Waterdrop is relying on its accumulated advantages in insurance and patients to make a natural extension to the medical field.
On the 11th of last month, Didi closed its network mutual aid platform "Little by Little Guardian", so far, in addition to Ali's "mutual treasure", the Internet giant's previous online mutual aid platform has been closed.
In addition to the Internet giants, since the beginning of this year, a number of Internet insurance platforms have also closed their own network mutual aid business, such as easy mutual aid under the Easy Group, and water drop mutual aid under the water drop company (WDH.US), which almost chose to close at the same time this year.
In the industry's view, on the one hand, it is the compliance problem of the entire industry; on the other hand, from the perspective of the process of the Internet insurance industry, network mutual aid has completed its historical mission, which is also the result of the natural "evolution" of companies such as WaterDrop.
It starts with mutual aid
In April 2016, Shen Peng resigned from Meituan to found Waterdrop Company, the first business is Waterdrop Mutual Aid, in Shen Peng's words, hoping to "China's traditional workers' mutual aid association or private mutual aid community" Internet to solve the problem of medical funds for users with serious illnesses.
According to Shen Peng's later recollection in an interview with the media, when he left his job to start a business, there were many tracks to choose from, but he realized that he could not be tough with the giants in the Red Sea market, so that the chance of winning was very small, and he had to choose a market that the giants ignored but was big enough to start a business.
Before Shen Peng started his business in 2016, network mutual aid has been developing in China for several years, and the gecko mutual aid, Kangai Commune, e mutual aid, and quark alliance, which are known as the "old four" of network mutual aid in the industry, already exist, but because the business model is unclear, it has been developing very slowly.
Shen Peng entered the network mutual aid industry, and there were many advantages at that time.
First, after the experience in the US group, it has mastered the way of Internet customer acquisition, and also has mature management experience; second, at the beginning of entrepreneurship, it has been supported by capital tycoons and has the funds to rapidly expand the market; third, the eyes of Internet giants have not yet turned to network mutual assistance.
Droplet Mutual Aid, which has gathered many advantages in one, has achieved rapid development as soon as it was launched, and has been the largest online mutual aid platform in China for a long time.
However, as more players enter, the problems of the online mutual aid industry are becoming more and more obvious. In September 2016, the former Insurance Regulatory Commission launched a review, and a large number of platforms without insurance operating qualifications and corresponding risk control capabilities fell into a "wave of closures".
Supervision tightened, public opinion questioned, the network mutual aid industry ushered in the industry reshuffle and platform self-revolution for the first time. After more than a year of adjustment, the network mutual aid industry has developed in an orderly direction.
In November 2018, Alibaba's "Mutual Treasure" was launched, pushing the industry to an unprecedented height and later surpassing Droplet Mutual Aid.
The "inflection point" of the network mutual aid industry began in 2020, when the entire network mutual aid industry began to decline.
Platforms such as Waterdrop Mutual Aid have begun to shrink actively, and the number of apportioned users on the "Mutual Treasure" platform is also declining. At the same time, with the rising cost of sharing, in the eyes of many users, the advantages of "low threshold and high cost performance" of network mutual aid are no longer obvious.
In essence, network mutual aid is a kind of insurance business, because of the advantages of "low threshold, high price, simple participation", etc., it has quickly attracted a large number of users.
On the one hand, users who are not covered by insurance perceive the protection method of insurance, which is conducive to the improvement of the insurance awareness of Chinese people; on the other hand, compared with commercial insurance, this protection method is indeed more suitable for low-income people and young potential insurance users.
However, commercial insurance is still the most compliant way of protection. In fact, at the beginning of its establishment, Shen Peng realized that network mutual assistance was only a "transition" stage for Waterdrop to carry out insurance business.
He once said in an interview that because the company did not have more funds to buy an insurance brokerage license at the beginning of its business, it chose the form of network mutual assistance.
In March this year, Shui di Company stopped the original Shui Di mutual aid business in an upgraded manner, and at this time, Shui Di's insurance business has been developing for 3 years, and it has become one of the largest insurtech platforms in China.
Insurable
Looking back now, for the water drop company, before the water drop insurance was launched, the water drop mutual aid undertook the task of "guaranteeing the supply" for a short time, and also enlightened the user's insurance awareness for a long time, which laid the groundwork for the launch of the insurance business.
