Reviewing the trajectory of history often allows us to anticipate the unknown future, or at least make fewer mistakes.
Early in 2009, the chairman of an insurance group asked internally, "Why aren't we selling insurance online? So the product process system and other quickly ready, but delayed not online, the reason is that the group's life insurance chairman worried about the impact of traditional business, did not nod.
Before this, only Taikang is trying to adhere to the online sales of long-term insurance, this period of history can be summarized as follows: large insurance companies to open up the land, third-party platforms to water, e-commerce platforms to help, which some of the pioneers to adhere to, flexible and adaptable, has been a gradual gain.
Two years, the line has basically established three types of business: official website direct sales B2C, third-party platform distribution B2B2C, the agent online A2C, and agents, bancassurance, telemarketing, agents and other "traditional" models stand shoulder-to-shoulder.
The main features of this period:
1. A variety of colors
Insurance companies set up a special organizational structure, from the project team to professional sections, independent departments, and joint IT departments to build platform products; or Taobao and other large platforms, the explosion of iterative, the third-party professional (C&M, WiseChoose, etc.) and the part-time platform (Ctrip, CCA, mobile, etc.) business is growing steadily; the regulatory attitude is clear, more and more agents online A2C. ; regulatory attitude is clear, more and more consumers accept to buy insurance online ......
2, chaos
Insurance companies are swarming online sales, there is no lack of impure motives: or due to the original model stagnation of the forced to choose, or over-ambitious, or climbing mentality, peace of mind down-to-earth evidence, openness to embrace the Internet The first is the one that has the most important role to play in the development of the Internet.
So there is no planning, behind closed doors, figure fast on the official mall there, lack of innovation, a number of insurance companies IT department to find suppliers to 3 months on a mall website, more imitation, less innovation. Impatience, pulling the wagon on the railroad tracks, a run to fall apart.
3, the undercurrents
Three horses Zongan as the first, rumors of the second Internet insurer will land in Shenzhen, China Life, Pacific, Xinhua, Taiping, Anbang, Sunshine, Life, Qianhai, etc. have started or planning to do independent e-commerce company, other industries have also tested the water through e-commerce to get involved in the insurance, where to go, Coco West, Suning ... ...
4, product thin
"Low value, low viscosity, standardized" car insurance, travel accident insurance, medical insurance, financial insurance is the main, rare long-term, high-value insurance, complex insurance, but the transaction is not completed online. The main reason is that the industry is not yet unified understanding, not dare to breakthrough attempts, the objective reason is the network ecological infrastructure supporting measures are not yet perfect.
Online sales product homogenization and lack of innovation is one of the biggest bottlenecks restricting the explosive growth of insurance e-commerce.
5, the opportunity is tempting
2011-2013 insurance test water to really touch the network, the financial Internet concept is surging, big data, cloud, SNS, mobile, payment, WeChat and so on, non-stop tease the insurance company that the quiet heart, wearable and in-car equipment has given rise to a new opportunity for UBI.
Previous attempts at product innovation by Huatai, Zhong'an, Taikang, PICC and others have begun to take shape, and online sales of high-value, long-term insurance will be a new opportunity that will dazzle since.
How the Internet will change the insurance industry
Perhaps some people foresaw this wave of the Internet, but could not see exactly how to change.
The Internet will provide a large number of new things, there is no industry body can all cover, wrap up all the things, competition + cooperation, merger will be the new landscape.
First look at a basic business formula:
Whether it is insurance and other "traditional" industries, or e-commerce "Internet" companies, as long as the business activities are centered around this formula, then there is no
Relatively speaking, although the traditional enterprises in the P and T of these two aspects are not as good as the Internet business, but the five work are the same, the most important thing is that the ultimate business goal is the left side of the equation: M, that is to say, this is a universal formula: to find or create markets, demand, provide products or services to meet it, from which to earn profits. If this formula and theoretical basis does not exist or changed, can only be called subversion, right?
Business model is the bias of these five, the path is different, the essence is not the same: Blue Ocean is the model to find a new P after the use of products and services V to meet the core competitiveness is the unique place of the R, T, C.
The Internet is more focused on excelling in P, R, such as discovering new markets, fan management; while the traditional industry is biased in favor of V, T, C, focusing on revenue, profits, statements whether to look good.
