After running wild for several years, China Insurance Technology has come to an important development node.
On May 18th, insurtech service platform i Yunbao announced the overall strategic upgrade at the strategy conference. At the meeting, i Yunbao officially released several important achievements, including the “Yuntu Big Data Laboratory”, “Yuntu Smart Data Center” and insurance product IPs independently developed and established by it.
Based on these self-developed solutions, iCloud Insurance can mine consumer behavior data to achieve effective matching of insurance products; at the same time, it combines the behavior data of insurance practitioners and provides them with different consumer demand scenarios. Online + localized agent services to meet their needs for timely and personalized insurance services.
This means that the A TO C model of i Cloud Insurance has gradually opened up the C TO A model since its establishment, establishing a two-way closed loop of services between agents (A-side) and consumers (C-side), with i Cloud Insurance as The typical model of insurtech empowering insurance practitioners has reached a new level.
Looking at the entire industry, after nearly five years of development in insurtech, the division of labor in the industry has been gradually refined, and capital enthusiasm has increased year by year. According to a report by the Zero One Think Tank, the amount of financing in the global insurtech sector will reach 27.62 billion in 2020 Yuan, hitting a record high, and huge financing frequently appeared. In recent years, in the domestic market, Huize and Waterdrop have also landed on the New York Stock Exchange. As the first batch of start-ups involved in insurance technology innovation, they have verified the huge value created by this track.
The evolution of the domestic insurtech track: starting from the insurance supermarket
Why do you say that insurtech has reached a key point? Let’s start with the evolution of the model of this track.
Two key market trends are worth noting for the rise of the domestic insurtech track:
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Referring to the development path of the foreign insurance industry, when per capita GDP grows to around 10,000 U.S. dollars, when a country’s per capita GDP exceeds 10,000 U.S. dollars, insurance demand will enter a stage of rapid growth-since 2019, my country Per capita GDP has exceeded US$10,000 for two consecutive years, and the disposable income of residents has continued to grow.
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China’s advanced Internet has given birth to a rich and diverse economic format. The post-80s and post-90s are the first batch of Internet users. Their consumption habits are deeply affected by the Internet, and it has also spread to insurance products that are generally considered to have long decision-making cycles and high transaction costs.Class-it is this group of people who have become the backbone of the society and the mainstream users of insurance at the same time.
When this group of people reach the age to buy insurance and have disposable income at the same time, what the insurance company needs to do is obvious: win new online Insurance users.
So, in the first ten years when the per capita GDP approached 10,000 U.S. dollars, third-party insurance technology began to sprout, and then it developed rapidly.
In the past, for an ordinary insurance consumer, the main way to buy insurance was offline, such as completing insurance purchases through a known insurance agent/insurance salesperson. But for new people, as aborigines of the Internet, it has become a habit to “do your homework” online before buying things. Transmitted to the insurance industry, product and service model innovation is particularly urgent.
After the rise of the Internet, the insurance industry first appeared in the supermarket model, that is, directly moving products online. Including insurance companies or part-time agents (such as banks) self-built official websites, establishing e-commerce platform channels, or professional insurance intermediaries self-built channels, etc., in essence, they are like shelves, moving insurance products online, and users choose to place orders on demand . The significance is that it breaks the types of products that users come into contact with, and directly removes the intermediate costs. Both consumers and insurance companies benefit from it. However, due to the low frequency of insurance consumption, the high cost of user awareness and decision-making, the probability of relying on users for active search and successful purchase is also very low. This model is also exploring new ways in the later stage.
If it is difficult for users to take the initiative to make a purchase, how to lower the threshold of product awareness? Scene customization insurance appeared.
With the gradual maturity of the app business format, a number of companies engaged in scene insurance began to appear in 2015. Typical products such as Taobao freight insurance and airline travel delay insurance are characterized by extremely low premiums and carry scene sales (such as when returning goods). , When buying air tickets and train tickets). Coupled with the maturity of infrastructure such as payment and insurance systems, this type of ultra-short insurance can be fully online. It used to be the best way for a group of startups to enter the insurance track, such as Guardian cattle, quantum protection, etc., this periodIt also gave birth to Internet insurance companies such as ZhongAn Technology.
Scene insurance has greatly broadened consumers’ awareness of insurance, and its decision-making threshold has been further reduced. At the same time, on the enterprise side, scene insurance has also explored a way for scene parties to improve GMV and user protection, and to provide insurance companies with new income. However, the thin profit margins and the excessively strong voice of the scene are all challenges for ultra-short-term insurance.
