New changes in auto insurance: the "C-bit" opportunity of OEMs

As early as 2019, there was a question on Zhihu that said, "Automakers have Exceeded warranty and perfect maintenance processes and data, why not sell insurance but give the market to insurance companies?" ”

Time has passed, this problem has now been more and more OEMs to respond to the air, according to media reports, a few days ago, the State Administration of Market Supervision officially approved the "BYD Insurance Brokerage Company" declaration and registration.

In fact, not only BYD, Tianyancha APP shows that Weilai Insurance Brokerage Co., Ltd. was just established in January this year, such as Tesla, Xiaopeng and many other OEMs have begun to lay out their own car insurance business in recent years, which also seems to reveal the helplessness from all aspects.

On the one hand, before the official release of new energy exclusive car insurance at the end of last year, traditional fuel vehicle insurance is usually difficult to divide the responsibility for accidents such as spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles, and car owners often either admit bad luck at their own expense or strive for the main engine factory to bear the loss.

On the other hand, although the new energy exclusive car insurance was officially released at the end of last year, due to the increasing number of sensors in smart cars today, Tesla's integrated injection process, etc., the accident maintenance costs of smart cars have been pushed to a new high.

According to the surging news, after the exclusive new car insurance was launched, some Tesla owners posted their own insurance policies, and their car premiums rose from 8278 yuan to 14902 yuan, an increase of up to 80%. Guangzhou Daily also said that "the premium of new energy vehicles above 250,000 yuan may rise."

We cannot deny the fact that the maintenance cost of new energy vehicles has increased, but Tan Qing said that AI believes that car insurance as a rigid demand for the automobile market exists, and under the demand for the rapid development of electric vehicles, in addition to focusing on the "lack of core" problem, it is also necessary to pay attention to car insurance, which is likely to be stuck in the neck of the entire new energy automobile industry.

Our cars are running wild on the road of intelligence, but will car insurance continue to go the traditional old road? The car insurance layout that has been surging among many OEMs already seems to be negative.

So as more and more car companies have the momentum of personally doing car insurance, in the face of the three giants of "Renpingtai" who have been entrenched in the car insurance market for many years, where does the confidence and driving force of the OEMs come from?

Motivation: The best executor of UBI car insurance

Where are the current pain points of new energy vehicle insurance? For consumers, it is actually a word, expensive. So is there any way to solve it? Reducing maintenance costs is obviously too difficult, but it may be useful to start with the pricing model of car insurance.

Nowadays, most of our car insurance is paid once a year, so if in this year, Xiao A is an entrepreneur, almost every day to drive to visit customers, back and forth between the company and the factory, in order to hurry there will often be dangerous driving behavior; Xiao B is an office worker, commuting to the subway every day, private cars almost can't drive several times a year, and driving behavior norms.

Then the problem with this pricing mechanism is obvious, whether it is the annual fee or the macro pricing perspective of actuaries in the insurance industry, it is obviously very unfair to Small B.

On the other hand, if you can achieve mileage charging and personalized pricing, this unfairness can be greatly alleviated, which is actually the essence of UBI car insurance that has been popular many years ago.

UBI car insurance has not been greatly developed in the mainland for many years, in fact, it is mainly about sensors. To get personalized driving data, insurers will undoubtedly need to install sensors for policyholders to monitor their driving behavior.

But imagine, these sensors have no other purpose than to monitor the driver's driving behavior, and for drivers with bad driving habits, it is natural that they will not be able to pretend to be guilty of themselves.

So why is the OEM the best executor of UBI car insurance?

Obviously, on the one hand, the reason is that the current smart cars of brands such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli are also equipped with a large number of sensors that can provide data value to the main engine factory, but the obvious value of these sensors lies in assisted driving, which is to create value for car owners, and car owners are naturally more acceptable. This makes the current personalized data of smart car OEMs, an advantage that the insurance industry has almost no solution for the time being.

On the other hand, if we continue to open our minds along the idea of insuring by mileage, then OEMs can also add options to a golden scene, thus further demonstrating the value of UBI car insurance, that is, the energy replenishment scenario.

You may wish to make such a vision, the future of car insurance and supplements can be an optional binding in the payment process, such as today when we buy air tickets, high-speed rail tickets or car rental and other travel products, a tightly bound option is insurance purchase.

In fact, the supporting foundation of this idea also exists objectively, and now car companies such as Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng and other car companies are heavily laying out their own energy infrastructure, and each car owner often realizes most of the online process operations on the APP of each brand when charging or changing the power.

In the future, for example, after the owner of a car brand pays the 300-kilometer charging fee on the mobile phone APP after charging, you can check the next 300 kilometers of car insurance, of course, the 300-kilometer car insurance fee must also be charged in the form of personalized UBI.

