.Insurance becomes popular target for insurers

Insurance technology and news

Insurance technology and news

ICANN begins accepting applications for new domain names

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization t hat oversees the assignment of Internet identifiers, has expanded the availability of domain names for the sake of the financial services industry. Large companies will now be able to vie for the ownership of identifiers such as .bank and .insurance, as well as variants of these names such as .lifeinsurance and .insure. ICANN is now accepting applications for insurance companies who wish to make use of these new domain names.

Decision to expand domain name availability a controversial issue

ICANN announced that it was planning to expand its offering of domain names at the beginning of 2012. The announcement caused a rift in the Internet community, with some claiming that it was a move to provide large corporations more control over the Internet while others declared it to be a new chapter for the World Wide Web. Whatever the case may be, many insurance companies have emerged in droves to seize claim to the coveted domain names .insurance and those that are associated with their particular industry.

Large insurance companies compete for coveted .insurance name

Among the competitors for the .insurance name is Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. The company believes that the domain name will set it apart from its competitors and make it more easily recognizable for consumers. Allstate has applied for the domains .allstate and .carinsurance. Others have chosen to apply for domain names representative of their own names or popular slogans. For example, Aetna has filed to register .aetna, and State Farm has applied for .onyourside .

New domain names proving to be costly for large companies

Each application costs $185,000. The costs for activating these new domain names are estimated to be around $500,000, with an additional $100,000 annual charge for keeping the names active. Other identifiers are available, apart from .insurance and its associated industries. Amazon and Google are currently competing for the names .book, .buy, and .cloud .

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