The "frontrunners" on the network mutual aid track treasured each other, and finally fell before the New Year's Pass.
On December 28, Mutual Treasure issued an announcement that in order to protect the rights and interests of all members in the long run, the platform decided to stop operation on January 28, 2022 after careful consideration and discussion. In the announcement, Mutual Treasure also mentioned that it will make every effort to do a good job in follow-up protection work, and suggested that members independently choose suitable protection products as alternatives.
Mutual Treasure was once the vanguard of Ant Group's entry into the field of network mutual assistance. Founded in 2018, it has accumulated hundreds of millions of users in just three years, not only far more than a number of latecomers, but even veteran players such as Waterdrop Mutual Aid are difficult to match. In 2021, when the network mutual aid platform has been shut down, Mutual Treasure still maintains the volume of tens of millions of users, which once made users and viewers have the illusion that "it can continue to last for a long time" - of course, the illusion will not come true because there are too many people who believe, and the shutdown announcement given by Mutual Treasure has proved this.
Looking back at the ten-year journey of the network mutual aid track, from the crowd and the giant to the entry, and then to the final dismal end, the fate of the network mutual aid platform is regrettable, after all, they have also saved many users from water and fire. However, with the improvement of alternatives such as basic medical insurance and commercial insurance, the phased solution of network mutual assistance has indeed reached the time to withdraw.
Image from Canva Paintable
The fall of mutual aid platforms
Once upon a time, network mutual aid was still a good business with a "public welfare" flavor - through the publicity of "joining completely free", a large number of users were gathered to form a mutual aid group, and if one of the users in this group was unfortunate enough to get seriously ill, other users who did not get sick would share his treatment costs together. After the scale effect of the platform is highlighted, the cost of each user is almost negligible, which is attractive to some consumers who cannot afford insurance expenses or cannot buy insurance for various reasons.
In addition to the vertical players who entered the game early, such as water drop mutual aid and easy mutual aid, some Internet manufacturers have also played an abacus of entering the mutual aid track. Mutual Treasure is the first player to eat crabs, and JD Mutual is close behind. In 2019, there were more giants who came to share a piece of the pie, not only Didi launched the "Drops and Drops" of the community of mutual aid for serious illnesses at the beginning of the year; in June of that year, meituan mutual aid was launched; followed by Baidu's "light mutual aid" was also launched in November.
But both old players and new giants seem to underestimate the difficulty of this track, and with the passage of time, more and more mutual aid platforms have begun to fall into the dilemma of weak user growth, and finally ended up shutting down.
Looking at the entire track today, a number of small and medium-sized mutual aid platforms established in the early days have long disappeared, typical such as concentric mutual aid, future mutual aid, tadpole mutual aid, 17 mutual aid, dandelion mutual aid, neighbor mutual aid, octagonal mutual aid, etc. On March 24, Easy Fundraising's Easy Mutual Aid also announced its closure, and it also carried out the last round of equalization before the shutdown.
Although the mutual aid business under the big factory has strong resources to support, many players have not escaped this fate. In addition to the mutual treasure that was announced to be shut down this time, Baidu Lighting Mutual Aid also announced its shutdown in September 2020 due to insufficient users and failed to meet the launch conditions - this is less than a year after the official launch of Lighting Mutual Aid. Judging from the announcement, the number of users at the end of the light mutual aid did not even exceed 500,000.
In addition, Meituan Mutual also announced its closure on January 31 this year, and its number of users once reached more than 30 million in its heyday, but as of the shutdown, less than half of its members were still "sticking to their hearts".
Droplet Mutual Aid is the first batch of real players on the network mutual aid track, but even if it is, it cannot escape the fate of shutdown. In March this year, Droplet Mutual officially announced the termination of the service and plans to insure all users for a one-year period, with a maximum insurance amount of 500,000 yuan (Waterdrop Health Insurance) as compensation, and the premium will be borne by the platform.
The image is from the official website of WaterDrop
What's the problem?
In fact, Internet giants have always had their own plans for online mutual aid.
For the Internet giants involved, the significance of network mutual aid is that it can gradually educate users to put aside their prejudices against insurance, and ultimately achieve the purpose of draining commercial insurance business. After all, the insurance business has a mature profit model, and it can bring huge traffic returns to these giants. Two typical examples are that Shui Di, which made its fortune in mutual aid business, has reached 700 million yuan in monthly signed premiums as of July 2019, and its annual premium income is expected to be close to 10 billion yuan; Ant Group, which has established ZhongAn Insurance together with Ping An and Tencent, has also exceeded the 10 billion mark in its insurance business.
However, the business model of the mutual aid platform may not be able to support the monetization vision of the giants.
As mentioned above, the target users of mutual aid products are mostly those who cannot afford insurance or cannot buy insurance for various reasons. These users have weak anti-risk ability, and at the same time, they are more sensitive to the apportionment price of mutual aid products, so the user body has buried a lot of hidden dangers for the mutual aid model.
