"At present, the Internet insurance technology platform, including water droplets, has begun to make full use of digital advantages and make innovative attempts in critical illness insurance from product design, channels and other directions." Recently, Teng Hui, chief actuary of Didi Bao, revealed in an exclusive interview with the reporter of International Finance News.
He pointed out that in the past two years, due to the shrinking agent scale, millions of medical insurance and the sudden emergence of Huimin insurance, the sales growth of critical illness insurance in traditional offline agency channels is weak, and the Internet platform is testing the new model of "offline team sales". With its own "product customization" advantage, it is expected to provide ideas for the innovation of critical illness insurance in the industry.
In the 2020-202 1 Annual Health Insurance Product Research Report, China Reinsurance pointed out that the sales volume of critical illness insurance is highly correlated with the number of insurance agents. In recent years, due to the influence of supervision and epidemic situation, the agent team began to lose a lot, which not only made it more difficult to recruit high-quality talents, but also made it difficult to increase the basic manpower due to the influence of emerging industries such as express delivery and logistics.
Critical illness insurance is the main product in the agent's product library, and its sales volume has also declined with the large-scale reduction of the team.
"Because the sales positioning of the two types of products, Million Medical and Huimin Insurance, coincides with the critical illness insurance at this stage, it also has a certain impact on the sales of critical illness insurance." Teng Hui told reporters that millions of medical insurance has been singing all the way since 20 15 appeared. By 2020, the new single premium income of millions of medical insurance will exceed 50 billion yuan, covering 90 million people. In 2020, the government-led customized urban commercial medical insurance "Huimin Insurance" appeared blowout, which quickly swept through 100 cities, covering more than 654.38 billion residents.
In addition, from the perspective of industry development, China has gone through the primary stage of the development of critical illness insurance. The total premium of critical illness insurance increased by more than 40% annually from 20 16 to 20 18. After years of vigorous development, critical illness insurance has developed into a mature product, and the dividends brought by new products when they first entered the market have basically been realized.
Teng Hui also analyzed several reasons why the critical illness insurance market was blocked from the market demand. On the one hand, affected by the epidemic and other factors, people's willingness to buy consumer goods such as insurance may be decreasing. On the other hand, critical illness insurance, especially long-term critical illness insurance, is higher than millions of medical insurance in absolute price, which leads to that only customers with a certain income level will consider buying critical illness insurance, while those who are price-sensitive will choose to buy millions of medical insurance with lower absolute price.
According to Teng Hui's judgment, in the future, with the further expansion of the scale of low-cost and high-coverage medical insurance products such as "Million Medical Care" and "Huimin Insurance" and the emergence of more innovative medical insurance products, the sales focus of critical illness insurance will gradually shift to the functions of "young people's income loss" and "old people's nursing expenses compensation", while the function of "high medical expenses reimbursement" will return to its original source and be borne by mainstream medical insurance.
As the main consumers of insurance products, the post-80s and post-90s have higher requirements for the professional ability of insurance sales, which also aggravates the difficulty for insurance sales personnel to meet new customers.
The sales growth of critical illness insurance in traditional agency channels is weak, and digital transformation may bring new opportunities.
At the end of 20021,China Insurance Association issued the Development Plan of Insurance Technology in the 14th Five-Year Plan, and in early 2022, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the Guiding Opinions on Digital Transformation of Banking and Insurance Industry, all of which pointed out that it is of positive significance for the insurance industry to promote digital development. Under the wave of digital development, the insurance industry will also usher in digital innovation in sales mode, product form, risk prevention and ecological services, which will further improve user coverage and service experience.
Teng Hui said that with the acceleration of the digitalization of insurance, the information barrier of insurance products has been broken, consumers can inquire and compare whether products are worth buying online, and the decision-making time before insurance is obviously extended. The advantage of the Internet insurance platform is that it is closer to the buying habits of young customers after the 1980s and 1990s.
"The Internet platform is currently testing the new' offline team sales' model and its own' product customization' advantages, which may provide some ideas for the innovation of critical illness insurance in the industry." According to Teng Hui, a number of Internet insurance technology platforms, including Shuidi, have recently started to recruit offline brokers and launched an "online and offline integration" business model.
He believes that compared with the "pyramid" hierarchical structure of the traditional insurance company's offline agent team, these new models have fewer management levels and flatter management, and the bottom salespeople can get higher commission income after selling critical illness policies. At the same time, the Internet platform has acquired customers through traffic and accumulated a large number of stock customer resources. The new model is more promising than the traditional offline agency channel that simply relies on the individual's "personal favor list" and "unfamiliar with the exhibition industry".
"At the same time, the online insurance platform is closer to customers. Through the in-depth interpretation of user needs by smart big data, we will use the advantages of the platform to customize cost-effective Internet-specific critical illness products. " Teng Hui bluntly said that compared with the existing offline major critical illness insurance products, the current online critical illness insurance products are more cost-effective, and there are long-term/short-term critical illness insurance products, so there is more room for choice.
