A new Internet web extension exclusively for insurance providers and distributors — .insurance — will become available on Wednesday.
Insurance companies, licensed agents/agencies, brokers/brokerages, trade associations, select service providers and government regulators are eligible to register domains in .insurance.
“Similar to the launch of .bank, we’re excited to provide eligible and verified members of the financial services community with new options to boost their online presence, and provide a more secure experience for their customers,” said Craig Schwartz, managing director of fTLD Registry Services LLC, which manages the web extension.
One year after the .bank Internet web extension launched in May 2015, the global number of registrations now stands at over 5,900. In the initial year, 45 percent of banks in the U.S. have registered domain names, according to fTLD. The organization has tracked 2,575 U.S. banks registering a total of 5,212 .bank domain names in this period, including 182 registrations in Iowa.
Bob Skow, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa, said he believes agencies won’t rush out to register new domain names.
“I don’t know the change will be immediately electrifying to the industry,” said Skow, whose organization represents about 1,000 agencies in Iowa. “Most of them rely on the customer base they have. I don’t think there will be dynamic changes overnight.”
Paula Dierenfeld, executive director of the Federation of Iowa Insurers, said her members have not weighed in yet on their plans for the new web extension.
Insurers may want to register their domain immediately as a defensive measure, said Steve Anderson, principal of The Anderson Network in Nashville, a and insurance technology consulting firm.
“At least initially, it won’t be very relevant, and there have been some references in the cyber hacking world that those domains aren’t safe,” he said. “That doesn’t mean for the industry that I wouldn’t go ahead and grab a domain from a defensive standpoint so that somebody can’t use it for negative reviews. While I don’t see it as a primary domain, I do so getting it as a protection so that somebody else can’t get it and do something else with it.”
The .insurance domains are available from fTLD-approved registrars and will initially be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. The current list of registrars is available here.
