Abandon the one-sided pursuit of scale and performance, and return to the origin of risk protection—
Is the insurance industry's "good start" no longer
Our reporter Li Chenyang
Compared with the past, the insurance industry's "good start" in 2022 will come a little later.
As usual, entering November in previous years was an important stage for various insurance companies to "make a good start" and compete on the same stage, but this year many insurance companies have postponed the time of "good start".
At present, only a few companies such as China Life and Ping An Life have launched related products.
As an annual highlight of insurance companies, the "good start" has always been a critical period for insurance companies to complete their annual premium targets. However, with the tightening of supervision, the "good start" has gradually cooled in the past two years. Then how will insurance companies change their traditional marketing models? Achieve high-quality development?
Downplaying the "good start" has become an industry consensus
The “good start” of the insurance industry generally refers to the tradition of insurance companies focusing on selling certain insurance products at the end of the year.
During this period, most insurance companies usually promote annuity insurance products with higher yields to attract customers, such as annuity insurance additional universal accounts. the following.
However, this year many insurance companies postponed the start of the "good start", and it has become an industry consensus to downplay the "good start".
In this regard, industry insiders said, “On the one hand, under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, life insurance reform, and the decline in the scale of agents, major insurance companies are under pressure on the liability side. Resources for the “good start” business are limited; on the other hand, last year the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the “Notice on Strengthening Standardized Management and Promoting the Stable Development of Annual Business of Life Insurance Companies”, emphasizing the “good start” in the industry and the implementation of new policies at key nodes. The company’s product development, sales and other activities are continuously monitored, and insurance companies are resolutely cracked down on illegal development of insurance products, hype product suspension, misleading publicity, etc. In the face of regulatory swords, this year insurance companies’ start-up time and program design in the “good start” It is more cautious".
Judging from the "good start" products launched by several insurance companies in 2022, they pay more attention to the needs of customers for pension protection.
Take China Life’s "Xinyu Nian Annuity Insurance" as an example. This product provides annuities, birthday benefits, and death insurance for customers from 60 to 75 years old, providing strong protection for the quality of life after retirement.
In other words, anyone who is over 60 years old and under 75 years old and in good health can be insured.
Moreover, the product's annuity receiving methods are divided into two types: regular receiving and lifetime receiving, and the insured can choose one of them as the contract annuity receiving method when applying for insurance.
It is not difficult to see that in the context of the industry's desalination "good start", insurance companies have abandoned the one-sided pursuit of scale and performance, and exchanged high costs for short-term business development business ideas, and returned to the source of risk protection.
Insurance companies pay more attention to the needs of consumers, highlight the risk protection function of insurance products, and continuously optimize product supply to meet the real needs of consumers.
Chen Bingzheng, director of the China Insurance and Risk Management Research Center of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, said in an interview with a reporter from Economic Daily that insurance companies’ relaxation of the insurance period and the introduction of annuity insurance specifically for the elderly can encourage individuals to purchase commercial endowment insurance for the elderly. People have more choices. This is not only to help the development of the third-pillar pension insurance under the background of accelerated population aging, but also in line with international conventions and the inherent logic of commercial insurance.
Meeting the needs of old-age security as an entry point
For insurance companies, how to design products that not only meet market demand, but can also bring the company's performance growth while downplaying the "good start"?
It is understood that many insurance companies have taken meeting the needs of endowment insurance as an entry point and turned to provide differentiated endowment insurance services for different groups.
Ping An Life’s recently launched "Yuxiang Wealth Annuity Insurance" has also relaxed the insurance age to 75 years old, with a payment period of 3 or 5 years, and a guarantee period of 8 years.
Ping An Life stated that, as a new generation of annuity insurance product plan that takes into account “wealth + pension + inheritance”, the launch of Yuxiang Wealth is a measure of Ping An Life’s proactive implementation of “insurance insurance” and customer demand-oriented, enhancing product supply capabilities , An important measure to build a multi-level product system.
Wang Xiangnan, deputy director of the Insurance and Economic Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters that strengthening the old-age security attributes of the product can relax the age requirements of policyholders and attract more policyholders who make financial planning for life cycle risks. It can be said that actively respond to the aging of the population. It has a positive impact on the insurance industry's "good start".
