The "good start" of life insurance in 2022 does not seem to bring much warmth to the industry in the deep adjustment.
As of February 20, the seven major listed insurance companies in the A and H share markets have announced their January premium income.
The first financial reporter found that although their total premium income increased by 1.93%, the 11.44% growth rate of property insurance was the main contributor, while the life insurance premiums included in pension insurance and health insurance showed a negative growth of 0.1%.
Judging from the premium income of the seven listed life insurance companies, there is a clear differentiation of "three ups and four downs", but industry analysts say that some insurance companies whose premium incomes have risen sharply mainly adopted single-payment products during the "good start" period to impact the scale However, the new business value contribution of these products is relatively low, so the new business value of listed insurance companies in the first quarter will generally be under pressure.
The premium trend of listed life insurance companies is differentiated
According to the premium announcements of the seven listed insurance companies in the A and H share markets, the seven listed insurance companies achieved a total of 621.4 billion yuan in premiums in January.
From the perspective of listed insurance companies, PICC, ZhongAn Online, and Guohua Life Insurance, a subsidiary of Tianmao Group, all achieved double-digit growth. China China Life Insurance’s premiums increased by 59.66% year-on-year, while China Life Insurance and China Taiping’s premium income increased. A negative growth of 5% year-on-year.
Although in terms of total premiums, listed insurance companies still maintained a rise of nearly 2%, if the total premiums are split into life insurance companies and property and casualty insurance companies, it will be found that the nearly 2% increase is entirely driven by property and casualty insurance’s 11.44% increase. However, the transformation of listed life insurance companies has not yet entered the harvest period, and the premium income has not achieved positive growth, but fell slightly by 0.1% during the "good start" period that was highly expected in previous years.
Among them, the premiums of the five largest A-share listed life insurance companies (Xinhua Insurance, Ping An Life, CPIC Life, China Life, and PICC Life), which account for the largest market share, decreased by nearly 0.4% year-on-year after including pension and health insurance premiums. The top five listed life insurance companies recorded a year-on-year increase of more than 8% in premiums.
It can be seen that for listed life insurance companies, this year's "starter" is generally not very popular.
Industry insiders generally analyzed that the decline in the scale of marketers' manpower, the high base and insufficient demand caused by the release of severe illness demand at the beginning of last year, the late start of the good start in order to sprint last year's annual performance, and the weakening of supervision and guidance have jointly caused this unforeseen situation. A red "starter".
However, the trend of premiums among listed life insurance companies showed a clear differentiation in January this year.
The premiums of Guohua Life, PICC Life and New China achieved year-on-year increases of 59.66%, 30.16% and 3.58% respectively, while the January premiums of other listed life insurance companies such as China Life and Ping An Life increased by 0.5% to 6%. Negative growth.
Why does this differentiation occur?
Some life insurance companies have taken the lead from the "cold winter" to the "spring"?
This may be related to the strategy adopted by some insurance companies in the "good start" stage.
Judging from PICC Life, which discloses premium details, its rapid growth is mainly brought about by the large-scale promotion of low-value single-payment business.
Data show that the first-year single premium of PICC Life Insurance in January increased by 136.6% year-on-year, while the regular premium fell by 13.5% year-on-year.
Compared with regular payment policies, single payment policies are usually large-scale products and are expected to contribute less to the value. Therefore, the increase in premiums does not mean an increase in the value of new business, an important indicator in life insurance valuation.
Haitong Securities believes that considering the adjustment of the product structure of life insurance companies in 2022, the significant increase in the difficulty of critical illness sales, and the expansion of the proportion of savings, it is expected that the pressure of new business value growth will be greater than that of new orders.
Kaiyuan Securities said that considering the business rhythm affected by the Spring Festival holiday, the probability of year-on-year improvement in the value of new orders in February is expected to be low. In addition, because the main products sold by insurance companies are mostly large-scale products, the value rate is relatively low, and the value of new orders is year-on-year. Or under pressure, it is expected that in the first quarter of 2022, the new order value of various insurance companies may be in the range of -30% to -20% year-on-year.
"I am very touched by this year's 'good start'." A senior agent of a large life insurance company told the First Financial Reporter.
From his observation, unlike previous years, this year's "good start" has shown a polarized situation. High net worth customers have a very strong desire to buy insurance, and they will take the initiative to inquire about purchases; Customers who purchase savings-type insurance, with the impact of the epidemic on their income, are not willing to add insurance, and may even reduce or surrender their insurance.
At the same time, the concentrated release of demand caused by the “Million Medical Insurance”, “Huimin Insurance” and the switch of critical illness insurance last year has also caused a considerable impact on critical illness insurance and other traditional life insurance products.
"At present, all large insurance companies are undergoing transformation, but they are still in the throes of transformation and have not seen obvious results. Although they are still optimistic about the insurance industry in the medium and long term, when will the large insurance companies get out of the cold winter in the short term? Unknown, we need to observe the process of its transformation." A senior industry analyst told the first financial reporter.
Car insurance premiums exceeding expectations
Compared with the bleak life insurance, property insurance has ushered in a good start to the year.
The five listed property insurance companies achieved a total of 119.162 billion yuan in premiums in January, a year-on-year increase of 11.44%.
Among them, only Taiping Property & Casualty Insurance experienced a negative growth of 5% in its premiums in January. Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance, CPIC Property & Casualty Insurance, PICC Property & Casualty Insurance, and Zhongan Insurance all achieved a year-on-year increase in property insurance premium income, and the premiums of the latter three reached double-digit growth.
Industry analysts generally believe that the faster-than-expected growth in auto insurance premiums drove the rapid rise in property insurance premiums in January.
PICC P&C data show that its auto insurance premium income in January was 27.584 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.5%.
Guotai Junan believes that the higher-than-expected growth of auto insurance premiums is mainly due to three factors: in the same period last year, due to the low industry risk premiums in the early stage of the comprehensive reform, the average car premiums base was low, and the risk premiums in some regions rebounded in the following months; small and medium-sized insurance companies At the beginning of the year, the pressure of underwriting losses was small and the business expansion was fast, which led to an increase in the overall growth rate of the industry and a good start for property and casualty insurance.
Kaiyuan Securities believes that after the comprehensive reform of auto insurance, the leading listed insurance companies have obvious advantages in service, pricing and data, and the market structure is optimized. Therefore, the increase in the concentration of the auto insurance market will also increase the auto insurance premiums of listed insurance companies; at the same time, the sales of new energy vehicles may increase at a certain rate. It also increases the average car insurance premiums.
However, according to the expectations of many industry analysts, the double-digit growth of auto insurance may not be sustainable, but the annual insurance premium of auto insurance in 2022 will still increase with the growth of car ownership, and the growth rate may be between 6% and 8%. between.
In terms of non-auto insurance, PICC Property & Casualty's accidental injury health insurance, agricultural insurance, and liability insurance all achieved growth of more than 15% in January. Accelerating the recognition of consumers, the potential of the health insurance market is still there.
Judging from the situation last year, the high comprehensive ratio of non-auto insurance has always been a major problem that plagued large property insurance companies.
Guotai Junan said that it is expected that leading insurance companies will mainly focus on improving profitability by actively adjusting their business structure and controlling the expansion rate of low-profit toB businesses.
Data show that PICC P&C's non-auto insurance premium income in January increased by 13.2% year-on-year, of which low-profit corporate property insurance premiums fell by 1.8% year-on-year. The adjustment of business structure is expected to benefit the improvement of non-auto insurance comprehensive ratio.