Against the trend to prepare for the "opening of the door" in 2022, insurance companies have made a lot of efforts

Due to the pressure of the epidemic and the continuous decline in the growth rate of insurance premiums, insurance companies have placed special hopes on the "opening red" in 2022. However, due to product shifts and a sharp shrinkage in the marketing team, the pressure to achieve the goal is huge

Wen | Caijing reporter Song Wenjuan

Editor| Yuan Man

"Dreaming of selling insurance, opening the door, rushing!" An insurance marketer describes his status.

Seemingly quiet insurance "opening the door", in fact, has long been in the army. As early as September, some insurance companies quietly prepared in advance in the form of pre-sales. Although regulators do not want insurance companies to rely too heavily on the sports-style "opening red", due to the pressure of the epidemic and the decline in premium growth, insurance companies have placed special hopes on the "opening red" in 2022.

Pushing new products, formulating competition plans, launching launch conferences, product launches, and customer salons, insurance companies have worked mobilization and marketing methods, and they are very busy. The head office formulates policies and allocates resources, which is the baton; the branch takes the oath to sign the goal achievement plan; the competent marketer also claims personal performance goals, the number of signed orders, and the manpower target.

Under the strong mobilization, branches and front-line marketers have been mobilized.

"The rhythm of 'opening the door' is a must for several visits a day." Insurance marketers at a large company said they were busier than usual during the "opening hour."

However, in 2021, as a tough year for the transformation and development of the insurance industry, the shrinkage of marketing manpower is the highest in history. The decline in the number of agents disclosed by listed insurance companies exceeded 10%.

For example, as of September 30, the total sales manpower of Chinese Life (601628.SH) was 1.052 million, a decrease of 406,000 compared with the total sales manpower of 1.458 million at the end of 2020, of which 980,000 were personal insurance sales, down 38% year-on-year; Ping An of China (601318. SH) had 706,200 individual life insurance sales agents, compared to 1,023,800 at December 31, 2020, a decrease of 317,600, or 31%.

Coinciding with the shrinkage of the sales agent team, the year-on-year decline in accumulated life insurance premiums has also widened, and the year-on-year increase in single-month premiums in October has continued to decline.

On the one hand, insurance companies are strongly promoting "opening the door", on the other hand, it is difficult to increase insurance marketing. Coupled with unclear economic expectations, the public has a wait-and-see attitude towards non-rigid insurance products. In this case, can the "opening red" of life insurance companies continue to be "red" in 2022?

The slogan "Open the Door" is loud

Towards the end of the year, the "opening red" of various insurance companies has been launched strongly as always.

On December 6, Xinhua Insurance (601336.SH) held its 2022 business kick-off meeting. Li Quan, president of Xinhua Insurance, issued task orders for various business channels, and issued a battle order for the president, and the teams of 35 branches and the elites of various channels took the oath. Li Yuan, vice president of Xinhua Insurance, made the 2022 sales work deployment and opening battle arrangements. "Go all out to fight at the end of the year, work hard to meet the beginning" and "the first battle of 2022 will be won", and its branches have shouted loud slogans.

Just entered November, Ping An of China launched a 2022 "open door" product Royal Jinrui Annuity Insurance, its product advertising fully covers newspapers, airports, subways, elevators, whether in the capital airport or Daxing International Airport, whether in Xidan subway station or Fuxingmen subway station, or in the core business district business office buildings, high-end residential areas, as far as the eye can see, its redtong product promotion advertising paving.

In addition, on November 26, Ping An Life also held a launch conference for the listing of three wealth management insurance products at the head office level. The "Opening Red" kick-off meeting, the "Opening Red" first battle honor dinner, the "Opening Red" wealth salon, and the "Opening Red" elite training meeting held by its branches have blossomed everywhere.

Chinese Shou's "opening red" was mobilized earlier. On October 20 Chinese Life began to sell the first "opening red" product in 2021 - Xinyao Oriental regular annuity product. As of the end of October, Chinese Life has issued three "opening red" products, namely "Xinyu Jinsheng (Two Full Insurance)", "Xinyu Niannian (Annuity Insurance)", "Xinyu Zhenxiang (Annuity Insurance)", except for one for two full insurance, the others are annuity insurance products.

In this "opening red" activity, Chinese Life has adopted a product pre-sale strategy as always, that is, the above products are pre-sold to customers before they are officially launched, and consumers are encouraged to prepay premiums to book products.

Chinese For example, at the launch meeting of the 2022 "First Quarter Peak" held by PICC Life Insurance on November 16, Xiao Jianyou, member of the Party Committee of PICC Group, vice president and chairman of PICC Life Insurance, proposed to do a good job in the target management, assessment methods and implementation methods of "First Quarter Peak" and win the battle with the determination to fight a battle.

