Recently, Sino-US MetLife Insurance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "MetLife") released the "2023 Annual Information Disclosure Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Annual Report").
In 2023, the insurance industry continued to recover. According to the State Administration of Financial Regulation, in 2023, the insurance industry will achieve 5.12 trillion yuan in original insurance premium income, with a year-on-year growth rate of 9.13%. However, at the same time, the industry is still facing multiple challenges such as the decline in the number of agents, the shift of savings products, and the "integration of newspapers and banks" in the bancassurance channel.
In the context of both opportunities and challenges, the annual report data shows that MetLife performed well in a number of indicators during the reporting period, including a year-on-year increase of 15.33% in the premium income of primary insurance, higher than the average growth rate of 9.13% in the industry and 9.91% in the life insurance industry, and total assets reached 101.833 billion yuan, which is in the upstream of non-listed life insurance companies.
It is worth mentioning that in the current deep transformation of the life insurance industry, premiums are no longer the only indicator to measure the company's operating results, and in the process of high-quality transformation, more attention should be paid to the scale of value and the future growth potential of the enterprise. In terms of related aspects, MetLife's first-year premium income of new orders increased by 37.90% year-on-year and the comprehensive solvency adequacy ratio reached 451% during the reporting period, continuing to maintain its leading position in the industry.
A number of core indicators are improving
In 2023, the recovery of the domestic life insurance industry will pick up, but judging from the growth rate of each month in the past year, the industry is still in the "deep water area" of transformation behind the recovery.
Against the backdrop of declining interest rates, in order to avoid the risk of interest margin loss caused by high pricing interest rates, at the end of July 2023, the insurance industry completely stopped selling traditional life insurance with a predetermined interest rate higher than 3.0%, participating insurance with a predetermined interest rate higher than 2.5%, and universal insurance with a minimum guaranteed interest rate higher than 2.0%.
In contrast to the scheduled interest rate cuts, the life insurance industry experienced a rare peak in performance from January to July 2023, and premiums have gradually fallen since then. After entering September, the growth rate of life insurance premiums slowed down due to the early release of demand before the scheduled interest rate cut and the short-term impact caused by the implementation of the "integration of newspapers and banks".
Under the challenge, as a representative domestic and foreign life insurance company, MetLife has delivered a rather impressive report card - its premium growth rate reached 15.33%, much higher than the industry average growth rate of 9.13%.
At the same time, its net profit reached 392 million yuan, ranking 6th among the 62 non-listed life insurance companies that have published their solvency reports for the fourth quarter of 2023, the total comprehensive income was 1.552 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.34%, and the company's total assets were 101.833 billion yuan, exceeding the 100 billion mark. Many of the above data are at the forefront of the industry.
It is worth mentioning that MetLife's new business value growth is also good. According to the data, during the reporting period, its first-year premium income of new orders was 3.780 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.90%.
Increase the number of channels
Behind the dazzling annual "report card" is a strategy and perseverance that are in line with the market. In recent years, MetLife has strengthened its strategic focus, continuously deepened the high-quality development of life insurance, and renewed its endogenous quality and efficiency, and continued to release momentum.
In China, with the drawbacks of the extensive development model in the past gradually emerging, the "crowd tactics" of insurance companies based on Chinese social and kinship relationships on the sales side have become unsustainable.
After 2019, the scale of insurance agents has been declining year by year. According to the former China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, at the end of 2019, there were 9.12 million agency sales personnel registered in the insurance intermediary regulatory information system of insurance companies nationwide, 9.102 million in mid-2020, 8.428 million at the end of 2020, 5.907 million at the end of 2021, and only 5.217 million in the first half of 2022, a decrease of 42.8% from the end of 2019.
At present, the life insurance industry has shifted from relying on scale expansion to improving the efficiency improvement cycle of agent capacity, and the optimization and development of high-end agents has become the main direction of insurance companies.
In September 2023, MetLife upgraded the value proposition of its advisory marketing channels, enriched the connotation of the four dimensions of "professionalism", "empathy", "elite road" and "future dream", and took multiple measures to promote the high-quality development of life insurance transformation.
In 2023, the number of MDRT members accounted for 10.8% of its sales channels, ranking among the highest in the industry.
Progress is not limited to individual insurance channels. While continuing to improve the quality of its telemarketing business and accelerate its business transformation, MetLife adheres to customer segmentation and customer demand orientation, accelerates the development of its bancassurance business with high-end customer operation as the core, focuses on both value and scale, and further consolidates the value of its bancassurance business on the basis of achieving rapid business growth.
Emphasis on "customer centricity"
As the backbone of the domestic life insurance industry, MetLife emphasizes customer-centricity and adheres to the origin of insurance protection.
In the new era, how to meet the increasingly diversified and personalized insurance needs of customers has become an unavoidable problem on the road to transformation of life insurance companies.
MetLife's answer is to uphold the value concept of "customer-centricity", and continuously improve customers' sense of insurance access, security and happiness through in-depth insight into customer needs, comprehensive customer solutions, continuous customer interaction, and excellent customer service.
During the reporting period, MetLife continued to optimize its multi-level product supply, creating a one-stop protection solution integrating "product + value-added services + customer experience", and successively upgraded and evolved one-stop solutions such as 360Health and 360Future and value-added services such as EduCare to meet customer needs with a combination of "pension + education + health".
In addition, during the reporting period, MetLife also launched its first personal pension insurance product to meet the increasingly urgent needs of customers for pension and financial management, and enhance customers' sense of access to diversified pension security.
According to the claims annual report, the total number of claims of MetLife individual insurance in 2023 will be 48,000, and the total amount of claims will be 970 million yuan, with an average of 2.661 million yuan per 24 hours, both of which will increase by about 10% year-on-year. The odds for customers reach 99.4%, and it only takes an average of 1.57 days from the receipt of the customer's claim request to the successful payment.
Looking ahead, MetLife said that it will continue to uphold the "customer-centric" development concept, continue to forge ahead, continue to enhance the company's product innovation capabilities, give full play to differentiated service advantages, and improve the efficiency of insurance products and services in multiple scenarios, so as to accompany all stakeholders to navigate a better future.
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