The advantages of this program will be reflected in two aspects, one is that it can feed back the brand replenishment business, and more preferential measures can be further refined through the joint payment of replenishment and car insurance, which will lead back customers who have lost their own energy replenishment system, improve the utilization rate of brand replenishment facilities, and increase the income of the main engine factory replenishment plate.

Second, there is a positive value at the social level, short-term insurance purchase will more intuitively show the flexibility of UBI car insurance pricing, the more standardized the owner of the car can be the more "save money", in the form of premiums to review their previous hundreds of kilometers of driving behavior norms when charging, it is likely to invisibly encourage more drivers to maintain driving standardization, thereby reducing the incidence of traffic accidents in society.

Therefore, the main engine factory entered the auto insurance industry in the form of UBI, and there are objectively two values of implementability and revenue.

Potential energy: The dimensionality reduction blow of autonomous driving subscriptions to car insurance

If you take a long-term view, for the traditional auto insurance industry, another keyword that can trigger the transformation of the industry seems to be getting closer and closer to the industry, that is, "the migration of responsible subjects".

SEA's automatic driving classification system clearly states that the classification of L0-L2 is collectively referred to as "assisted driving", and since L3, it has been "automatic driving".

This is also why many OEMs are now playing a graded edge ball, even if they say that their auxiliary driving ability reaches "L2++", it will never be said to be L3. Of course, it is also true that most countries still do not open up the right of way to L3 and above to passenger cars.

Therefore, it is not difficult to deduce that if the passenger cars equipped with L3 and above automatic driving begin to obtain a large number of right-of-way rights, from the moment the user uses the automatic driving function legally and compliantly, the main body responsible for the accident has actually changed, that is, from the driver to the automatic driving system.

This will achieve a dimensionality reduction blow to the huge auto insurance market of individual car owners to a certain extent, and the two possible industry changes that may occur subsequently are as follows: one is that the purchase of private car insurance will be greatly reduced, and the other is that in contrast, providing users with corresponding on-road property and safety guarantees after opening the automatic driving function will become an inevitable thing for OEMs.

The first point does not need to be repeated, in essence, the technical iteration has an impact on the operating logic of the traditional auto insurance industry.

The second point means that OEMs need to face a choice in the future, that is, whether the OEMs as the insured will choose to provide driving protection for the owners themselves, or pay for the automatic driving system from a third party such as the insurance company. This answer still seems to be slightly ambiguous.

If the main engine factory personally provides personal and property safety protection for the owner during the automatic driving period, in the future, for the responsible subject of the automatic driving system, the car insurance will be expected to exist in a new form, that is, the safety and property protection agreement that the main engine factory automatically takes effect after the owner subscribes to the automatic driving service. If a very few accidents really occur, the OEMs can pay the claims solely.

At that time, the amount of insurance will be able to be implicitly added to the self-driving subscription service, which may provide OEMs with another revenue growth curve for the hidden business. For example, the "Renping Tai" at the head of the insurance industry has fully confirmed that the car insurance business can be profitable.

However, on the other hand, many people know that the head effect of the auto insurance industry is very obvious, and there have been relevant data showing that 70% of auto insurance companies have lost money, and there are not many long-tail companies that can make profits.

If the OEMs do their own "automatic driving system insurance", the market share of auto insurance, which is now a big industry such as "Renpingtai", will be divided by many OEMs. At that time, whether car insurance could still be a good business was worth a question mark.

However, Tan Qing said that AI believes that although there are differences in choice, there will still be a certain change, for the traditional insurance industry, even if the main engine factory chooses to be underwritten by third-party insurance companies for the automatic driving system in the future, this business has also migrated from 2C to 2B in large quantities.

During the time period when the automatic driving function is activated, the main engine manufacturer will likely completely occupy the initiative of car insurance selection.

Scenario: A golden opportunity for user operations

Although autonomous driving turns the responsible entity into an automobile system, we must also make it clear that the 2C mode of traditional car insurance cannot be killed.

It is undeniable that for people who choose not to subscribe to automatic driving services, or switch back to human driving in order to experience the pleasure of driving, there will still be objective market space for car insurance with people as the main responsibility unit.

But whether it is "autonomous driving system insurance" or private car insurance in the 2C market, how many things will there be in this line of traditional insurance companies in the future? It's all worth putting a question mark on at the moment.

Tan Qing said that AI believes that if UBI car insurance can provide a new growth curve for OEMs, then more and more car companies have begun to use Internet thinking to do deep user operations, which seems to be another key that OEMs must do to enter car insurance. Traffic accidents are something that no one wants to encounter, but if they do, then this will be a golden scenario for OEMs to do user operations.

Why? Let's first look at a mainstream operation process of car insurance from insurance to completion.