Wang Wen, secretary of the party committee of PICC Life Insurance and vice president of the work, said that piccolary life insurance institutions at all levels should formulate customer strategies and product strategies in accordance with the overall deployment of the head office, and fight the "first quarter peak" campaign in accordance with the baton of the head office.

Originally, "opening the door" was only a marketing activity of Chinese-funded insurance companies, and now foreign life insurance companies have also joined the battle group. For example, AIA Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai and other branches have held the "Opening Red" launch ceremony, the 2022 "Opening Red" training conference, and its Beijing branch achieved premiums of over 100 million yuan on the third day of the "Opening Red".

Intermediary companies that have been struggling with marketing have also vigorously carried out "opening the door". Fanhua Financial Holdings Group (NASDAQ: FANH) recently held a live broadcast of the opening red 100,000 people, and its various forms of opening kick-off meetings and trainings from the group to the prefectural and municipal institutions, the "Twelve Gifts" and "Macau Summit" and other sales incentives were unprecedented. In order to encourage the increase in staff, Pan China Financial Holding Group also held the first Pan China Entrepreneurship Festival. At the 2022 opening ceremony of the Zhejiang branch of Fanhua Financial Holdings Group, the entire venue was dressed up as a cabin and aircraft shape, "50,000 direct access to Macau". The opening plan promoted by its Fujian platform is directly divided into four themes: "rich", "expensive", "rong" and "hua".

The industry entanglement behind the complicated marketing

The so-called "opening red", that is, in this specific period of time, insurance companies gather the strength of the whole company to carry out full sales from all aspects of product marketing, assessment rules, sales incentives, advertising and so on, and seize the market. During this period, the branch will sign a goal achievement plan; the competent marketer will also claim personal performance goals, such as how many tens of thousands of yuan "FYC" (First Year Commission), the number of signed orders, and the manpower target.

China Merchants Securities analysis believes that "opening red" after years of operation in the industry has become a "battle that must be fought by soldiers", and there is also a saying in the industry that "opening red all year round, opening black all year black", after years of accumulation of business habits in the industry, "open door red" has become a more important work for both the company and agents.

Cai Qiang, general manager of Taibao Life Insurance, said frankly at a forum, "A friend of mine joked with me that your insurance industry only does one thing a year, that is, 'opening the door'. It can be seen that in the past five years in this industry, every January has been a pillar of power, and the rest are tightening the belt of their pants, especially the sales staff, hungry for three or four months, and then eating for a month, this 'premium moving' model is very low-end. ”

The general manager of the Beijing branch of a small and medium-sized insurance company told caijing reporter why although the supervision repeatedly emphasizes to dilute the opening red, almost no insurance company does not do "opening red", customers in the first quarter have some spare money, just after the bonus, the first quarter is a peak season for insurance sales.

A middle-level life insurance company believes that "the 'opening red' of insurance is like double eleven." Tmall is not going to fine it for double eleven. Since Tmall and Jingdong can engage in double eleven, why is the insurance industry criticized for doing 'opening the door'? After all, 'open door' customers have needs, insurance companies have needs, and marketers have needs. Since 'opening the door' is not a crime, say it out loud. ”

However, some people in the industry believe that the "opening red" of the insurance industry is a pathology - the annual product change soup does not change the medicine, the annual model is the "customer appreciation meeting" and other sales methods, as well as a variety of exaggerated copywriting in the circle of friends.

"The performance of insurance companies is usually to concentrate on fighting the war of annihilation, pushing one up and down by all employees, allowing the customer's family situation to be different, anyway, that one is the most suitable for you!"

"Opening the door" is a product of Chinese characteristics. Some people who have been in the industry for many years told caijing reporters that foreign companies such as AIA, Zhonghong Life and Sino-Italian Life were reluctant to do "opening red" in the first few years of entering the Chinese market, because their home country did not have a "opening red" marketing activity. It believes that in recent years, foreign insurance companies that have also vigorously developed the opening red are relatively more restrained and more planned than the general insurance companies when doing the opening activities, and the foreign giants have also vigorously carried out the "opening red" because it also needs the scale, if it does not quickly occupy the market scale, it may lose the opportunity. An insider of AIA Beijing Branch said, "The 'opening red' is mainly to give everyone an incentive during this critical period." ”

An industry insider revealed that the usual routine of "opening the door" is to open various start-up meetings and mobilization meetings, telling the salesman that "opening the door" is very important, especially for the year-end business sprint. During this period, insurance companies will hold meetings and interviews from top to bottom, so that salesmen should attach great importance to "opening the door". In addition, there will be various incentive schemes during this period, setting up various phased incentive schemes, such as rewards for entering information to customers in advance, and how much premium to achieve will also have incentives, which may be cash rewards, may be commissions, or may be travel incentives. Then there are all kinds of industry talks, customer service activities, salons, inviting customers to large conference halls or hotels, arranging seats, there will be salesmen in each seat, and usually a senior supervisor will be arranged to assist the less senior salesmen.

