China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a notice to regulate short-term health insurance business
The million-dollar medical insurance market may cool down
Our reporter Jiang Fan
Recently, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the "Notice on Regulating Short-term Health Insurance Business Related Issues", which means that short-term health insurance including the "Internet celebrity" product million medical insurance will face more standardized supervision.
Although the word "Million Medical" did not appear in the "Notice", as a representative product of short-term health insurance, how the Million Medical Insurance will be included in the standard and how much influence the standardization process will have on the market has attracted much attention. .
Speaking of million medical insurance, most people, especially the younger generation of insured persons, are no strangers.
In recent years, million medical insurance can be said to be popular in the domestic insurance market.
Pay a few hundred yuan a year to get an insurance coverage of millions of yuan. With "high leverage and affordable for everyone" as a selling point, it attracts countless fans.
Recently, iResearch and ZhongAn Insurance jointly issued the "White Paper on the Development of China's Million Medical Insurance Industry", which mentioned that the market size of Million Medical Insurance will maintain an annual growth rate of 25% to 40% in the next few years, by 2025. , The market-wide premium scale will exceed 200 billion yuan.
However, the problems of Million Medical Insurance are also obvious.
Data shows that with the continuous expansion of the market space, the million-dollar medical insurance payout ratio has been on the rise in recent years, and it is expected to exceed 35% in 2020.
At the same time, there has also been a tendency toward product homogeneity and downward pressure on profit margins, and some small insurance companies with little operating experience have therefore stood on the verge of loss.
"The outstanding problem of million-dollar medical insurance is the relatively high expense rate. The main reason for this is that the intermediate expense rate is too high." said Zhu Junsheng, a researcher at the China Insurance and Pension Research Center of the National Institute of Finance, Tsinghua University.
Since most of the million-dollar medical insurance products are sold by insurance companies and Internet companies through the use of platforms, charging content such as customer traffic will occur, and insurance companies have no bargaining power in this cooperation model.
"This kind of cooperation itself is okay. But when the expense rate is too high, there is a problem from the product expense structure, that is, from the structure of the comprehensive cost rate." Zhu Junsheng said.
The "Notice" focuses on protecting consumers' right to know, and specifically requires insurance institutions to regularly disclose the overall comprehensive loss rate of short-term health insurance services on the company's official website.
Zhu Junsheng stated that “opening the loss ratio can make related products more transparent and help protect the interests of consumers through market-based mechanisms.”
Professor Wang Guojun of the University of International Business and Economics believes that relevant measures will effectively reduce information asymmetry.
From the current point of view, the subsequent impact on property insurance companies will be greater, because short-term health insurance is mostly operated by property insurance companies, and the proportion of products is also higher.
It may have some impact on the growth rate in the short term, but it is beneficial in the long term.
"We must face up to the existing problems of Million Medical Insurance and promote development through regulations." Zhu Junsheng said that short-term health insurance represented by Million Medical Insurance is a major innovation in my country’s health insurance market in recent years, which complements the existing medical insurance system. Insufficiency in the protection of high medical expenses.
However, consumers should also make it clear that million medical insurance is a compensatory medical insurance, that is, how much the consumer actually spends, after deducting the corresponding deductible, the insurance company will pay according to the contract. It is not a million yuan that can be obtained once the insurance is out. Compensation.
Moreover, the million medical insurance generally has a deductible of 10,000 yuan, and only medical expenses above 10,000 yuan can enter the reimbursement process.
Therefore, daily medical expenses often fail to meet the claims standard.
The so-called "million" compensation is only theoretically possible.
Wang Guojun especially reminded consumers that consumers must clearly understand the terms of health insurance and match their own risks to be a smart and rational insurance consumer.