Based on this formula, the Internet will comprehensively improve the entire insurance industry ecosystem, including the existing consumer market, agents, intermediaries, e-commerce platforms, insurance companies, regulators, the six elements, will also give rise to a seventh element of the industry: the public **** basic resource providers, let's call it the "very 6 + 1".
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1, the consumer market: diversification of demand, consumer personality and thought behavior is valued
Internet information symmetry effect, so that the status of consumers rise, service requirements are increasingly high, and the willingness to consume insurance from the invisible and visible, consumer initiative, frequency and amount of enhancement, bringing a wider range of insurance product innovation space: "insurance living "Insurance life" has become an important innovation direction, "service as product" has risen from a hidden concept to a visible indicator, consumers no longer buy insurance for the sake of buying insurance, insurance with the Internet has penetrated into the clothing, food, housing, transportation, entertainment, shopping, medical care and even emotional life in a silent manner, and has been upgraded from an economic compensation to a tool for hedging against negative experiences, which will give rise to a myriad of new and innovative insurance products. Derived from countless fancy new insurance products, perhaps many insurance products do not look like insurance at all, more like a standard of service, such as the hot moon insurance and cold sun insurance, etc. (Curious that these two products are from the same company, the treatment of how to be different from the far pinch), as well as the nakedness of the insurance, the insurance of the third party, the insurance of the pregnancy (the marriage is risky, the relationship needs to be cautious!)
This means an increase in P and V, and also signals an eye-rolling truth: in a commodity society, happiness and pleasure can be quantified in terms of money.
In addition, the Internet gives insurance companies the opportunity to capture the coveted "pre-sales" data, to understand the personality and preferences of their target customers before the transaction, and to develop more personalized services and programs, which means an increase in R and V and a decrease in T and C.
The Internet has also given insurance companies the opportunity to use the Internet as a tool to improve the quality of their products and services.
2. Agents: exacerbated survival of the fittest leads to structural changes
The huge number of agents, over 3 million, will be the only disturbing variable brought about by the Internet. Insurance companies, agents management failure, so that this huge group of controversial. Undoubtedly, as the most expensive sales channel, its position has been eaten up by the Internet, the survival of the space encountered serious challenges:
Agent in the value chain of the position and the right to speak will be weakened, the past and the insurance company's bargaining chips will be because of advances in information technology and gradually lost, such as the "who is the customer", "my work is the", "my work is the", "my work is the", "my work is the", "my work is the" and "my work is the". The insurers will provide pre-sales value-added services through the Internet in exchange for agents' control over customer lists, and apply LBS technology to control the agents' trajectory of business.
Agents whose professional skills and business development effectiveness cannot be improved will inevitably be eliminated, while those with foresight will take the initiative to seek changes, acquire customers through the Internet, or improve their professional ability and service level to undertake more brands and more categories of financial products, and there will also be some agents who will no longer be selling independently but will combine with the Internet to become part of the sales chain, giving rise to The "O2O" model, there will also be some agents will turn to the third and fourth-tier cities, villages and other Internet-undeveloped market.
With the rapid and perfect development of the Internet and the entire insurance industry chain, agents will shrink in size, ability to improve, more balanced distribution in the geographical and consumer levels, meaning that the R, V, while the T and C is reduced, thus optimizing the operation.
3, the intermediary: mass market concentration increased
Tens of thousands of high customer viscosity part-time agents, and legal person business-oriented professional agents, will not be subject to the Internet for the time being. But for the mass market of the intermediary market share is too small, talent precipitation, financial strength is not as good as its upstream insurance companies, no voice, not enough resources to invest in the transition, coupled with heavy historical baggage, unwilling to see and understand the Internet, in the "financial disintermediation" trend will be ruthlessly shuffled out of the game, the only advantage is flexible. The only advantage is flexibility.
And the Internet can make the "flexible" to play to the extreme, insurance e-commerce will be mainly distribution, early intermediary e-commerce platform to touch the Internet and therefore survive and have the opportunity to grow. In the future, such specialized vertical platforms will not be too many, at most 3 to 5, to see who will be the "king of the leftovers".
The Achilles' heel of this type of platform is the poor user experience, many products but mostly subject to the constraints of the insurance company is difficult to improve, affecting the conversion rate of R; second is the high operating costs C, such as docking with the insurance company's transactions, it is a headache; third is the high-value insurance products online transactions are not in the hands of the dominant, can break through the need to look at the face of others.
