Australians are concerned about their economic future and are now looking to buy life insurance if the price is right.

A new Swiss Re survey says 56% of 20 to 40-year-olds in Australia have said they will buy some sort of life or health insurance.

But this figure is way behind the 78% of Indians and Indonesians willing to buy insurance within the next 12 months.

Most Asian countries’ buying intentions were above Australia’s, with only Taiwan and Japan lower.

Swiss Re Head of Life and Health Client Markets Neil Sprackling says Australians have become prudent after the string of natural disasters this year and the worsening economic outlook.

“A large majority of respondents in Australia (66%) are concerned about their financial future, but only 41% have clear financial plans to follow through,” he said.

“This action gap has only marginally narrowed during the past two years – 64% and 33% respectively in 2009.”  

Mr Sprackling says more than half of Australians say they will buy some insurance as protection, but this is qualified by product cost and their ability to afford the premiums.

“Despite the perception life insurance is expensive, more than half of the survey respondents were willing to pay at or even above the market price for a pure life insurance product,” he said. 

“This perception gap in customers’ minds is an opportunity for the life insurance sector to reach out and provide greater clarity to consumers on the relative cost and value of pure life insurance.” 

About 25% of those surveyed in Australia were willing to pay above market rates, while another 25% would pay the “market rate”. The rest wanted to pay less.

Vietnam has the largest number of respondents wanting to pay less than the market rate.

The internet was the preferred method (64%) of finding out about life insurance in developed markets, while life insurance agents (59%) and TV (52%) were the chosen route for emerging markets.

Social media was one of the least popular methods (15%) of finding insurance information in both developed and emerging markets.

In developed markets, the least popular information source was radio, while in emerging markets it was independent financial advisers.