When it comes to life insurance and other insurance types that have high premiums and are directly related to life and health, the full online path of ultra-short insurance is difficult to quickly work, and offline is still an important starting point. The changes in the sales side of long-term insurance have also spawned third-party insurance technology into a new era of reform.
To B, To A and To C: Insurtech enters the deep water zone of reform
In this period, third-party insurance technology has differentiated three directions for how to shorten the path of “insurer-intermediate-consumer” : To A (for agents), To B (for enterprises), To C (for consumers).
In fact, the three directions have their own opportunities and challenges.
From the perspective of the To C model, with the rise of the concept of private domain traffic, the To C direction has gone from the initial insurance supermarket to the stage of refined operation and user promotion. A typical example is the water drop, through its own mutual assistance. , The fundraising scene forms a traffic pool, and then performs fine operations to transform it into an insurance user. However, the challenge in the To C direction is that it is difficult for customers to understand the terms of complex products. Therefore, this model started from a relatively standard short-term insurance, and is now gradually moving towards long-term insurance.
To B mode for the enterprise side, the B side includes a very wide range of enterprise typespan. The most common mode in the market is to provide intelligent commercial insurance requirements for enterprises through technological innovation. Typical enterprises such as Huize provide insurance products, systems, and services for many third-party insurance platforms. The challenge is that with the weakening of the information gap between upstream and downstream, the willingness of both parties to directly connect is increasing. As an intermediary, whether the platform is capable of strong enough to be able to connect both parties while ensuring its own competitiveness and competitiveness. Expansion capacity.
The TO A model for agents refers to the provision of one-stop services for insurance agents based on the needs of insurance agents, such as customer acquisition, business exhibition, transaction, back-end services, etc., to provide customers with better quality Professional insurance services. However, my country’s agent market is still in the early stage of development. For this group, whether it is from the perspective of user positioning or service mode, more professional industry awareness is needed.
Through recent insurance practices, the insurtech track has run out of listed companies such as To B and To C. With the current trend of online traffic falling into a growth bottleneck and greatly increasing customer acquisition costs, iCloud Insurance, the first echelon of the To A model, has evolved its development path and model, which may be used as a reference for the next stage of insurtech reform.
From A TO C, to C TO A
In 2016, i Cloud Insurance was established. As of 2020, the GMV of the i cloud insurance platform has reached 8 billion yuan, with revenue of more than 1.5 billion.
“Social fission” is the first impression that many insurance practitioners realize iCloud Insurance. The traditional insurance agent model is a pyramid model, and the stacking of layers leads to high cost of insurance products, and the sales link also accounts for the largest proportion of the cost of insurance products.
The core of iCloud Insurance is to transform the traditional insurance agent’s “pyramid” model based on organizational development into a flat model based on Internet organizations.
I Yunbao CEO Li Zhe said that, first of all, insurance products have the characteristics of low frequency, heterogeneity and weak sense of acquisition. It is difficult for insurance investors to form a standardized cognition and consumption habits. This means that insurance products and There is a huge friction between the needs of consumers. As a lubricant between products and customers, insurance agents have the ability to solve insurance product transactions ranging from standardization to complexity, which is an effective means to resolve friction.
How to do this? Revenue, products, tools, and customers are the four core issues i Cloud Insurance solves for agents.
First of all, the flat structure of iCloud has reduced the administrative expenses under the traditional “pyramid” model, and effectively reduced operating costs. Part of the cost savings will be fed back to insurance practitioners to increase their income; the other part will empower insurance companies to lower their marketing costs. Li Zhe said that under the flat mode of iCloud Insurance, the overall operating cost can be reduced to one-third of the traditional organization.
On the product side, under the traditional pyramid model, agents can only sell their own products; while under the iCloud Insurance model, iCloud Insurance strictly selects high-quality insurance products on the market, and the agent can freely choose from them, so as to Customers provide a product portfolio that meets their needs. Currently, iCloud Insurance cooperates with more than 100 insurance companies and achieves full insurance coverage.
Li Zhe said that based on the above-mentioned decentralized system, the underlying infrastructure innovation can play a greater role, and it is difficult to build barriers with a single tool. For example, on the client side, iCloud Insurance’s business development tools include insurance science content, online questionnaires, mini games and other tools, which help each agent to acquire customers in its private traffic domain and effectively enhance the agent’s ability to acquire customers.