In May 2017, a year after the launch of the network mutual aid, Waterdrop spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire an insurance brokerage license in Shaanxi and launched the Waterdrop Insurance business. Compared with online mutual aid, Waterdrop Insurance is a compliant insurance institution and holds an insurance brokerage license.
For a long time, whether it is an insurance company or an insurance brokerage company, selling insurance basically relies on the "sea of people tactics", and even the leaders of the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission have said that China's insurance industry is a typical human resource-intensive industry.
After the launch of Waterdrop Insurance, it revolutionized the way the insurance industry sold in a new way.
The innovation of water drop protection is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Build an insurance scenario to stimulate the insurance needs of users.
A few months after the launch of Droplet Mutual Aid, Waterdrop Company also launched a business droplet chip that is still popular in everyone's circle of friends, which is a social major illness fundraising platform, waterdrop chip through mobile Internet technology to move the offline behavior of private "mutual assistance and mutual assistance" to social networks, and through family and friend sharing, mobile payment and other ways to help troubled seriously ill patients and families more conveniently publish and spread help information, so that donors can also help more conveniently.
From the three quarterly reports just released by The WaterDrop Company, it can be seen that the Waterdrop Chip does not contribute revenue, but the business is of great significance to the Waterdrop Company.
On the one hand, Waterdrop Company has built a multi-level commercial security system through Waterdrop Chip, Waterdrop Mutual Aid and Waterdrop Insurance, which provides health protection for users at different income levels in different ways.
On the other hand, as an important insurance education scenario, because the threshold is low enough, Droplet Mutual Aid can allow users who have never purchased insurance before or are still hesitating to experience insurance services at a relatively low price, and can also complete a good crisis awareness education for users.
With the help of WaterDrop Chip and Waterdrop Mutual Aid, Waterdrop's insurance business has developed rapidly in recent years and has become the largest independent insurance technology platform in China.
2. Use InsurTech to launch marketable insurance.
If you build a scene, you also need a good product. Whether it is selling ordinary commodities or financial products such as insurance, only good products can really impress users.
How to design a good product? The first step is to understand the user, Waterdrop relies on big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, based on multi-channel user tag analysis of user portraits, together with insurance companies, reverse customization of insurance, innovative insurance products, increase the supply of insurance products.
In addition, waterdrop companies generate massive amounts of data every day. The data center of the water drop can solve the problem of data islands in the platform very well, thereby enriching the user portrait data, combined with external third-party public data, improving the accuracy of the algorithm model as a whole and providing a data set for the AI algorithm.
Through big data analysis, Waterdrop Insurance can find out what users' needs for insurance have not been met, and can be fed back to insurance companies to jointly develop targeted insurance products. Compared with traditional insurance products, customized insurance can better meet the needs of users
According to the three quarterly reports released by Waterdrop, as of September 30 this year, 323 insurance products were available on the Waterdrop Insurance platform, and more than 90% of the first-year premiums were contributed by The insurance products exclusively customized by Waterdrop Insurance.
3. Opened up the insurance incremental market.
Compared with many insurance institutions, the biggest advantage of water drop insurance is in the "sinking market". On the one hand, this benefits from the long-term user accumulation of droplet chips and droplet mutual aid in the "sinking market"; it also benefits from the strategic positioning of "inclusive insurance" of droplet insurance.
For a long time, water drop chips and water drop mutual aid are an important source of flow of water drop insurance, water drop insurance at the beginning of the line, it will jointly launch million medical and other cost-effective insurance products, these products have been popular after the launch, million medical insurance has also become a popular product of water drop insurance.
For insurance companies that cooperate with Waterdrop Insurance, the innovation of Waterdrop Insurance has allowed insurance companies to cover the vast number of sinking market users in China, expanding the incremental market for them.
According to the financial report previously released by Waterdrop, in 2020, Waterdrop Insurance sold insurance to 97.6% of cities and counties in China, and more than 71% of users came from third-tier cities and below.
Since the beginning of this year, Shui Di Bao has actively participated in the "HuiMin Bao" projects across the country, including Beijing, Zibo, Dezhou, Liaoyang and other cities across the country. This is a more "inclusive" insurance product, and after the products were launched in many places, the user growth was rapid.
