1. The Current Situation of Internet Insurance Innovation
According to the "Internet Insurance Industry Development Report" released by the Insurance Association of China in early 2015, according to the classification of companies operating Internet insurance business, There are 44 personal insurance companies and 16 property and casualty insurance companies, accounting for 45% of the 133 property and life insurance companies in the industry. Many insurance companies, including PICC Property & Casualty, Taikang Life, Ping An Life, Pacific Insurance, Tianan Property & Casualty, etc., have taken the lead in staking their claim online. The deep integration of Chinese insurance companies with the Internet has fully arrived.
First of all, at the regulatory level, last month, the long-awaited "Interim Measures for the Supervision of Internet Insurance Business" was finally released by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, which marked the formation of basic regulatory norms for China's Internet insurance business. With the basic idea of ??encouraging innovation, preventing risks and protecting consumer rights and interests, the "Measures" clarify the basic rules for the operation of Internet insurance business in terms of operating conditions, operating areas, information disclosure, supervision and management, etc.; it stipulates the sales, operation and management of Internet insurance business. Insurance business activities such as underwriting, claims settlement, surrender, complaint handling and customer service should be managed and responsible by insurance institutions; the content and methods of business entities performing information disclosure and notification obligations have been strengthened, and efforts have been made to resolve information opacity and information that may exist in autonomous transactions on the Internet. information asymmetry and other issues to maximize the protection of consumers’ rights to know and choose.
Secondly, in terms of insurance entities, as early as 2013, PICC launched "Pocket PICC", claiming to be insurance at your fingertips; last year, with the slogan "Easy claims settlement, just in Tianan" Tianan Property & Casualty Insurance’s “Che YiChen” APP was launched across the country; subsequently, insurance online service platforms such as “China Pacific Insurance”, “Dadi Tongbao” and “Taikang Online” sprung up. It can be seen that the pursuit of service and experience has become a trend for various insurance companies. The main direction of competition among insurance entities. At the same time, while focusing on insurance itself, various insurance companies are also extending their channels to the periphery, carrying out varying degrees of cooperation with P2P platforms, credit guarantee agencies, etc. The following is the top 15 list of 60 property and life insurance companies that provide Internet services in 2014, evaluated by the Insurance Association of China from three aspects: service innovation, technological innovation, and channel innovation:
II , Risks Behind Internet Insurance Innovation
It should be said that Internet insurance innovation based on improving customer experience is in the right direction. As an emerging field, Internet insurance has huge room for development, but at the same time, Internet insurance innovation also brings a series of risks and problems. Judging from the risks that have been exposed so far, they mainly include misaligned insurance product innovation, a sharp increase in consumer complaints, expanded consumer moral hazard exposure, and inadequate risk assessment and control.
(1) Innovation in insurance products
Since the establishment of ZhongAn Online invested by "Three Horses" at the end of 2013, it has driven the development of insurance products by major insurance entities in China. Innovation boom. Innovative insurance types such as theft insurance, high temperature insurance, return insurance, marijuana insurance, and World Cup football hooligan insurance are constantly emerging. Life insurance companies have also launched so-called "throwing" products based on the WeChat platform, such as seeking care, love upgrades, and life buoys. Each one is more fancy than the last. Among them, some insurance types are beginning to take shape, but most of them are innovation for the sake of innovation. For example, few copies of the World Cup football hooligan insurance were sold from the beginning to the end. As a result, the originally relatively cheap 3 yuan/ copy was directly reduced to 1 cent/ copy in the later period, turning it into a complete gimmick. What's more, they have developed smog insurance, moon viewing insurance, lottery insurance, etc., which seriously deviate from the essence of insurance.
(2) Consumer complaints increased sharply
According to the "Notice on Insurance Consumer Complaints in the First Half of 2015" recently released by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, in the first half of 2015, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission A total of 157,544 calls were transferred to the 12378 complaint and rights protection hotline nationwide, a year-on-year increase of 40.24%. Among them, complaints about bundled sales of Internet products account for a certain proportion. The reason is that the Internet insurance business of many insurance entities is developing rapidly, but their management and service capabilities are seriously insufficient. They focus one-sidedly on front-end sales network, but back-end operation management is still traditional thinking. The front-end and back-end are not matched, making it easy to return when buying and difficult to return, leading to consumer complaints.
(3) Expansion of consumer moral hazard exposure
Currently, all insurance entities have basically launched simple compensation in claims services, that is, insurance companies pay for claims below a certain amount ( Simple compensation is implemented for insured accidents ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 yuan. Consumers can use the APP platform launched by the insurance company to transmit the accident scene information to the backend of the insurance company by taking photos or videos. The insurance company will immediately pay the compensation after review and confirmation. The entire process It usually takes about 5 minutes to complete. It should be said that this approach has greatly simplified the claim settlement process, shortened the claim settlement time, and made it more convenient for consumers. However, objectively speaking, we have to face the current basic situation in the country. The average moral level of the people needs to be improved. Repair shops and 4S stores are engaged in organized mass counterfeiting. Insurance fraud is endless. These will undoubtedly increase the risk exposure of insurance companies. The mouth expands infinitely.
(4) Risk assessment and management are not in place
Insurance is essentially a risk transfer arrangement and should be supported by quantifiable data. At present, many product innovations lack basic Rate determination, cost estimation and other procedures. At the same time, insurance pays attention to the law of large numbers. If a product cannot achieve a certain scale, the level of compensation will be extremely unstable and risk management will be impossible.