"At the product briefing, three things are usually said: the company is very powerful, it is a central enterprise or a state-owned enterprise, a large foreign capital; the investment is very strong, investing in various large-scale infrastructure projects; the income is very strong, how much and how much income. At the meeting, various reports will be made to inform which customers have purchased how much premium insurance products have been purchased, which will make people on the scene feel as if they are not embarrassed not to subscribe. ”

For the pre-sale of "opening red" products carried out by some large insurance companies, many professionals said that this practice is not reasonable and has no value to customers.

A professional believes that "the 'opening red' of an insurance company began at the end of September, the money was collected in the name of pre-collected premiums, and the contract has not been effective." Marketers encourage customers to start making appointments, and to grab them is to earn them. But this is actually for the needs of the insurance company's business, and the effective time of the customer's policy has been postponed. ”

Another senior person also expressed his opposition to this practice, "Selling two months in advance, deducting tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of premiums from customers, it does not reflect the policy information, nor does it give interest on early payment." Insurers are often making innovations that don't create real value for their customers, just to create false prosperity. ”

The pressure of "opening the door": product shifting and agent decline

In the past two years, the growth rate of insurance "opening red", health insurance mainly based on serious illness insurance, is far above life insurance products, which has almost driven the growth of "opening red" performance. However, in the "opening red" in 2022, life insurance products such as annuity insurance have replaced serious illness insurance as the main products of mainstream large insurance companies.

A marketer of an insurance company told Caijing that health insurance is a good "stepping stone", from the perspective of team retention, there is a dilemma of increasing personnel around the Spring Festival (February), and only in January can the new one survive the mid-winter of organizational development. The main health insurance is the opening red, and the premium is equal to manpower.

However, judging from the situation this year, it is difficult for health insurance to save the market, and it is even more difficult to play a major role in promoting manpower growth.

The relevant person in charge of the actuarial department of China Re Life Insurance believes that the "bottom product" of serious illness insurance in the past as an agent product library is a product that each agent should issue an order, and it is a barometer reflecting the status of agents, so the sales volume of serious illness insurance and the number of agents show a high correlation. In 2021, the growth of serious illness insurance has encountered a certain bottleneck, and the source of this bottleneck is the channel dilemma encountered by insurance companies in the past two years.

It believes that in 2021, a large number of customers purchased the old definition of serious illness insurance before the landing of the new regulations on serious illness, resulting in the centralized release of potential customer resources in a short period of time, and the outbreak sales of the old definition achieved 2-3 months of serious illness insurance sales in the same period, which also means that at least 2-3 months of customer resources were quickly consumed, but in fact, more customer resources were consumed. Because the sales model of serious illness insurance during this period is carried out with the help of the sale of old definition products, "casting a wide net, fast transaction" is the sales characteristics of this stage, its development of customers is relatively extensive, and it is difficult to tap and develop again in the new definition era by promoting the "absolute advantage" of the old definition of products to customers, resulting in many customers who can be obtained through more refined marketing at this stage.

In addition to the fact that the demographic dividend of serious illness insurance is no longer there, for small and medium-sized insurance companies, they are also facing the problem of the removal of a number of hot products. In October this year, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) issued the Notice on Further Regulating the Internet Life Insurance Business of Insurance Institutions, which clarifies that when an insurance company sells ordinary life insurance (except term life insurance) for more than ten years and ordinary annuity insurance products for more than ten years, it must have a comprehensive solvency adequacy ratio of more than 150% and a core solvency of not less than 100% for four consecutive quarters, and a comprehensive solvency surplus of more than 3 billion yuan for four consecutive quarters. For four consecutive quarters (or six quarters in two years), the risk composite rating is above Category A, and the document will be fully implemented on January 1, 2022.

According to relevant statistics, the only companies that can have annuity insurance sales qualifications on the Internet are: Ping An Life, Chinese Life, Taikang Life, Taibao Life, New China Life, Taiping Life, PICC Life, AIA Life, Sunshine Life, Minsheng Life, Guohua Life, Sino-US United Thai, CITIC Prudential, China Merchants Cigna, Zhonghong Life, ICBC AXA, BOCOM Life, Hengan Standard, Sino-British Life, Great Wall Life and other companies, and a number of small and medium-sized companies do not have annuity insurance sales qualifications.

