The soaring premium of new energy vehicles has aroused heated discussion, and insurance companies are helpless, can the premiums still be reduced?

Wen | Ni Yuping, a weekly magazine of "Finance and Economics"

Edited | Sun Yue

On December 30, 2021, Wu Zhiqing went to pick up a new car with joy. But on this day, he found that the Toyota Corolla hybrid version of the premium he had just bought had "jumped halfway", and after the discount, the premium of this car was about 5500 yuan - "the double twelve car insurance was discounted by more than 3700 yuan, and he did not buy it at that time", he mentioned that he felt "meat pain", "these days it has risen".

Premiums have risen since the 27th. All the "cars with green cards, the premiums are expensive", Wu Zhiqing is also an agent of PICC Property Insurance, he said, "Tesla, more than 800,000 yuan, the original premium of more than 9,000 to 10,000 yuan, now it has more than 18,000 yuan." ”

About a week ago, the new energy exclusive car insurance was officially launched. Previously, most of the industry believed that new energy exclusive car insurance will bring "fee reduction" concessions to most car owners, but from the perspective of insurance at this stage, there is a general upward trend in the price of new energy car insurance.

New energy vehicle premiums have generally increased

The price increase storm began with Tesla.

Soon after the launch of new energy exclusive car insurance, a news of Tesla's 80% price increase triggered the focus of public opinion. Some car owners posted policy information on social platforms, Tesla Model Y insured on the 23rd, the cost was 8278 yuan, and after the 27th, the insurance cost rose to more than 14,000 yuan, an increase of 80%. In addition, the premiums of Model 3, Model P and other models have also increased to varying degrees.

Tesla official response shortly after that from the latest December 30 statistics, its vehicle premium increase to the national average of about 10%, the more concerned high-performance version of the car premium, the increase in the national average within 20%, the specific amount please refer to the local insurance company quotation prevails.

"Before the online exposure premium rose by 80%, but the larger increase was only concentrated in these two cases, and the subsequent premium price has been adjusted back." A Tesla salesman in Beijing explained that the overall premium price of Tesla is now 10% to 20% higher than the previous version, "mainly because of the more protection content, even the charging pile is guaranteed." ”

And here in Wu Zhiqing, he saw that Tesla's premium is still far ahead of the one, "(Car insurance) began to rise from December 27, Tesla's more than 300,000 car premiums have tens of thousands of blocks, more than 800,000 cars have no claim premiums will be 18,000 yuan, if there is a claim to get more than 20,000 yuan." ”

Shenwan Hongyuan Securities analyst Ge Yuxiang team believes that the actual increase in Tesla premiums needs to be confirmed, and at present, according to the benchmark premium changes mastered by its team, the increase is between 15% and 20%, and the actual car insurance price changes also need to be combined with the market environment, region, the owner's own situation and the change of the independent pricing coefficient.

Not only Tesla, in fact, the trend of premium increases has spread in the new energy vehicle market.

On February 28 this year, Zhuang Xiao's BYD premiums are about to expire. After receiving calls from several car insurance salesmen, she found that the premium of her Song Pro EV model would face a price increase of about 2,000 yuan. On the basis of last year's premium of 4700 yuan, China Life Property & Casualty Insurance and Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance gave quotations of 6700 yuan and 6000 yuan respectively.

Zhuang Xiao analyzed that the rise in premiums may be due to the occurrence of claims, "insurance premiums will rise by 10%, but if there is no insurance, it will drop by 10% to 20%. However, she does not think that this means that the new energy car insurance premium has been reduced, on the contrary, BYD's first-year premium price for the same model of new car has also increased by 10% compared with when she first bought it. It is worth mentioning that the current price of this car is 200,000 yuan, that is to say, the vehicle premium below 250,000 yuan is still likely to rise.

According to the new energy vehicle benchmark pure risk premium table released by the China Association of Actuaries, there have been many views in the industry that the price of 250,000 yuan is a watershed in whether the new energy vehicle insurance is raised, and under normal circumstances, the premium of new energy vehicles below 250,000 yuan may only fall or not rise.

"New energy vehicles as a whole are rising", Zhuang Xiao saw in the process of continuous price comparison, 200,000 yuan of new car premiums generally raised by about 1,000 yuan. At present, Zhuang Xiao is still waiting for quotations from other insurance companies, and under the premise that the rise has become an established fact, she still wants to have more opportunities to compare prices.