Tianfeng Securities said in a report that mutual aid platforms have long been caught in a "dead loop" - the increase in the user base will inevitably lead to an increase in the risk rate of the platform and an increase in the amount of apportionment, and the increase in the amount of apportionment will lead to more price-sensitive healthy people to opt out, and the decrease of users will further increase the amount of apportionment of each user, which will form a vicious circle.
Some insiders also revealed in interviews with the media that if the insurance business is not diverted, the network mutual aid platform itself is more difficult to make a profit. "Under normal circumstances, in order to maintain the operation of the platform, the network mutual aid platform will only charge a management fee of 6%-8%, so even the industry's head platform can only barely achieve breakeven, let alone feed the company's overall revenue."
On the other hand, due to the relatively high degree of overlap between the mutual aid model and the insurance business, this has also attracted the attention of the regulatory authorities for the entire industry. Previously, the CBRC had issued an administrative penalty totaling 650,000 yuan to Mutual Treasure, on the grounds that Mutual Treasure had changed the product rate calculation method and basic data through product parameter adjustment, which did not meet the relevant provisions of the Measures for the Administration of Health Insurance; in September 2020, the CBIRC wrote that in recent years, the online mutual aid platform that has grown barbarically in recent years "has the characteristics of commercial insurance, but currently has no corresponding regulatory policies and is in a rather embarrassing situation".
In the article, the CBRC stressed that the number of members of the network mutual aid platform is huge, and it is in the state of "driving without a license" for non-licensed operations, and the risks of the stakeholders must not be ignored. In addition, some charging model platforms have also formed a large number of precipitated funds, and there is a risk of running away from the volume, if it is not handled properly, the possibility of causing social risks cannot be ignored.
The insurance track has entered the second half, how can the Internet giants stand out?
The insurance market is quietly growing as Mutual Treasure and its competitors grapple with crisis of public opinion, compliance and profitability issues – the extensive exploration of the sinking market by online mutual aid platforms has given local government departments and traditional insurance institutions many inspirations. Taking this as an opportunity, the "Huiminbao" born in recent years has gradually surpassed the previous network mutual aid in terms of sound.
Huimin Insurance is not different from traditional medical or commercial insurance, its positioning is closer to the two, and it is mostly established under the guidance of local government departments, and insurance institutions provide commercial operations. Compared with some of the pain points of previous insurance products, Huimin Insurance focuses on low prices, low insurance thresholds, allowing insurance with illness, no age and occupation restrictions, etc., coupled with the endorsement of the government and well-known insurance institutions, which is more attractive to the target groups of online mutual assistance. According to the data released by the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission in October this year, the number of insured people has exceeded 70 million, and as many as 58 insurance institutions have participated in it.
At present, the development of some regional huimin insurance has entered the second year, and many regions have also begun to make meticulous improvements to the pain points of different groups of people, including price, scope of protection and service model. It is conceivable that under the support of the huge domestic population base, the coverage of HuiminBao will expand to unimaginable points, and the service will be more refined.
In addition, the regulator's attitude towards network mutual aid can also play a role in killing chickens and monkeys, restricting internet giants in the field of Internet insurance to resort to unscrupulous marketing behavior for drainage - before this, complaints about the "monthly zero premium trap" of Internet insurance platforms have long abounded, and water drop insurance, Yuanbao Insurance, Du Xiaoman Insurance Brokers, and 360 Insurance have all exposed such news.
In response to such phenomena, the CBIRC has taken action. On November 8 this year, The company was punished by the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the specific illegal items included different amounts of premiums paid in installments, and the actual standard of 3 yuan in the first month was advertised as "0 premiums". Based on this, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission fined Shuidi Company a fine of 1 million yuan.
Under such a general trend, almost all traditional insurance companies have begun to vigorously develop self-operated channels, trying to reduce the previous dependence on third-party platforms. Chinese Life, China Taiping, Xinhua Insurance and other companies chose to develop their e-commerce business independently, while Taikang Life set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Taikang Online, to build Internet channels.
The picture is from the official website of Taikang Group
For the Internet giants, the most common mode of their entry into the insurance track is the aggregation insurance platform and network mutual assistance, but at the moment when the supervision is becoming stricter and the traditional insurance companies are actively creating new channels and developing their own Internet insurance business, the tried and tested methods of the Internet giants have been difficult to work. In the next time, giants such as Baidu, Meituan, and Ctrip that have not yet won their own insurance licenses may rush to fight for opportunities for themselves, while the competition between licensed giants such as Ant Group, Tencent, and JD.com and traditional insurance institutions is bound to be more intense. In the end, will the Internet giants withdraw from the fight, or can they be separated from traditional insurance companies by virtue of their strength? It's all up to time to verify.