3. Risk management of Internet insurance innovation
(1) Insurance product innovation: returning to the essence
Insurance, in the legal and economic sense, is a a risk management approach. Therefore, the basic principle and bottom line of insurance product innovation is that innovative products have the possibility of risk management, that is, through the accumulation of experience and effective management measures, the risk of the insurance subject can be reduced. This is the fundamental reason why force majeure such as earthquakes and hurricanes are generally not covered by insurance, because so far, humans have not been able to affect the occurrence of the above-mentioned events through their own actions. On the other hand, current innovations in insurance products, whether it is smog insurance, moon viewing insurance, or even high temperature insurance, basically break through this basic principle.
I think there are two main reasons why this situation occurs. One is the insurance itself. In the current insurance market, the homogeneity of scale products is very serious, and the terms are basically the same. , basically the same rates, basically the same services. In this case, the goal of product innovation is no longer the "needs" of customers, but the "eyeballs" of customers. I remember that a few years ago, an insurance company developed a type of insurance called "Drunk Driving Insurance." It never sold a single policy, but the company was very happy from top to bottom because this product attracted a lot of attention at the time, including from the news media. , regulatory authorities, peer companies and consumers, which has greatly improved the company's visibility. The second is related to the current general environment of the entire society. At present, from the collective to the individual, under the command of materials and economics, every social organization and cell is trying its best to obtain as many resources as possible, while ignoring the utility and value of the resources themselves. . As a saying goes, as you walk, you forget the purpose of setting out.
(2) Insurance risk management: big data as a tool
1. Application of big data in rate determination. The rate setting of insurance policies is the source of risk management of insurance companies and is also a very important task. The main purpose is to make the set rate correspond to the risk level of the policy holder. The smaller the risk, the lower the rate. Try to do it as much as possible. to fairness. The key issue in determining the rate is to find out the "risk factors or variables that affect compensation expenditures." In fact, the life table is a classification of age, one of the "risk factors or variables that affect compensation expenditures." For another example, in car insurance pricing, the degree of urban traffic congestion, the age, driving experience, gender of the driver, the newness of the car, etc. may all be "risk factors or variables that affect the compensation expenditure", and these factors or variables can be determined through a large number of Data analysis and processing to determine.
2. Application of big data in risk assessment. In the era of big data, risk assessment is no longer limited to historical data of companies and industries. Both the description of risk characteristics and the acquisition of data resources are more convenient. First of all, in the field of auto insurance, which accounts for more than 70% of the property insurance market, insurance companies can obtain three levels of data to support risk assessment. The first level is the core level, including company and industry data, and the second level is the close level, including car models, Data on vehicle zero-to- whole ratio, second-hand cars, etc.; the third level is the peripheral mobility layer, including the use of vehicle-mounted sensing equipment to collect driver behavior data.
At the same time, for actuaries of insurance companies, more and wider data acquisition can more accurately identify potential risks of individual objects, establish more effective data models, and continuously improve and increase actuarial accuracy to help judge and assess risks and risk reserves.
3. Application of big data in anti-claims fraud. While ensuring data resources, through complete and diversified data (data including but not limited to the company's internal policy and claims history records, industry data, credit records, public social network data, criminal records, etc.), Supplemented by effective algorithms and models to identify possible fraud patterns in claims, potential fraudulent behaviors of claimants and possible fraud chains, this should be the main direction of anti-claims fraud in the future. For the entire Chinese insurance industry, establishing an industry-level insurance data information platform as soon as possible is the key to combating claims fraud. At present, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other provinces and cities have achieved full sharing of claims information data, and the effectiveness of anti-claims fraud in these areas has been significantly improved.
4. The core of the application of big data in risk management in the insurance industry—data integration. At present, the data of insurance companies include peer data from industry platforms, front-end customer APP import (or on-site ordering) data, mid-end intermediary, channel, claims, and call data, and back-end financial collection and payment data. In addition, there is also automobile pricing system Spare parts data, personnel data in the personnel system, risk control data in the audit risk control system, etc. are diverse and complex. Therefore, there is an urgent need to establish a big data platform for data integration, unify data storage and transmission standards, and integrate data from different systems. Get through it and conduct data mining according to different needs.
(3) Insurance risk control: application of new technologies
In the future, the application of new technologies and new equipment will become the main way to control risks in the insurance industry. In the underwriting process, data analysis technology based on big data will present various data and characteristics of the insurance subject in a three-dimensional manner at the first time, providing first-hand information for underwriting decisions and policies, and controlling risks from the source. In the claims settlement process, new technologies and new equipment will also be widely used. In the field of vehicle insurance, wireless electronic devices mounted on the vehicle use communication networks to extract static and dynamic information and record behaviors of vehicles, roads and drivers, thereby supervising the behavioral risks and moral risks of drivers. , and carry out pre-accident prevention, mid-accident response and post-accident processing, thereby changing insurance accident management from reactive to proactive and reducing claims costs. In the field of life insurance, wearable devices that can monitor human health in real time are used to obtain and segment the human health and life and death probabilities of different groups and ages, and provide customers with timely advice on diet, fitness, etc., thereby reducing the cost of insurance. people’s medical expenses. In the field of home property insurance, smart home systems can be used to remotely monitor homes and promptly detect and mitigate risks. When a gas leak or water pipe bursts in the home, the valve can be automatically turned off to reduce losses.
The development of anything must have corresponding supporting management measures, and Internet insurance innovation is no exception. Internet insurance innovation will be on the road for a long time to come, and risk management based on Internet insurance innovation will also follow closely.
Extended reading: How to buy insurance, which one is better, and step-by-step instructions to avoid these "pitfalls" of insurance