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Regarding the complexity of insurance services and customer’s feelings of the need for professional support, the online technologies provide insurance companies the opportunity of customizing their offers thanks to a wide array of interactive Internet-based tools. For instance, e-insurance customers might obtain several insurance services at home, such as purchasing policies, requesting quotes, calculating coverages, and performing simulations in a personalized way (Ettis & Haddad, 2019). E-commerce is a development springboard that offers benefits to firms and consumers. The Internet provides benefits in terms of cost, energy, and time (Toukabri et al., 2015).
E-insurance is a topic that has been little studied (Ettis & Haddad, 2019; Pahuja & Chitkara, 2016). Moreover, the studies were conducted in Western countries and there is a paucity of such research in emerging market economies. The limited number of investigations of e-commerce adoption in the MENA region was related to e-banking, telecom services, and government agencies when they omitted the e-insurance sector (Alzahrani, 2019; Hamad, Elbeltagi & El-Gohary, 2018). This research, focus on the MENA market region to elucidate the determinants of e-insurance acceptance.
In 2017, the MENA insurance marketplace reaches a growth in premiums about 5%, which attaint 39.29 billion USD (Swiss Re Institute sigma No 3/2019). Specifically, according to the report of FTUSA (2018), the premiums of the insurance industry in Tunisia has increased in 2016 by 10.65%. Within, the paid claims recorded an increase of 2.78%. The result for the year improved in 2017 with a surplus of more than 61%. The consolidated balance sheets were released in 2017 a profit rise of 61.4%. In the same vein, in Saudi Arabia, insurance is an important branch of the economic and monetary market (Toukabri et al., 2016). The growth rate of the insurance gross written premiums in Saudi Arabia reached 8.50% in 2019 (Aljazira capital, 2019), and the contribution of the insurance sector to non-oil GDP is 2% (Albilad capital, 2017). Also, a revolution is expected in the sector with the new law authorizing women to drive. United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Morocco remained at the highest of the classification in the MENA region. Then, these three countries detent 68.6% of the total premium, when Qatar occupies fourth with a market share of 8.74%. Moreover, the UAE and Saudi Arabia consist of the largest insurance markets in the Middle East contracted in 2018 (Swiss Re Institute sigma No 3/2019).
Despite the explosive growth of insurance transactions over the last years, the e-insurance share remains below expectations and the insurance industry has been slow to use e-commerce to rise e-insurance adoption and an insufficient sales amount is actually being spent online in these countries. The explaining factors are various. E-insurance adoption is still an emerging issue and governments’ encouragements are in their beginning. The regulation of e-insurance is missing or has not yet been implemented. More importantly, most insurance companies do not deliver any real online value for customers, interfaces are poorly designed, less interactive, less trustworthy, and complicated. Very few companies show an e-insurance strategy. The significant importance of the insurance industry in the MENA market is persuasive to take advantage of the new information and communication technologies.
This paper explores factors affecting e-insurance adoption. This research builds on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to propose a theoretical model to explain customers’ intention to use e-insurance services. Accordingly, the influencing effects of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and attitude are examined. This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the role of these factors in an e-insurance context. The findings will provide recommendations to insurance vendors on how to increase customers' use of online insurance services than conventional offline services.
We begin by exposing the theoretical background of the study. Next, we present the research model and provide supporting literature to the hypotheses and relationships of the model variables. After, we present the methodology and discuss the results. Then, we provide managerial implications. Finally, we expose the research limitations and suggestions for research.