Therefore, cooperation with emerging industry elements to improve P and V, strengthen internal strength to improve R while reducing C, need to focus on consideration, otherwise its marginal cost will not be able to fight against the insurance company's direct marketing business, be marginalized into the insurance company's appendage, the value of the investment is not great.
4, Internet e-commerce: the customer big bully store or anti-client master
"E-commerce platform" has financial and insurance institutions coveted huge resources: massive consumption data, associated behavioral preferences and commodity data, payment transaction entrance and potential credit data, a huge relationship chain and topic accumulation. ...... becomes a bargaining chip for exchanging interests with financial and insurance institutions, but greed may lead to failing to achieve the original purpose of reducing the cost of insurance sales, and becoming the second most criticized real estate.
So it's no surprise that they have managed to bypass regulation and get involved in financial insurance themselves: Taobao took the lead by bringing in dozens of insurance companies to yell at the opening of the market, relying on its large flow of wealth management universal life insurance to hit the ground running, but the traditional insurance network sales are invariably not very promising. NetEase, Sohu, Baidu and others also scratch the itch to follow the coaxing, Tencent's thoughts on finance is not surprising, the road to self-managed insurance is not yet clear, and the internal operating structure of the mountain of insurance companies to make the eyes of the gold star.
While low conversion rates and thin products have not been able to effectively address these two hard-hitting problems, traffic is still an attraction and even a threat to insurance companies. Ctrip, where to go, Coco West with a number of small and medium-sized travel vertical platforms, relying on accurate traffic in the travel insurance niche, and even began to think of professional insurance license.
The amount of information needed for insurance is large and detailed, and the data content is high, and because of its "non-standard" and full of imagination, there is a huge derivative of the financial and other related commodities market space. Therefore, although insurance is only a part of finance, but the e-commerce platform is extraordinarily attentive: one is to focus on the innovation of insurance products to enhance V, and the second is to enhance R through the "big data" operation.
Therefore, multi-category, multi-brand, multi-specification of the financial and insurance product innovation is what the e-commerce platform is willing to see, and willing to do something about it. do something about it. However, its degree of professionalism is insufficient, guarding the data gold mine may not dig the treasure, then put down the body, more open to cooperate with other new industries, Taobao insurance assiduously want to do life insurance is an example.
5, the insurance company: a clean slate, two-legged
More and more insurance companies gradually realize that the first thing to do is to innovate their products, but imitating the Huatai return insurance, Zhong'an Zonglebao, People's Insurance Mobile Phone Insurance, Taikang Leye Insurance, Allianz Moonlighting Insurance and so on is the same as dancing to the rhythm of others, which is far from being enough.
Product innovation first requires a change in talent and business concepts. Given that there is no insurance Internet talent in the current market, one must break the rigid salary framework, the second to create a relaxed spiritual environment, and the third to improve the original system system, otherwise even if the people recruited can not be retained, and retained also can not do things to optimize the original intention to improve the P and V will ultimately fall through.
Product innovation does not only mean changes in the form and price of insurance products, but also the need for insight into the overall vision of the Internet, as well as actuarial thinking, caliber, risk control concepts of change, the challenge is the existing product development and supporting business operations system, such as rapid response to the original requirements of the original board of research and development process, decision-making chain to be shortened, which means that the power to redistribute the existing management system and human nature, in order to adapt to the environment, and to optimize and improve P and V will eventually be in vain.
What's more demanding is that product innovation often means a change in values and a change in appraisal mechanisms, which is often difficult for insurance company executives and shareholders to accept:
Can you bend over, get out of the hall, and think of yourself as an idiot?
Or ditch the so-called resources they already have and put themselves in harm's way to start a business?
Willing to allow yourself to be highly clothed and become a highly individualized, maverick spokesperson?
Willing to go from a premium performance requirement to a pure investment in fan management?
Can afford to have hairy young men in their early twenties earning hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year and not be jealous?
Perhaps the reality will not be so grim, but you have to ask yourself: a clean slate, a new life, okay? The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on the Internet and get out of the way!
Conservative style insurance companies, most likely incompatible with the two cultural environments and lead to personality disintegration, so for the Internet as a "new channel", the best way to deal with this "new channel" is not as a parallel department or business unit, but simply separate out, at least a division, or simply independent of the e-commerce company, and even cultural and institutional aspects of the company. The best way to deal with this "new channel" is not as a parallel department or business unit, but simply to separate it out, at least as a division, or simply as a separate e-commerce company, and even culturally and institutionally separate it from the original pool.