In the process of exploring the flat model, iCloud Insurance has also successfully operated hot products in the insurance industry such as Premium Life Insurance, which has become an important node in the development of the health insurance market, and has also verified the huge potential of this model from the side. .
Data contributes to this moat, helping iCloud Protection to reach the 2.0 stage. By comparing traditional insurance companies online, i Cloud Insurance is based on a digital business model, accumulating a large amount of consumer behavior data from insurance processes such as customer contact, transaction, and underwriting, claim settlement, change, etc., and has become i Cloud Guaranteed core data capabilities.
Based on this, i Cloud Insurance has established a series of supporting underlying data infrastructure. Around 2018, the online insurance industry has accelerated. The SaaS system independently built by iCloud Insurance has effectively improved the degree of online business, ensuring that agents can stabilize their business during the period of rapid business growth; AI and other cutting-edge technologies are applied in multiple scenarios , Including helping agents complete high-quality pre-sale consultation and after-sales service, and improve service efficiency and accuracy.
The further upgrade of the data infrastructure has allowed i Cloud Insurance to complete the change from ATO C arrives C TO A two-way closed loop is established.
On the one hand, through the establishment of a “cloud map intelligent data center”, i Cloud guarantees algorithms to match the sales services of customers, products, and agents, making it easier for customers to select suitable products. As of now, “Yuntu Smart Data Center” has matched 4000+ user tags and 3000+ insurance product knowledge Atlas. At the same time, the data of the entire chain enables i Cloud Insurance to realize reverse product customization with insurance companies, further reduce product costs, and provide users with personalized insurance products.
On the other hand, data has further helped to build security capabilities. The “Smart Mirror Risk Control System” helps i Cloud Insurance to identify possible fraudulent activities such as insurance fraud through data analysis. For further data mining, the risk control link can be forwarded, for example, through the abnormal analysis of the agent’s sales behavior, the early potential risks in the sales can be found, so as to intervene and deal with it to avoid the formation of black swan incidents in the later period.
In the future of insurance technology, where is the sea of stars?
It can be said that the current insurance technology is facing the best time and opportunity.
First, the huge demand is far from being fully satisfied. Compared with developed countries, the proportion of insurance assets in my country’s residents’ financial asset allocation is still less than 2%, which is far lower than the average level of developed countries during the same period. According to the report of Zero One Think Tank, China has a large population, but the insurance depth and insurance density in 2019 were 4.22% and USD 406, which are far below the 7.81% and 3737 levels of developed countries, and even lag behind the global average of 6.09% and 682 USD. Level.
In a complete insurance system, the third service platform occupies an important market position in insurance marketing. Compared with the experience of developed countries, the market share of the third-party service platform in the entire insurance field isThe rate is 30-40%, and the current rate in my country is less than 3%, which means that my country’s third-party service platform has nearly 10 times more room for growth in the future.
China’s new insurance population grew up in the period when the Internet business was the fastest growing. From PCs to apps, the emerging media for customer acquisition has expanded from PCs, various apps, and official accounts to today’s live broadcast delivery. The speed at which users accept the new marketing model determines how fast the insurance industry’s online data can climb ——According to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, compared with the 19.4% average annual growth rate of offline channels, the compound annual growth rate of premiums of commercial health insurance online channels from 2016 to 2019 reached 94.6%. New things still have a strong momentum for development in China’s insurance industry.
At this critical development node, how can insurtech companies seize greater opportunities?
I Yunbao CEO Li Zhe believes that the first focus is on infrastructure. New business and service models will inevitably require higher concurrency and more flexible infrastructure. How to match the infrastructure and business is the most important proposition facing insurtech in the future.
Secondly, there are huge opportunities for designing products based on big data and solving product supply-side problems. In the future, key elements such as product form and pricing are inseparable from timely feedback and effective application of data.
On the risk control side, insurtech companies are also promising. In essence, the core of innovation on the sales side is to solve efficiency and trust. These two points make insurance sales really reduce costs, and risk control is the cornerstone of it.
Everything is ready, and the east wind is rising. After the development of the previous ten years, although the insurtech industry is still in its early stages, it has explored a number of feasible development paths. The infrastructure is ready, and the development of cutting-edge technologies such as big data, AI, and cloud computing will drive insurtech. Continue to run fast forward. Judging from the data at the beginning of this year, global insurance technology financing is picking up, and the focus is gradually shifting to mature enterprises. The track will usher in a new round of harvesting period of products and models. Looking to the future, the online consumption patterns of people in the post-epidemic era will be profoundly affected, and the innovation of insurance technology is destined to be endless.