Through business innovation, Waterdrop Insurance has grown rapidly and become the main source of revenue for Waterdrop. With the enhancement of brand awareness, the dependence of the water drop insurance business on water drop mutual aid and water drop chip has been decreasing. In March this year, for The Waterdrop Company, the Waterdrop Mutual Aid Business, which has completed the missions of "user education" and "universal protection", was shut down.
The closure of Droplet Mutual Aid, realistically speaking, has the choice to actively adapt to the situation, but more importantly, after completing the evolution from "mutual aid" to "insurance", the mutual aid business has become relatively less important, especially it still needs to face a lot of uncertainty.
At present, according to the scale of the first year's premium, Waterdrop Insurance is already the largest insurtech platform in China. As of September 30, 2021, the cumulative number of insurance customers reached 108.7 million, and the cumulative number of paid insurance customers reached 27.2 million.
At the same time, Waterdrop Insurance is also improving customer value mining and customer stickiness, and the first-year premium per customer in the quarter increased to 1292 yuan, an increase of 17.1% year-on-year.
Stronger than ecology
On the whole, whether it is the early launch of the droplet mutual aid, waterdrop fundraising business, or later in order to achieve greater commercial value and the launch of the droplet insurance, droplet medical and other businesses, in recent years, the droplet company has built a health protection ecology around the needs of users.
As Shen Peng stated in his Q3 earnings report, "a solid business foundation has been established through a large customer base and social networks, product innovation capabilities, technological advantages, and unique synergies between business units." ”
For Waterdrop, the core significance of health protection ecology is twofold:
First, for the company's core business insurance, a complete health protection ecosystem is a rich insurance scene, after the insurance awareness education of this ecosystem, the conversion rate of users to buy insurance will increase, which makes the insurance acquisition cost of WaterDrop Company significantly lower than that of peers, which is also one of the main reasons why many domestic insurance companies choose to cooperate with Waterdrop Company.
Second, the health security ecology is essentially a health security system outside the medical insurance, as a supplement to medical insurance, the water drop company's water drop chip, water drop insurance, water drop medical and other businesses for different income levels to provide health services, increasing the "thickness" and "breadth" of user health protection.
It can be seen from the development process of Waterdrop Company that the "health security ecology" it has built has gone through two stages: the first stage is the insurance scene ecology built around insurance, and the trinity of "mutual assistance + fundraising + insurance" promotes each other and coordinates with each other; the second stage is based on insurance business and waterdrop fundraising business to build an ecosystem of "insurance + medical treatment".
Compared with the first stage, in the second stage, Waterdrop hopes to penetrate the business into the medical field, cover the protection needs of users throughout the life cycle through a variety of service models, create a leading payment system outside medical insurance, connect to high-quality medical and health service networks, and become a reliable social enterprise.
In fact, Shen Peng has long believed that "protecting hundreds of millions of families" should be to ensure that every family can be "worry-free" on the issue of medical treatment, and this "worry-free" is not only economic worry-free, but also a worry-free for medical convenience.
In the eyes of the outside world, based on the two mature businesses of water drop chip and water drop insurance, the development of health care business may be one of the directions in which water drop company continues to "evolve".
One thing is more obvious, the goal of the water drop company is not limited to the existing pattern, it hopes that one day, users can also enjoy high-quality and convenient medical services in the health insurance protection system they have built.
Since last year, Waterdrop has also begun its exploration in the field of medical health. In addition, Waterdrop has also launched waterdrop health business, water drop open platform, water drop medical data center, patient recruitment and other services.
At present, it is impossible to get a full picture of it from the public information, but an analysis of the relevance of these businesses to the existing mature business shows that Waterdrop is relying on its accumulated advantages in insurance and patients to make a natural extension to the medical field.
Hu Yao, general manager of Waterdrop's fundraising and medical business group, also said in the Q3 financial report, "Our medical business is built on the existing infrastructure, taking advantage of the competitive advantage of Waterdrop, the huge patient base and the extensive network, since the initial exploration last year, it has begun to gain momentum."
Now, when it comes to water drop companies, most people may think of water drop chips and water drop protection, but in the near future, the outside world may see a new water drop company.