The insurance company that sets up an online marketing department, finds a few people with Internet backgrounds to do marketing, builds its own mall, and moves its products online to sell them is bound to die! With the simple idea of adding a traditional channel on the ground such as bancassurance and agency, it is feasible, but it can't touch the deep essence and can't be played on the Internet.
Changes in culture and environment will be a major issue for insurance companies (and other traditional industries) to reach the Internet. The e-commerce team likes to absorb fresh blood from the Internet industry, full of wolves, and the original team's blood type is genetically different from the original team, and even see each other as losers, style conflict, difficult to integrate, and blood loss, blood loss, this kind of case has been seen many times, remember to learn a lesson!
Recently rumored that Ma Mingzhe toured its fintech company without formal dress, an insurance IT team canceled the morning meeting, the insurance e-commerce companies independent of the workplace, or abandon the parent company *** enjoy resources, etc., are this omen.
Even so, there will still be a number of insurance companies trudging along. With the Internet to make the ecosphere flattened, brand influence online than offline influence is greater, the Matthew effect is more and more obvious, such as small brands can not do in a niche area has a unique three strokes and five styles, and go to the red sea with the big brand homogenization of competition, online than offline to die faster!
The Internet provides the convenience of information, data, will make the insurance company for user attributes and behavioral preferences and other data extremely thirsty to meet the strategic goal of discovering the blue ocean, product innovation is colorful, and any upset may be used as the subject of the insurance - the connotation of the definition of insurance will be greatly expanded, and the billing cycle may be Weeks, days, tossing actuaries and IT infrastructure, before the BI + AI + CRM and other accumulation of real use, and even into the field of data, investment, acquisition of data concepts completely unrelated to the insurance business, to occupy the industry's "commanding heights", control of the new Internet entrance: hardware, desperately trying to make big P, reduce the cost of competition in the future!
Entering the hardware means that hundreds of billions of dollars, once considered difficult to Internet-based enterprise property insurance market, is expected to be changed by the Internet: the intelligence of industrial control equipment, networking, will make the risk data of the key aspects of production and operation of the enterprise to become a tool for the insurance company to foresee the risk of fast claims, but also significantly improve the threshold of competition and reduce the cost of insurance premiums. One day, enterprise insurance will no longer take "year" as the validity period of underwriting, but under the long-term contract of five or ten years, the wind control cycle and dynamic premiums in minutes, as well as connecting the upstream and downstream production, fire and security, smart city, smart transportation, smart medical care, smart storage and transportation, and even ERP. ...... In short, connecting everything!
This also means that the three horses Zongan facing the blue sea as a starting point, the main form of insurance companies change: large and comprehensive comprehensive insurance company, it is very likely to give birth to face specializing in some specific markets (such as mother and baby or students), channels (pure network channels such as Hongkang), and even certain events (weather, financial derivatives) light insurance companies, specializing in some specific segments of the market to provide risk hedging services.
Insurance companies will shift their business orientation and approach from "product-oriented" to "user- and demand-oriented", and the idea of "what I have to sell you" will gradually be changed to The idea of "who wants what and how can I provide it", even learning from the Internet to study and satisfy human needs, personalized service for a few customers under the big data, rather than for the whole of mankind.
Existing insurance companies will be affected by the "Internet thinking" and make themselves lighter: from the current outsourcing of IT and local operations, they will gradually outsource sales and operations, product development, customer service, etc., and focus on the core brand, products, and internal control, while at the same time giving rise to new specialized market players.
The next three to five years, the online mass consumption market will only fly three or five big flags, a large number of new market segments will be colorful flags! Their business models will be characterized by explosive growth in P and V with the virtually infinite breadth of data dimensions provided by the Internet.
Insurance companies will not abandon the existing business, "two-legged road" will be the majority of insurance companies after touching the network of choice: the wheels must be changed but the car can not be stopped, can not be replaced, then let the slow and fast cars, high-speed railways and trains are running on a track.
6. Regulators: efficient, forward-looking, proactive supervision based on data
The CIRC is not the "evil mother-in-law" in people's impression, and enhancing the productivity level of the industry is its primary KPI, which is more important than catching misleaders to find ways to make the market cake bigger. Therefore, the policy of promoting and supporting insurance through the Internet will become more and more open, and will even take the initiative to provide convenient conditions to encourage innovation outside the existing rules and regulations.