On December 2, Cintai Life issued the Notice on Temporarily Stopping Internet Insurance Business on its official website, pointing out: "According to the overall arrangement of the company's high-quality development strategy transformation, comprehensive consideration of process optimization and technology research and development time cycle, as well as relevant regulatory regulations, the company will temporarily stop the Internet insurance business from January 1, 2022, and the resumption of Internet insurance business will be announced separately." The company insurance contract purchased prior to this is not affected in any way. "Huagui Life fully removed 8 products including "Huagui Barley Sweet Home 2021 Term Life Insurance", "Huagui Xiaoai Whole Life Insurance", "Huagui Barley Reduced Term Life Insurance" and so on before December 31, 2021; Hengqin Life removed 4 hot-selling products from the Internet channel in November, including Hengqin Chuanshi No. 1 Incremental Whole Life Insurance, Lijiu Increase Whole Life Insurance, Worry-free Life Critical Illness Insurance, Zhenxiang Lifetime Pension Insurance, etc.

Qiu Binbin, a senior insurer, believes that from the current "opening red" products released by various companies, it is impossible to return to the protection products to play the "opening red". The premium of the protection product parts is too low, even if there is a new protection product, it is necessary to combine the savings product with a package to do product promotion. Basically, changing the soup does not change the medicine or revolves around the savings product, whether it is two full insurance or annuity, just change a gimmick and add something grandiose.

It is pessimistic about the "opening red" outlook for 2022, believing that the possibility of a year-on-year decline is very large. "Looking at it now is basically to sing the original set of words again, still changing the soup and not changing the medicine." The big economic environment is not good, and the regulatory policies are becoming stricter, so I think it is difficult to have any big improvement and change in the "opening red". Qiu Binbin said. In his view, "the premium pressure of each company is still relatively large, and the profit pressure is relatively large, under this pressure, the insurance company may not have really weighed some basic mistakes in its operation how to change, but only think about how to change or cope with some superficial errors." From the system, assessment, requirements and habits, most giants can not respond quickly to the new market, its sales are not around customer demand, but around the profits of insurance companies. It is not to think about what the customer wants, so the problem of sales movement deformity will be more prominent. ”

A person at the headquarters of a life insurance company believes that "after the number of insurance marketers fell, the per capita production capacity has not increased, indicating that the sales ability of the existing personnel is still very weak." The agent business is increasingly difficult to attract the people that insurance companies want to attract. The root of the problem was ten or fifteen years ago. The question of the legal status of insurance marketers has not been resolved, and there has always been a problem of double taxation. Although the listed insurance companies have made many reforms, the core issue that will never touch is the legal identity of the marketer, and it will not turn him into an employee of the company. Under the traditional agent system, insurance companies accept everyone in order to increase their staff, there are too many low-quality agents, and the product introduction is not clear, and this production relationship is seriously behind the development requirements of the times. ”

Shenwan Hongyuan believes that the decline in manpower has led to an expansion of the pressure trend of NBV (new business value), and there is still pressure to start well in 2022, ensuring that product sales are less than expected and dragging down the overall value rate. Considering the sharp decline in manpower and the transformation is still underway, it is expected that the opening of 2022 will still face greater pressure in the context of the decline in manpower scale and the high base in the same period of 2021.

China Merchants Securities believes that in the past, insurance companies due to the contribution of value mainly from the protection of insurance, so that the opening period will also pay attention to the promotion of serious illness insurance (even limited the sales of annuity insurance), the current with the continuous downturn in serious illness insurance, the companies have now strengthened the training of savings insurance, but also more focused on the sales during the "opening red" period, while matching more positive targeted costs, to help the "opening red" sales and the transformation and upgrading of the team, is expected to "open the door" in 2022 "The sales effect of annuity will be better.

An insurance consumer told Caijing that her mother-in-law and cousin are engaged in insurance marketing, but recently her relatives are selling insurance to her, and she does not dare to trust anymore, "They sold Me Ping An products when they were safe, and later recommended Chinese life products to me in Chinese Life." Also I felt that the water of the insurance was very deep. They asked me to make a decision to buy insurance as soon as possible, and I felt like I had to wait. ”

One person who has been in the industry for many years believes that insurance practitioners will be reduced by at least a quarter in the next year. "In the current situation, the insurance business is seriously polarized. The pots that are done well earn a lot, and the northwest wind that is not done well cannot be drunk. Also, in team development. There are fewer and fewer people who want to develop and want to be a team, for two reasons: First, they have not yet made money, and they have the ability to recruit new people to make money. Second, newcomers have no skills, no income, no confidence, no customers, and it is still very difficult for the elderly to do business, not to mention newcomers. ”

He revealed, "Talking to some insurance marketers who have been in the industry for many years, I feel that everyone has a feeling of not being able to hold on. ”

However, there are also many professionals who believe that the industry's "opening red" controversy or the decline in the industry's overall original premium data is not necessarily a bad thing, and the industry needs to reflect and reflect, and think deeply about and study some basic issues. If the dilemma of an industry can urge everyone to conduct introspection, it is actually beneficial.