However, the accumulation of data on the length of life of the elderly, the incidence and cost of various diseases, and nursing needs is relatively small, and the long-term trend is not easy to predict. Therefore, insurance companies must first establish stable pricing and verification for the development of such products. Guarantee capacity.
"In addition, pension insurance products have the characteristics of long term and large amount of funds, and the product design of annuity insurance + universal insurance is rich, so product design, marketing and subsequent management will test the company's operating level. Especially the financial insurance knowledge of the elderly And the overall skills are relatively weak, which requires insurance companies to explain to consumers, help consumers analyze, and provide products that truly suit their needs. They must be customer-centric and change the policy perspective to the customer perspective.” Wang Xiangnan said.
Regarding the research and judgment of next year's "good start" sales environment, Zhan Zhong, vice president of China Life, believes that fluctuations in the economy and the epidemic will affect the degree of customer demand release, and the normalization of epidemic prevention and control will also have a greater impact on the offline exhibition industry.
Factors such as the decline in scale of manpower and the increasing requirements of regulatory agencies and companies for high-quality development will also bring certain challenges.
It is reported that previous supervision emphasized that life insurance companies should scientifically formulate development strategies, rationally plan annual development tasks, balance the pace of business development, effectively prevent and control operational risks, and promote the stable, healthy and high-quality development of the life insurance market.
From crowded tactics to intensive farming
In the context of the reform of the life insurance industry, it is the general trend to reduce the scale of agents. However, the shift from the extensive crowd tactics of the past to intensive operation of insurance companies may bring some expectations to the "good start" performance.
Faced with the pressure of insurance premium growth, the incentive effect of "good start" becomes even more important for insurance companies.
According to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, in the first three quarters of this year, the insurance industry achieved original premium income of 3651.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.29%; compensation expenses were 1,159.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.05%.
Among them, life insurance premium income was 2773.3 billion yuan, down 0.13% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that in the first three quarters of this year, the premium income of the first three quarters of this year was the only time in the same period of the past five years that there was a year-on-year decline, while the growth in compensation was the highest in the same period of the past five years.
However, China Merchants Securities pointed out in the "Insurance Industry's 2022 Startup Outlook": Overall, this year’s sales environment for savings insurance such as annuity insurance and whole life insurance will be better than last year, and insurance financial assets will also be under the background of the wealth management migration. It is expected to divert funds.
The reporter learned in the interview that the demand for life insurance has not decreased, but consumer preferences and consumer behavior have changed. In the past, many people bought insurance as a "relationship policy", but now consumers are more rational in purchasing insurance and pay more attention to matching needs. , And the professional level of sales staff.
In this regard, Chen Bingzheng confessed to reporters that although insurance companies need a "good start" to boost their performance, they should not over-enhance the "good start". Instead, they should develop balanced sales and develop on-demand without emphasizing the sales schedule; Focusing on the interests of customers, improve the overall quality of the agent team. As consumers have higher and higher requirements for the service of insurance sales personnel, the agent team in the future should be able to help customers first conduct a personal health risk assessment, and then provide reasonable protection Suggestions, truly do a good job in risk management for customers.
At the same time, the past insurance agents will be transferred to a professional investment and financial management team, only in this way can they become one of the core competitiveness of insurance companies.
According to Huang Hongying, Chief Digital Operations Officer of Ping An Group and Chief Marketing Officer of Ping An Life, Ping An launched an AI follow-up short video production tool to help agents "automate" create high-quality short videos such as insurance knowledge, wealth management, and healthy life. Current short video marketing trends.
In terms of claims settlement, Ping An has launched services such as "smart pre-claims" and extremely fast "flash claims" to improve the claim settlement experience and shorten the claim settlement time, thereby increasing the recognition rate of clients to agents.
In addition, Ping An also fully supports each agent to accurately locate the customer's differentiated service needs through functions such as customer portraits, intelligent recommendations, and intelligent reach.
It can be expected that as insurance companies more reasonably plan their development tasks throughout the year, products better meet market demand, and the team of agents becomes more elite, the growth of new business value in the future will be an important indicator of the high-quality development of the insurance industry.