According to the car insurance information feedback from xiaopeng automobile sales staff, the increase in car insurance is about 300 yuan to 500 yuan, "mainly the price adjusted by the insurance company."

Weilai Automobile is still "standing still" in terms of car insurance prices for the time being. On December 29, they issued a note on the captive insurance for new energy vehicles, promising to maintain the pricing of the new "worry-free service" package, and also including three additional insurances added to the new clause, namely external grid fault loss insurance, self-use charging pile loss insurance and self-use charging pile liability insurance. Users who are still in the service worry-free 2021 server do not need to purchase three additional insurances in the new terms, and the current service worry-free package will contain the corresponding protection content.

Li Ke, a salesperson at WEIO, confirmed the company's commitment. According to his understanding, in the past "service worry-free" pricing, 6,000 yuan to 7,000 yuan is the premium price, and 3,000 yuan is the service price. "This time the new energy car insurance, the insurance price in the service worry-free rose to 8600 yuan, the service part of the project unchanged, but the total price of the service worry-free did not rise."

It is understood that the "service worry-free" project is a service project that Weilai Automobile packages value-added services such as car insurance and maintenance and repair to the owner, which is also an attempt by new energy vehicle companies to directly intervene in the car insurance link. At the beginning of 2020, Service Worry-free 2.0 was launched. Compared with the previous version, the coverage of Worry-free 2.0 has been reduced, and the cost has decreased accordingly.

"Many car owners who did not buy worry-free service before will buy it, but they will buy it, and the price gap between the insurance company's car insurance quotation and the service worry-free is not obvious." Li Ke said.

But whether Weilai Automobile's car insurance service will keep up with this wave of price increases is not easy to say. In the above note, WEILai revealed that the 2022 edition of Service Worry-free is "under intense discussion" and is scheduled to be launched in March this year. In the message area, around the question of whether the 2022 version of the price increase, there have been car owners who continue to leave messages. For this problem, Li Ke only threw out one sentence, "Before upgrading the 3.0 version, quickly renew the insurance." ”

It should be pointed out that these phenomena of premium increases that have aroused concern are closely related to the policy changes in the industry. In the past 2021, the reform of new energy vehicle insurance has been greatly advanced, and on December 14, the China Insurance Association and the China Association of Actuaries simultaneously issued the "Exclusive Clauses for Commercial Insurance of New Energy Vehicles (Trial)" and "Benchmark Pure Risk Premium Table of Commercial Insurance for New Energy Vehicles (Trial)". It is mentioned that new energy vehicle insurance includes 3 main insurances and 13 additional insurances of automobile loss insurance, third-party liability insurance, and vehicle personnel liability insurance, and the insured can choose all insurance types or part of the insurance types. That is to say, on the basis of traditional comprehensive insurance, the unique "three electrics" system of new energy vehicles and all other equipment at the factory are included in the insurance coverage. For example, accidents such as self-use charging pile loss, external grid fault loss insurance and self-use charging pile liability insurance fully cover the driving, parking, charging and operation scenarios at the use level.

On December 27, the new energy exclusive motor insurance guided by the above policies was launched on the Shanghai Insurance Exchange, and 12 property insurance companies, including PICC Property & Casualty, Ping An Property & Casualty, CPIC Property & Casualty, Taiping Property & Casualty, China Life Property & Casualty, China United Insurance, Dadi Insurance, Sunshine Property & Casualty, Tianan Property & Casualty, Zhongcheng Auto Insurance, Asia Pacific Property & Casualty insurance and Samsung Property & Casualty, were the first to be admitted to underwrite.

That is, after December 27, the price of new energy vehicle insurance has changed. "All insurance companies have seized this opportunity and have raised the premium of new energy vehicles." Wu Zhiqing talked about his views.

Insurance companies are "forced" to raise prices

Insurance companies have their own difficulties in increasing the price of new energy vehicle insurance.

A car insurance industry practitioner complained that the price of car insurance premiums is closely related to the price of car parts and components - to a large extent, the higher the cost of parts replacement, the more expensive the premium price.

The "traffic responsibility" Tesla in new energy vehicles, the zero ratio (the ratio of the sum of the price of vehicle accessories to the sales price of the vehicle) is higher than that of traditional fuel vehicle companies.

In 2019, Zhao Mang, who lives in Tongzhou, bought Tesla's Model 3. During a drive, a flying pebble just hit the front windshield, and the glass shattered at the moment — Zhao Mang summed up the cause of the accident as "fast and (the stone) angle". To this end, Zhao Mang has a claim record: at a price of more than 5,000 yuan, he replaced a front windshield.

