, and built around insurance products rather than the person sitting across the table. And advisors who built their careers around investments may also worry that introducing insurance feels like a sales pitch.
These were some of the experiences that were on our mind when we began developing Insurance Center.
Justin Boatman, Nitrogen’s Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Product Strategy, and Jesse Rosato, Chief Technology Officer, led that work. Here’s what they learned along the way, and why they believe insurance awareness belongs in modern financial advice.
Q: What customer problem led Nitrogen to build Insurance Center?
Jesse Rosato: We know many of the advisors we serve are already helping clients with insurance. We also believe advisors who are not having those conversations often feel like they should be.
The challenge is finding a comfortable way to start. Insurance brings up delicate topics involving death, family, and care. Advisors who come primarily from an investment background may not feel prepared to lead that discussion. Some are also concerned about being perceived as the outdated stereotype of an insurance salesperson.
At the same time, clients have questions. They want their advisor to help them understand whether they have what they need.
Our experience with Risk Number® showed us that a quantitative, client-specific starting point can make a difficult conversation easier. We thought there could be a similar approach for insurance. That led us to begin working on Coverage Number™.
Justin Boatman: There hasn’t been much progress in how advisors talk about insurance with clients. The terminology can feel archaic, and the tools are often separated by insurance type.
That reminded us of how the industry used to discuss investment risk. Advisors had plenty of technical terms, but much of that language didn’t mean anything to the end investor. The Risk Number helped turn that complexity into a discussion that a client could participate in.
We saw an opportunity to do something similar with insurance. Begin with something specific to the client, help them become curious about their coverage, and give the advisor a clearer way into the conversation.
Q: Did personal experience influence how you approached the product?
Rosato: About six months before we started working on Insurance Center, my wife and I went through the process of buying term life insurance. We have young kids, and we were preparing to take a flight without them.
It naturally raised the worst-case question, “If something happened to both of us, would our children be taken care of?”
We worked with an agent we liked, but the process was still daunting. It was difficult to get clarity around what would be enough, what might be too much, and how we could feel confident about the decision.
I came away thinking, “There has to be something we can do to help with this.” That experience stayed in the back of my mind as we began developing the product.
Boatman: My wife and I were shopping for term life insurance around the same time. We had also recently completed our estate planning, so insurance was already part of the conversation at home.
What stood out to me was how much of the process focused on products. It felt like looking at a sheet and choosing among the available options.
My reaction was, “What about me? What is right for my family?” I wanted the conversation to begin with our situation and then move toward a recommendation. That became an important part of how we thought about Insurance Center.
Q: What surprised you during development?
Rosato: I was surprised by how difficult many existing insurance assessments can be from the client’s perspective. Even when the analysis is technically sound, the experience isn’t always friendly or easy to understand.
I was also struck by how easy it is for someone to underestimate their insurance needs.
When people think about replacing income or paying for a child’s education, the numbers can become larger than they expected. The same applies when considering the financial contribution of a stay-at-home parent. Their work has real economic value, but families may not recognize the cost of replacing that work until they walk through the details.
Boatman: I kept expecting to find that somebody had already approached the problem this way.
There is plenty of insurance technology, but much of it’s carrier-specific or designed for a different purpose. We found very little focused on helping an advisor engage a client around overall insurance alignment.
That made the opportunity more interesting. It was no longer just about trying to improve an existing category of advisor software. We were exploring a type of client conversation that technology hadn’t addressed particularly well.
Q: Did any assumptions change as you worked through the methodology?
Rosato: One early assumption was that an insurance assessment could be completed at the household level.
As we worked through different scenarios, it became clear that each person in the household needed to be considered individually. A household might appear to have adequate coverage in total while one spouse has little or no coverage.
The stay-at-home parent is a good example. People may focus on insuring the primary income earner, but the loss of the parent providing childcare and managing the household could create substantial expenses for the surviving spouse.
Looking only at the household total can hide that gap.
Boatman: The cost of long-term care also remained surprising throughout development. Looking at those expenses, and how they can grow over time, reinforces how important it is to begin these conversations before the need becomes immediate.
Q: What was the hardest part of designing Insurance Center?
Rosato: Coverage Number differs from Risk Number in an important way.
There is no wrong Risk Number. It reflects a person’s preferences and comfort with investment risk. Insurance need is more quantitative. Based on the information entered, there may be a gap between the client’s estimated need and current coverage.
We had to find a way to communicate that without making the client feel blamed or judged.
The goal is to create appropriate urgency while preserving confidence in the advisor relationship. A coverage gap should lead to an open dialogue. It shouldn’t make the client feel as though they failed an assessment.
One of the questions we kept returning to was, “How do we share information without making someone feel judged for it?”
Boatman: We also wanted to keep the advisor in the driver’s seat.
Insurance Center should give the advisor a useful framework, not make the decision for them. That influenced our choice to use ranges rather than presenting the result as a pass-or-fail answer.
The advisor knows the client and can apply professional judgment. The technology gives them a clearer way to explain what they see.
Q: How did advisor feedback shape the final product?
Rosato: We met with customers and walked them through early versions of the product. At first, much of what we demonstrated focused on life insurance and long-term care.
The question we consistently heard was, “What about retirement income and annuities?” Those were already part of our thinking, but the response confirmed how important they were to advisors.
That feedback helped reinforce the broader view of the product. Advisors are not looking at one insurance need in isolation. They want to understand how different forms of coverage fit within the client’s financial life.
Boatman: We spoke with advisors about which insurance types should be prioritized, but we also wanted the client experience to remain intuitive.
Our process was essentially to ask advisors what matters, build an experience that would make sense to our own parents, and then bring it back to advisors for testing.
When something is easier for the client to understand, it usually becomes more useful to the advisor as well.
Q: What is the one thing you want advisors to remember about Insurance Center?
Boatman: Every advisor ought to act in the best interest of their clients when it comes to insurance.
That doesn’t mean every advisor needs to sell insurance. It does mean advisors should be aware of how insurance may affect the client’s plan and long-term goals.
Insurance Center is designed to help them begin that exchange.
Bring more clarity to insurance conversations
Insurance needs can be hard to calculate and even harder to raise. Insurance Center gives advisors a client-friendly starting point, with room left for professional judgment and a deeper planning conversation.
Interested in learning more? See how Nitrogen can help your team make complex financial topics easier for clients to understand.
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