At the same time, the IA also understands: innovation and risk are the same, so how to make the regulatory work can also be "high-tech", enhance regulatory efficiency, and even solve the "after-knowledge" of this long-term pain, the Internet has become the first choice of means, the recent The "China insurance letter" will hopefully become a good prescription to enhance the efficiency of supervision.
This unified platform, starting with the recovery of the auto insurance platform, will bring together the underwriting and claims data of the life insurance industry, which will not only improve the efficiency of supervision, but also *** enjoy the results of its statistical analysis to the insurance companies for decision-making purposes, and promote the development of the industry as a whole.
With the automation of insurance company transactions and the trend of centralization of operations, the industry is expected to give birth to a real trading platform. The real-time transaction data, coupled with the resultant data on the CIRC platform, will be more conducive to the development of the whole industry, thus realizing the monitoring of "during the event", and enhancing the supervision of the aftermath to a "preventive" level. The "preventive", and even the introduction of the "insurance index" to predict the development of the market, scheduling the overall situation, supervision is more scientific, forward-looking, comprehensive, reflecting the professionalism and wisdom, to play a greater role.
Central and local, regulatory and subject, official agencies and industry associations between a lot of games, will make this process of unification is full of variables. But isn't this how the development of productivity comes through thick and thin?
7, +1: emerging industry supporting industry chain blossomed
Insurance ecosystem itself is not yet sound, missing fundamental business elements, third-party intermediaries are weak, the lack of industry value **** knowledge, fragmented IT industry standards, the lack of credit and health care and other basic data of the public ****, the social security and commercial insurance wall, etc., the reason, or because of the immaturity of the stage of development, or because the development stage. Or because of the black light or short-sightedness, or because the market landscape is not open enough, but also due to the history of weak commercial foundation.
The Internet's "openness, equality, collaboration, and sharing", coupled with the power of the market, regulatory guidance, and the capital boost and other elements of the production relationship, on the one hand, will quickly break the monopoly and barriers, on the other hand, to create a large number of new market players.
First of all, the public **** resources related to the insurance industry will be the "data operators" that make a difference in the chain of data acquisition, transmission, storage, processing, and distribution, and within this scope, the vertical data from in-vehicle smart terminals, medical and healthcare wearables, intelligent medical devices, electronic medical records, and so on will be used as the basis for the development of the insurance industry. UBI (User Based Insurance or User Behavior Insurance) has become a reality, and the vision of "sooner or later becoming intertwined with the insurance industry" has made this kind of startups a hotspot for venture capitalists, and even does not rule out direct investment by insurance companies with foresight, and even participation in the development of the underlying data format. It is not surprising that they are even involved in the development of the underlying data format and transmission standards, and are competing with the Internet industry for the data high ground.
And platforms that have the potential to collect and evaluate consumer credit will also become the focus of insurers' attention. The need to specialize the operation of basic public **** data such as social security, healthcare, assets and credit (the green part of the chart below) will lead to commercial investment opportunities.
Meanwhile, a sound ecosystem also requires independent, third-party rating agencies such as kaopubao.com to establish a common standard for rating insurance companies, products and services, which will gradually become an unofficial basic value scale, credibility and influence; third-party platforms with the ability to aggregate and operate a large amount of fragmented, long-tailed data will use BI technology to fuse credentials, healthcare , social security, and reverse group purchasing of insurance will become a reality. In addition, the Internet will make the concentration of the industry more obvious: consumers gradually tend to one-stop shopping (blue) rather than searching around the comparison, the birth of vertical large-scale professional market platforms, Taobao, such as the solution to the problem of its professionalism has the potential, and the aforementioned kaopubao.com need to solve the problem of traffic.
In order to solve the high-cost and low-efficiency transaction docking problem between insurance companies and distribution platforms (the gray cross-hairline network in the chart above), there will be a third-party, pure service platform specializing in transaction access (the orange part of the chart above), similar to the stock exchange, which is able to penetrate and implement industry standardization, provide rapid deployment of product releases, and transaction access, settlement, and transaction data services, and integrate the concepts of Big Data It incorporates the concept of big data + cloud platform and provides "software and services" through SAAS. The platform has great investment value, but only a few people can see and realize.
When the quality and quantity of data can be guaranteed, product development, customer acquisition, shopping, transactions, claims and other business, will be gradually outsourced to professional suppliers, to achieve a high degree of intelligence, automation, and then in the other direction to squeeze the agent's survival space.