Insurance Lead Quality: What Buyers Actually Want and How to Deliver It

Key Takeaways

Insurance lead buyers have a simple complaint: most of the leads they buy are garbage.
The US insurance lead market is mature and well-priced.
Lead quality at the infrastructure level comes from four operational capabilities:
If you are buying insurance leads, ask your provider three questions: (1) How do you deduplicate leads before delivery?

The Setup

Insurance lead buyers have a simple complaint: most of the leads they buy are garbage. According to a 2025 Insurance Journal survey, insurance agents report that fewer than 20% of purchased leads convert to a quoted policy, and fewer than 5% convert to a bound policy. At $30-$80 per shared life insurance lead, a buyer purchasing 500 leads per month and converting 5% is paying $15,000-$40,000 to write 25 policies. The unit economics only work if the leads are genuinely qualified.

The conventional lead generation model treats all form fills equally. A consumer who fills out three fields in 8 seconds gets the same treatment as one who completes a 12-field form with accurate coverage details over 90 seconds. Both get sold to the same buyer at the same price. The buyer cannot tell the difference until they start dialing -- by which time they have already paid.

Lead quality is not a subjective judgment call. It is measurable, and the infrastructure that generates, scores, and routes leads determines whether buyers get data they can work with or data that wastes their time. The gap between a high-quality lead operation and a low-quality one is not marketing -- it is engineering.

What the Data Shows

The US insurance lead market is mature and well-priced. Current market rates (2025-2026) reflect the value buyers place on different quality tiers:

Lead Type	Shared Price	Exclusive Price
Auto Insurance	$15-$45	$25-$70
Life Insurance	$30-$80	$50-$150
Annuities	$50-$120	$80-$200+
Personal Finance	$25-$60	$40-$120
Legal (HOA/Property)	$25-$50	$40-$100

(Source: industry benchmarks and LGaaS pricing framework, 2025-2026)

The spread between shared and exclusive pricing tells the quality story. Buyers will pay 2-3x more for a lead that only goes to them because exclusive leads convert at 3-5x the rate of shared leads, according to QuoteWizard's 2024 agent conversion study. But exclusivity alone is not enough. A lead that is exclusive but contains fabricated data -- a fake phone number, an inaccurate zip code, or a coverage amount that does not match the consumer's actual situation -- is worthless at any price.

Stealth Labz infrastructure addresses lead quality through multiple layers in PRJ-01. The platform processes 616,543 leads (as of January 2026) with identity resolution across 958,937 contact points. The identity resolution system uses three-tier matching (unique identifier, then email, then phone number) to deduplicate leads, merge data from multiple touchpoints, and build a unified profile before routing. A lead that enters the system missing a phone number but later fills out a second form with that phone number gets the data merged automatically -- the buyer receives the complete record, not the incomplete one.

The platform's blacklist contains 306,676 entries (as of January 2026). These are known-bad records: serial form fillers, disconnected phone numbers, complainers, and previously returned leads. Blacklist checking happens before routing, so buyers never see leads that have already been flagged. This single feature eliminates a category of waste that most lead generation operations handle reactively (after the buyer complains and requests a credit).

PRJ-07 captures insurance leads through multi-step quote funnels across 13 US insurance verticals. Multi-step forms -- where the consumer progresses through 3-5 screens of qualifying questions -- serve as a quality filter by design. A consumer who completes only the first step (zip code and basic info) is less qualified than one who progresses through vehicle details, driver history, and coverage preferences. The form architecture itself separates serious shoppers from casual browsers.

According to a 2025 J.D. Power study on insurance shopping behavior, 68% of consumers who complete a multi-step quote form with 8+ fields have a genuine intent to purchase coverage within 30 days. That intent signal is worth more to a buyer than any amount of demographic enrichment.

How It Works

Lead quality at the infrastructure level comes from four operational capabilities:

Data completeness. A lead with a verified phone number, email address, full name, accurate zip code, and relevant coverage details converts at higher rates than a partial record. PRJ-01's enrichment layer (via VND-01 integration and persona mapping with 26 persona categories) fills gaps in the original form submission -- adding demographic, geographic, and professional attributes from third-party data sources. The enrichment happens before routing, so what the buyer receives is a completed profile, not raw form data.

Deduplication and identity resolution. When the same consumer fills out forms on three different sites, they should appear as one lead, not three. PRJ-01's identity resolution matches across unique identifiers, email addresses, and phone numbers, then merges the data into a single verified lead profile. This prevents buyers from paying for the same consumer three times and ensures the most complete version of the record is the one that gets delivered.

Behavioral quality signals. Form completion time, number of steps completed, page scroll depth, and return visit patterns all indicate buyer intent. A lead that took 3 minutes to complete a 5-step form carries a stronger intent signal than one that autofilled a single-step form in 4 seconds. PRJ-01 tracks 530,077 lead activities and 503,412 lead events (as of January 2026), providing the data layer to score leads based on behavioral signals, not just demographic data.

Post-delivery feedback loops. The highest-quality lead operations track what happens after delivery. Did the buyer contact the lead? Did the lead answer? Did it convert to a quote or a policy? PRJ-01's revenue attribution system tracks the full lifecycle from first touch to lifetime value, using lead-level revenue tracking through the LeadTransaction model. This data feeds back into scoring models, so the system gets better at predicting which leads will convert over time.

What This Means for Business Operators

If you are buying insurance leads, ask your provider three questions: (1) How do you deduplicate leads before delivery? (2) What is your blacklist size and how often is it updated? (3) Can you provide behavioral data (form completion time, steps completed) alongside the lead record? If the provider cannot answer these questions specifically, the quality controls are minimal or nonexistent.

If you are generating insurance leads, your quality infrastructure is your competitive advantage. Buyers who get consistently high-quality leads renew their contracts and increase volume. Buyers who get low-quality leads churn within 30-60 days and leave negative reviews that poison your reputation with other buyers. The infrastructure cost difference between a high-quality and low-quality operation is small compared to the revenue difference: an operator delivering leads that convert at 15% versus 5% can charge 2-3x more per lead and still retain buyers longer.

References

Insurance Journal (2025). "Agent Survey." Insurance agent adoption and technology usage.
QuoteWizard (2024). "Agent Conversion Study." Shared vs. exclusive lead conversion benchmarks.
J.D. Power (2025). "Insurance Shopping Behavior Study." Consumer insurance buying patterns.
Keating, M.G. (2026). "The Compounding Execution Method: Complete Technical Documentation." Stealth Labz. Browse papers