It's hard to dis-intermediate insurance salespeople

 The WSJ has the story:

How Life Insurance Agents Beat Back a Tech Onslaught. Startups tried to bypass salespeople but now embrace them.  By Leslie Scism

"A decade ago, technology startups were planning to steamroll the stodgy life-insurance industry.

"They thought the glad-handing life-insurance agent who cornered customers at Little League games and closed deals at the kitchen table was a relic. Snazzy websites and sophisticated analytics would replace the one-on-one sales pitches and tedious application process that often involved a medical exam.

"The agents won the battle, and now the tech firms are courting them. Of seven startups that together raised more than $1.2 billion to sell life insurance directly to consumers, at least five now promote services to help agents sell policies, according to Coverager.com, which tracks so-called insurtech activity. One of the startups, five-year-old Sproutt, last month bought an insurance brokerage.

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"Many of the tech firms now better appreciate an old industry adage: Life insurance is sold, not bought.

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"Glenn Williams, president of life-insurance and financial-services firm Primerica Inc., said his company’s more than 135,000 full- and part-time agents are in people’s homes, “drinking your coffee, eating your brownies…getting the sale done.”