Under the premise of no casualties, the owner of the insurance will roughly go through such a process: the traffic police will determine the responsibility and the insurance company to take the insurance, through the trailer or self-driving to the 4S shop or repair shop to determine the damage repair.

It is not difficult to find that in this set of the most common process, the three actions of responsibility, insurance reporting and loss determination are completed by the traffic police, insurance companies and car companies, respectively, and the humanitarian care when the owner is most vulnerable is actually more provided by the traffic police and insurance companies.

The main engine factory in it only looks a bit cold maintenance work, or the appropriate telephone condolences after the insurance report, but in the anxious period when the owner deals with the accident, a variety of telephone splits and covers the face, which will form a negative effect to a certain extent for the car company that cannot substantively solve the on-site problem.

Tan Qing said that AI believes that the occurrence of traffic accidents is not only the most vulnerable moment for the owner of the car concerned, but also the moment when it is easiest to establish in-depth brand recognition, and for any car brand, how to serve is often the most visible in the face of accidents. Not to mention that in today's era when car companies are increasingly emphasizing Internet thinking and user operation, humanitarian care such as this is even more important.

In fact, in the era of fuel vehicles, Mercedes-Benz BMW has already smelled the great value of humanitarian care in the face of accidents and a certain degree of humanitarian care for OEMs.

In the relevant policies of accident rescue, Mercedes-Benz BMW has given the same answer many years ago, that is, to provide users with a lifetime free 24-hour accident rescue. After the accident, not only can the user be provided with a free 150-kilometer towing service, but also the user can be reimbursed for the taxi fare of up to 100 yuan to and from the 4S shop when repairing the car.

The benefits of this are obvious, on the one hand, maintaining the luxury brand image in the service dimension helps to increase the brand power and repurchase rate, which does not need to be repeated too much, and the repurchase rate of Mercedes-Benz BMW is a microcosm.

On the other hand, as a luxury car brand with high premium capabilities, many car owners will go to the repair shop after the warranty period to repair and maintain, through this measure can maximize the recovery of the loss of customers outside the warranty period of the 4S system, so as to increase after-sales service income through dealers.

In addition to humanitarian care, efficiency is also a helpless keyword in the handling of many traffic accidents today, from accident alarm to contact insurance companies, which may go through a long process of responsibility, seeing the large amount of energy of the owner, the main engine factory can not realize its own service value.

However, in the future, if the main engine factory enters the automobile insurance industry, under the premise that the car is becoming more and more intelligent, a large number of sensing devices and network synchronization data will be able to greatly facilitate the traffic police to handle the case, for many casualty accidents in the future, it will be possible to achieve the accident data provided by the main engine factory, assisting the traffic police to achieve an efficient case handling mode of online and background processing.

Under the integrated way of handling, in order to improve the efficiency of accident judgment and reduce the cost of multi-party communication of car owners, it seems that it is also a necessary part of the main engine factory to make up for its own service territory, and an important reason for entering the auto insurance industry.

Write at the end:

From the comprehensive full text, for how car insurance will penetrate into our intelligent era life in the future, we may wish to imagine such a scenario:

One day in the future, after subscribing to the AUTO driving service of the XX brand, Xiao C has obtained the automatic driving property and personal protection directly in effect of the XX brand by default, and the word car insurance has begun to be more and more distant from it.

Until one day, small C want to experience the fun of manual driving, then after charging by the way to buy 10 km of UBI car insurance that takes effect immediately, when the small C is about to end 10 kilometers of car insurance protection manual driving, the car network connection system immediately intervenes in the small C reminder, "UBI car insurance mileage is insufficient, whether you need to renew UBI car insurance", if small C is not cool, only need to renew the payment in the car voice.

Another day, Xiao C accidentally scraped the front car when driving manually, and after Xiao C and the other car owner reported to their respective brands, they immediately left the scene to repair the car, and the responsibility, damage determination and maintenance behind it were completely handed over to the two brands to take over.

It is not difficult to find that if you want to achieve such a picture of a future car under the protection of car insurance, only through the in-depth intervention of many intelligent means of the main engine factory can the main body of responsibility for car insurance be seamlessly connected and the convenience fully displayed. And traditional car insurance here, it seems to have become a "tear of the times".

However, for the question mentioned at the beginning of the article, "Why do automakers not buy car insurance", Monty Wong of Chinese Min Property Insurance Co., Ltd. once replied under the answer, "Car dealers are manufacturing industries, and insurance is the financial industry, for cross-border insurance, it is not impossible, but from the management side, there are also requirements for capital reserves, the cost is higher." ”

As he said, although the prospects are good, but as Buffett said, car companies sell insurance is no less difficult than insurance companies to make cars, before the OEMs can really figure out the account of entering the car insurance industry, when will the future travel picture of Small C be presented to us? It's still up to you to leave the answer to.