Decoding Customer Adoption of Insurtech with a Focus on Trust in Digital Insurance Platforms

Abstract

The insurance industry has undergone a digital transformation that has reconfigured consumer assessment, buying, and engagement with insurance services. This paper investigates the adoption of InsurTech platforms by customers through a combination of the Extended UTAUT and TAM with a trust-based approach, where trust is used as a mediating factor. The model has included perceived usefulness, ease of use, security, social influence, and enabling settings to describe the behavioral intent towards digital insurance services. Data were collected from 395 respondents residing in Kerala through the convenience method, and the sample was calculated through the Cochran formula, ensuring adequacy for statistical analysis. The structural model (PLS SEM) has a good explanatory power with values of R² equal to 0.784 and 0.713, respectively, in trust and behavioral intent. Based on the findings, security perceptions have the greatest effect on trust, followed by usefulness perceptions, and finally perceptions about the ease of use; however, social influence did not significantly affect the research subjects. Behavioral intention is greatly motivated by trust. Measurement model fulfills the criteria of reliability and validity, and all constructs have values above the cut-off criteria for Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability, and average variance extracted. Overall, the research emphasizes that trust is the most important mechanism connecting technological and security perception with InsurTech adoption that can be used to improve customer engagement.