Entering insurance technology: Lu Min, former chief insurance business executive of Ping An Group, focused on insurance Internetization

As the track of insurtech becomes increasingly hot, not only venture capital capital is rushing into the investment, but also the "veterans" of the insurance industry are eager to try.

Recently, Lu Min, former chief insurance business executive officer of Ping An Group, chairman and CEO of Autohome, created a neutral third-party insurance technology platform - Understand Foreign Exchange, aiming to establish a knowledge graph of insurance terms, reduce the threshold of insurance product cognition through big data technology, and let the people clearly "buy insurance" and have sufficient risk protection at home.

"Since retiring from Ping An at the beginning of last year, I have been thinking about doing something in combination with my strengths. The so-called strengths, one is that I have been doing management work in the insurance industry for more than 20 years and understanding all aspects of the situation; second, through the appointment of Autohome, I deeply understand the operation of the Internet vertical platform. In addition, I have some thoughts on the direction of insurance Internetization, and I want to combine the Internet and insurance as a vertical platform by creating 'understanding foreign exchange'. Recently, Lu Min said in an exclusive interview with this reporter.

On October 1, 2021, The company officially launched the company and began to use technology tools to assist consumers in making purchase decisions under professional and comprehensive insurance cognition.

"I have been asked about the model and differentiated development strategy of understanding foreign exchange," Lu Min said bluntly, and the biggest difference between understanding foreign exchange and other platforms is that it is positioned as a "help-buy platform". On the one hand, through technical means to break the information and knowledge asymmetry, so that the majority of users clearly buy insurance, to maintain personal risk exposure; on the other hand, to fill the gap of third-party insurance vertical platform. At present, the more popular insurance platform in the market mainly displays the hot selling products on the Internet, but does not show the hot insurance products in the whole industry, and understands that baohui intends to cut into a blank market that has not yet been tapped.

The reporter learned from many sources that the industry is more concerned about the development prospects and business model scalability of this emerging insurtech platform.

An industry insider said bluntly that in terms of industry development prospects, China's insurance market still has a lot of room for development, for example, the current insurance density in China is 400 US dollars / person, only 1/10 of the United States, the per capita life insurance policy is 0.8, the proportion is very low, and both have a large room for improvement.

Lu Min said that he was "a rational entrepreneur", and everything was calculated before deciding to create a foreign exchange guarantee. When asked about financing, he said that he was also actively approaching venture capital institutions, and if there were suitable investors to help understand the growth of foreign exchange, he said that he would also welcome it.

The reporter learned from many sources that since the launch of the line in October 2021, the main work of understanding foreign exchange has focused on user research and product polishing, and continuously improving the value of products.

At present, the service model of the insurance APP is mainly "tools + content + services", in layman's terms, that is, insurance actuarial algorithm + big data + user understandable content + user troubleshooting.

The "Tools + Content" section is mainly based on the database of the understanding of the foreign exchange assessment system. Understanding baohui evaluation system is based on big data and scientific algorithms, belongs to the intelligent, data-based products, based on the evaluation system database to make tools and content without marketing and subjective color, in order to ensure that the user's choice of the premise is objective. The combination of tools and content can also reduce the threshold of insurance product cognition, so that consumers do not need to learn difficult and obscure financial knowledge, they can understand insurance.

"In terms of services, for ordinary consumers, the after-sales service that Baohui will launch includes policy management, claims consultation, etc. For insurance companies, the platform may provide data applications in the future to help insurance companies understand the image of their products in the minds of consumers, what are the advantages and disadvantages, and improve them in a targeted manner. For insurance agents, in addition to the lead service to solve the problem of customer acquisition, in order to improve the skills of agents, in the future, Webinar will also launch training services for different agents. Lu Min pointed out.

According to the reporter's understanding, at present, many venture capital institutions are also more optimistic about this business model, and believe that the C-end has a relatively large imagination space. Lu Min said that only by helping consumers solve real pain points can we win the trust of the C-end and attract more users to come in. The model of understanding foreign exchange is in the company of the insurance industry and friends with agents, which also promotes the benign development of the business model.

Lu Min also pointed out that he has always believed that the development prospects of the insurance vertical track are higher than those of the automotive industry. During his previous tenure as chairman and CEO of Autohome, he found that only 1/4 of the daily life of thousands of people between cars had car purchase needs, and the rest were car enthusiasts. However, in terms of insurance, users will not have insurance "enthusiasts", most visitors come with insurance needs, which means that the daily traffic of insurance vertical platforms may not be higher than that of entertainment platforms such as automobiles, but the conversion rate of users must be higher.

In his view, with the increasing number of users and the formation of industry reputation, there will be more room for expansion in the business model of understanding foreign exchange.

It is worth mentioning that unlike other platforms, "I understand that foreign exchange will not form its own insurance agent team, but empower insurance agents in the industry." Lu Min stressed that once the agent has an affiliated relationship with the platform, the platform needs to speak for the agent, and there is a possibility of losing the interests of users, so Baohui insists on not establishing its own agent team.

At present, the entire life insurance industry has entered a period of transformation, and the biggest sign is that the number of agents brought about by the disappearance of the demographic dividend and other reasons has dropped sharply, which has also forced the business model of insurance agents to change from the "human sea model" to the "production capacity model".

"According to estimates, if the number of agents in the insurance industry drops by 40%, insurance companies want to maintain the original premium level, and the per capita production capacity will increase by 60%. This means that insurers must increase their capacity per capita to achieve positive premium growth. Lu Min analyzed that there are only two ways to enhance per capita production capacity, one is to increase the average premium of the piece, that is, to allow consumers to increase the amount of insurance, but this is linked to the level of consumer income, there will not be much change in the short term; the second is to increase the number of per capita pieces (that is, increase the number of policies per capita), when the problem of agents' customer acquisition is effectively solved, their per capita number of pieces will naturally increase.

Lu Min said that understanding the value of foreign exchange in the insurance industry is not only to let consumers clearly buy insurance, solve the problem of customer acquisition of agents, and provide reference data for insurance companies; the greater original intention is to contribute to the Internetization of the insurance industry and do their part.

"At present, insurance agents are still mainly offline, and the overall situation cannot be opened online. From the perspective of insurance companies, although they have set up websites and developed APPS, they still rely more on third-party traffic platforms, and the industry data has not yet formed its own traffic pool. He pointed out. Specifically, the business model of traditional life insurance companies is mainly I-P-A-C-S (I insurance company, P is the product, A is the agent, C is the consumer, S is the service), that is, the insurance company first develops the product, and then gives the insurance product to the agent, and the agent finds the consumer to sell, and finally provides insurance services, but this model is mainly based on the offline customer sales format.

In recent years, some insurance companies have tried to adopt the A-C-P-I-S model, that is, with the help of the agent's private desire traffic - through the circle of friends to find consumers with insurance needs, and then introduce insurance products, let consumers choose insurance companies, and finally provide insurance services. This model may solve the urgent needs of insurance companies with a large team of agents, which is a compromise route.

"At present, Understanding Foreign Exchange adopts the C-P-A-I-S model, that is, starting from consumer needs, connecting suitable products to meet user needs, and then matching high-quality agents to provide follow-up insurance and insurance services." This means that we are maximizing the use of public domain traffic to help agents acquire customers, and help insurance companies accurately judge market demand and consumer feedback as a basis for product improvement. He pointed out that once the C-P-A-I-S model is effectively promoted, the future development will be quite controllable. In addition, when asked about the use of financing, Lu Min told reporters that the introduction of more funds can help market promotion and product polishing, and accelerate the landing speed.

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