"It's expensive", Liu Haoyang, who is engaged in the transaction of new energy second-hand cars, can't help but admit that changing a front windshield is only about half the price in other new energy vehicles. The same 5,000 yuan, Zhuang Xiao can be used to replace her BYD car door: in 2020, she collided with another car, and the repair price is within her view "normal range".

"The zero ratio of new energy vehicles is not low", Liu Haoyang explained, which is related to the fact that the sales base of the entire new energy market is not large enough. "If the model is niche and there are not enough maintenance points, such as the need to transfer goods from other places, this cost will increase the zero ratio, and for the insurance company, the underwriting cost will also increase."

In the market for new energy vehicles, there are some layers, "the new energy vehicles of traditional OEMs, the zero-to-integer ratio will be relatively low, because many accessories can be used, but Tesla may lead to a higher zero-to-whole ratio due to pricing strategies and other factors." Liu Haoyang further analyzed.

Song Jiaqian, a car insurance agent of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance, said that in the previous new energy vehicle underwriting cases, the price of a customer's vehicle may be less than 200,000, but the premium will be higher than that of more than 200,000 vehicles, "it may be that the model is rare, the premium will be higher, and the customer will sometimes feel depressed, but this is no way, it is the result of actuarial calculation." ”

Another factor driving up premiums is that car insurance agents have less authority to adjust prices.

Song Jiaqian talked about this and sighed, "In the policy quotation of new energy vehicles, the salesman personally has no commission to take. "No commissions means that it's hard to give discounts on customer satisfaction.

For the change in the price of car insurance premiums, it is difficult for agents to give immediate judgment, Song Jiaqian told the "Finance and Economics World" weekly, "the major insurance companies are unified networked, need to report models, insurance information, etc., and the system brings out the car insurance price." Even, it is difficult for agents to judge which model can be insured, which requires the system to give a judgment: the system can "bring out" the price can be out, "can not bring out the price can not be guaranteed."

Taken together, the agent's operating space is smaller. "The prices are similar, and now we are actually paying more attention to value-added services." Song Jiaqian said.

Can the rising premiums still be reduced?

Since the official launch of new energy exclusive car insurance on December 27, it has just turned one week. The new energy auto insurance market is still adjusting. Will there be room for the level of premiums that are rising in the ups and downs to fall?

"The price of the new car premium in the first year will be higher overall, but in the subsequent renewal process, there will still be some discounts within the system for the insured's good driving habits and driving records." Song Jiaqian said, "This year is the first year of new energy vehicle insurance, and there is no way to compare, and the premium is reduced or not, which is also based on the comparison of this year's trip with next year's." ”

On the other hand, the new energy vehicle market is also expanding. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, from January to November 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.023 million units and 2.99 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.7 times year-on-year. The market penetration rate reached 12.7%, higher than in the previous October. It is expected that the production and sales of new energy vehicles will exceed 3.4 million units in 2021. Shenwan Hongyuan's team expects production over a longer period of time, and by 2025, new energy vehicle sales will exceed 10 million to 10.46 million, with a total of 35.65 million.

With the expansion of the market, the zero-to-integer ratio problem may be alleviated to a certain extent. "The market volume is large, which is equivalent to a reduction in the cost of spare parts," Liu Haoyang also admitted. However, specific to whether it will lead to a correction in the price of car insurance, he feels that it is "enough to choke", "The after-sales maintenance price is not exactly equivalent to the retail price, and this part is also an important source of profit for car companies." ”

Ge Yuxiang said that the price increase of some new energy models also fully reflects that the competitive entities in the industry after the comprehensive reform are no longer blindly oriented by the scale of premiums, but pay attention to the improvement of business quality through the linkage of price and fee. After the comprehensive reform, the connotation of auto insurance pricing has changed, and the risk pricing ability has become the core of the underwriting profits of insurance companies, and the risk and rates are more compatible.

"We expect that due to the comprehensive reform of motor insurance, the average premium of new energy vehicle insurance vehicles will drop to 4243 yuan / car in 2021, 4200 yuan / vehicle in 2022, and it is expected that by 2025, the proportion of new energy vehicle insurance premiums will increase from 4.1% in 2021 to 15.0%." Ge Yuxiang said in the report.

(At the request of the interviewee, Wu Zhiqing, Li Ke, Zhuang Xiao, Zhao Mang, Liu Haoyang, and Song Jiaqian are pseudonyms)

This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.