Can Internet insurance open the "shop around" model, can it fill the gap in the shrinking channel of agents?

Mainland insurance sales have become the third largest channel from the original agent, silver post and economic generation "two worlds" model, to the addition of Internet channels.

The impact of the new crown epidemic on the domestic agent channel, in the past three years, directly led to a sharp decline in the premium growth of the entire insurance industry, while the latest regulatory authorities released data show that the size of the agent directly reduced from the original more than 8 million people to 2.5 million people, although many insurance companies and third-party institutions are actively seeking their own and industry changes, such as increasing investment in Internet insurance sales channels, in order to smooth the impact of the shrinking agent channel, but from the current point of view, the effect is not obvious.

Other giants with great Internet customer stickiness have begun to intervene in the Internet insurance sales market, hoping to stimulate the market's consumer enthusiasm with the "shop around" model.

On February 28, after a month of trial operation, Ant Insurance, the insurance agency platform of Ant Group, officially launched the "Golden Selection" service, and the first batch of products selected for the "Golden Selection" totaled more than 40 products, covering medical insurance, serious illness insurance, accident insurance, life insurance and other insurance types, including insurance products of dozens of well-known insurance companies such as Chinese Insurance, Ping An Insurance, China Pacific Insurance, Sunshine Insurance, and ZhongAn Insurance.

"On the insurance page of the golden selection product, consumers can clearly understand the reasons for each product through the five-dimensional analysis chart and the actuary evaluation. The service is to make the insurance product recommendation rules transparent, and select the insurance products with the strongest comprehensive competitiveness on Ant Insurance from five dimensions to reduce the difficulty of consumers choosing insurance products. In this regard, Shao Wenlan, vice president of Ant Group, told the "China Times" reporter.

Multiple platforms launch new modes

According to the reporter's understanding, the standard introduced by Ant Insurance to help the Internet people choose and buy insurance products is not the first in the industry. Previously, there were several Internet platforms in the form of a certain insurance in the market to help Internet people buy insurance through product comparison, but because the traffic of these platforms was small, it was difficult to attract a wide range of attention from the market.

In this regard, Guo Jinlong, director of the Insurance and Economic Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that insurance is a financial product with a high threshold of understanding, and insurance is difficult to understand and choose, which on the one hand plagues consumers, on the other hand, it also forms an "invisible" restriction on the development of the industry. This model of solving consumer pain points makes insurance products more transparent, can better protect the rights and interests of consumers, and helps to promote the high-quality development of the industry.

"For Internet platforms that have not obtained qualifications, it is prohibited for regulators to provide consumers with purchasing reference services by publicly comparing the advantages and disadvantages of products." However, from the perspective of the services provided by Ant Insurance, it does not actually belong to such services, this service is more like providing consumers with a purchase standard, analyzing their own family, work, age, finances, etc., to analyze what kind of insurance products individuals should buy, and then choose the insurance provided by various insurance companies on this platform. Perhaps for the post-90s and post-00s who are currently accustomed to Internet consumption, the purchase of relatively simple health and serious illness insurance, accident insurance, etc. is a more convenient service. But for insurance planning that focuses on the whole, it may not be enough. In this regard, Wang Tao, a doctor of actuarial science in the Department of Insurance of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, admitted frankly in an interview with the "China Times" reporter on March 1.

It is worth mentioning that the evaluation insurance product "AIMM Gold Selection Five-dimensional Model" launched by Ant Insurance is a specific analysis, the model will be from the insurance threshold, the scope of protection, cost-effectiveness, service claims and the company's operation of the five dimensions of the insurance products for comprehensive comparison and scoring, from the "Ant Insurance" platform hundreds of products, select the top 10% of the products of each subdivision of insurance, at the same time will be dynamically updated according to user feedback, follow-up products that meet the requirements will be transferred in, and products with poor user feedback will also be called out.

Shao Wenlan said that the golden selection service is an attempt by Ant Insurance to reduce the difficulty of consumer decision-making, and the follow-up will continue to absorb feedback from users and partners, continue to optimize and iterate, and as an open platform, it will continue to link more insurance companies and continuously introduce high-quality insurance products for consumers to choose.

Layout behind the Internet track

In the entire domestic insurance market, insurance companies, consumers and third parties (including agents, bank-post agents and Internet channels) constitute a "triangle" relationship, and in this triangle relationship, each has its own considerations.

"After the domestic mutual insurance model withdraws from the market, it should be said that this part of the market consumer group and the scale should be absorbed by the commercial insurance market, but the original Internet mutual insurance is extremely cheap. Premiums ' to obtain higher protection to attract all kinds of policyholders, this model is a disguised price war for commercial insurance companies, and even leads to some short-term consumer health insurance products can not be sold; and for healthy consumers, the mentality of most people is to choose which insurance is cheaper; but commercial insurance companies should consider the cost of product development, sales and follow-up services. Therefore, the disguised low-price competition strategy is obviously not feasible in insurance products. On March 2, Xie Wen (pseudonym), marketing director of a large life insurance company in Shanghai, analyzed and pointed out to the reporter of China Times.

Xie Wen said that for the agent channel, with the vigorous development of Internet insurance consumption, there is a change in the consumer group after 80-00, and the "Internet natives" have gradually become the backbone of society, and the demand for protection has increased. However, agents have not yet fully realized the "changes" of the market, still relying on the sale of simplified insurance products has not worked, so the shrinkage of the team is also expected, the future of domestic agents for the inevitable to take the high-end route to survive in the market.

"Domestic agents must take the route of foreign wealth planners to win a place, the consumer group is changing, insurance products for the post-80s, they can completely compare themselves, and even for the understanding of financial management is not worse than the level of agents, then recommend insurance products to them, if there is no rich level of knowledge and experience, there is no way to impress them to buy insurance." Xie Wen said frankly.

In fact, in the eyes of the industry, the Internet platform to promote insurance products to meet the needs of consumers is if the insurance company sells the insurance company through the Internet sales platform or the third-party sales platform built by itself, in addition to the cost of building the platform, whether it can reduce the price of the original product.

"While the new crown epidemic has stimulated the awareness of national health protection, the industry has a deeper understanding of the urgency of online insurance, insurance companies have laid out the Internet track, and a large number of Internet insurance products have emerged in the market." However, in the case of the same follow-up service, consumers will think that the same insurance products of insurance companies must be sold on the Internet cheaper than through the other two major channels, because labor costs are saved. But now it seems that many insurance companies not only did not reduce prices, but instead raised prices, so although the Internet insurance channel is developing rapidly, there are very few who can really attract consumers to apply for large amounts of insurance. On March 2, Chen Zhiwen, a veteran who has long studied changes in the domestic insurance sales market, pointed out in an interview.

According to its disclosure, although the Internet insurance channel has developed rapidly, the overall situation is still the characteristics of low single premium and large number of pieces, and after more than two years of development, the Internet insurance channel has not yet been able to achieve the degree of convergence with the other two major channels.

In addition, the "China Times" reporter also learned from the industry that the insurance industry in January this year "opened the door" can be described as miserable, there are data from internal exchanges in the industry, in addition to a very small number of small companies new policy premium growth, all other large, medium and small life insurance new policy premiums fell by about 30% is the norm, and even some companies new policy premiums fell by more than 80%.

Responsible Editor: Xu Yunqian Editor-in-Chief: Gong Peijia