He also revealed that the Internet platform is trying to modularize the traditional and complex forms of critical illness insurance products, and customers can flexibly combine them according to their own needs. In addition, Internet critical illness insurance products can reach some people not covered by traditional critical illness insurance, and are more attractive to young customers who are price-sensitive and pursue cost performance.
The reporter noted that since the new definition of self-weight diseases and the implementation of the new Internet regulations, both the online exclusive critical illness insurance products and the new critical illness insurance products mainly sold offline are not much different from those before the implementation of the new regulations, but only from the details of insurance rules, health notification or security responsibilities (such as payment ratio and payment interval).
In addition, no matter regulators, insurance companies or reinsurance companies, they are conservative about the worsening trend of the incidence of serious illness in the future, and it is unlikely that network celebrities will have a serious illness price war again.
The first direction is the small-step iterative upgrade of product responsibility. At present, the price of critical illness has approached the bottom line of the industry, but some radical insurance companies will try to iteratively upgrade some characteristic responsibilities under the framework of the existing critical illness product form for the sake of sales pressure. For example, the additional liability for compensation for malignant tumors, from the existing mainstream second and third compensation, began to try a new attempt of "unlimited compensation, every time with an interval of 3 years".
These practices are good for customers, but they pose great challenges to insurance companies and reinsurance companies.
There are also some platforms that modularize the protection responsibility of existing critical illness insurance products and try some short-term critical illness insurance products with clear responsibilities. This method is flexible and can be sold separately or as additional insurance. For example, the "mini version of critical illness insurance" recently launched focuses on the responsibility of critical illness protection, simplifies the insurance clauses, lowers the insurance purchase threshold, and greatly reduces the premium. At present, it seems that the user acceptance is good.
The second direction is to develop sub-standard customer base products. At present, customers still need to go through a series of strict risk assessment, physical examination and health notification before they can successfully purchase major seriously ill products from various channels. For a large number of people with chronic diseases and sub-health conditions, it is still difficult to buy products with serious diseases that match the needs.
In the future, it is still a direction worth exploring whether to relax the underwriting rules for this kind of unhealthy people, or to develop exclusive critical illness insurance products for the corresponding sick people for some specific diseases with stable disease incidence and controllable treatment costs.
The third direction is to cover people at both ends. The main audience of traditional critical illness insurance is middle-aged people. In the future, the product strategy of critical illness insurance will be extended to "income loss of young people after illness" and "compensation for long-term care expenses of the elderly".
Follow-up insurance companies can develop regular serious diseases with higher cost performance, increase insurance for old customers with limited income and high cost performance, or buy insurance for young new customers; Or developing long-term care insurance with higher leverage and guiding young and middle-aged customers to buy in advance are potential directions.
Although the sales volume of critical illness insurance is low in recent two years, its absolute dominant position in China's health insurance product system is still unshakable.
The critical illness insurance market experienced rapid growth in 20 17 and 20 18. From 20 19, the growth rate of new single premium of critical illness insurance began to turn from negative to positive due to the influence of external environmental factors such as the epidemic situation in COVID-19 and the agent's "repaying". However, according to the latest industry statistics, as of the end of 20021,critical illness insurance still accounts for about 60% of the total industry health insurance premiums.
Teng Hui analyzed that there are two main reasons why critical illness insurance can maintain its market vitality in China for nearly 30 years.
From a macro perspective, the continuous improvement of insurance awareness and income level of Chinese residents in recent years, as well as the policy orientation of CBRC to guide the insurance industry to "return to protection", have become an important driving force for the sustainable development of critical illness insurance.
In 20 17, the former China Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the Notice on Standardizing the Product Development and Design Behavior of Life Insurance Companies (No.134), which required that "the first life insurance premium should be paid after the policy came into effect for five years, and the proportion paid or partially received each year should not exceed 20% of the premium paid", so the sales focus of insurance companies should start with "annuity/pension" with quick returns.
From the micro level, critical illness insurance is the only product that can meet the different interests of insurance companies, salespeople and consumers at the same time, which is also the fundamental reason why critical illness insurance can maintain its long-term vitality in China insurance market.
For insurance companies, compared with annuity, medical insurance and other insurance products, the new business value rate of critical illness insurance is higher, which can contribute more profits to the company and bring more long-term stable cash flow.
For salespeople, the average premium of critical illness insurance is higher, especially the current mainstream product forms of "returning to the original critical illness" and "whole life insurance+lifelong critical illness", which are easier for agents to understand and sell. At the same time, the higher sales commission of critical illness insurance can also bring considerable income to the agent.
For customers, the current mainstream product combination form of "long-term/lifelong serious illness"+"endowment/whole life insurance" can not only meet consumers' demands for various risks such as illness, death and pension, but also flexibly choose endowment or whole life insurance products according to customers' actual conditions, thus forming a comprehensive insurance product protection scheme, taking into account consumers' wealth savings needs to a certain extent.
This article is from International Finance News.