Car insurance is just one part of the automotive industry chain.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Huabao Tianxia” (ID: insuranceforce), author: Hui Bao world.
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, known as “Iron Man”, has always challenged people’s imaginations with their extraordinary brains and mobility. , recyclable rockets, Mars spacecraft, transformation of the human brain, etc., are all the same. Because of this, almost every one of his plans will attract the attention of people in the scientific and technological circles all over the world.
In recent times, he has succeeded in attracting interest from the insurance industry because he announced that he will launch the car insurance “Tesla Insure” and said that Tesla car insurance can be 20% cheaper than ordinary car insurance.
“Iron Man” is a car insurance, will he become a grave-digger for car insurance? From the current point of view, the page for selling Tesla auto insurance has been rushed off the line in just a few hours. Although it has been re-launched after several hours of maintenance, some owners have reported that the premium calculated according to it is even higher than other companies.
Despite this, Tesla began to sell auto insurance but had to attract the attention of the industry. The automakers represented by Tesla are in the core of the auto industry chain and play a leading role. Mastering the absolute right to speak, and auto insurance is just one of the links in this huge industrial chain.
01Tesla takes an insurance broker license and claims a product premium discount of up to 20%
Beijing time on August 29th, Tesla announced that it was the first to launch its own insurance project “Tesla Insure” in California, and said that insurance costs will be 20% lower than the industry peers.
Tesla’s official website shows that Tesla Insurance aims to provide Tesla owners with comprehensive insurance and claims management with discounts of up to 20%-30%. The owner can pay the premium monthly, no additional fees. If the owner is not satisfied, you can cancel or change Tesla Insurance at any time.
“Based on the company’s understanding of the technical safety and maintenance costs of Tesla vehicles, Tesla Insurance can provide lower cost insurance for many eligible owners,” up to 20% compared to traditional insurance products. % discount, Tesla explained. A Tesla executive also said that the company will refer to the owner’s personal data as the pricing basis for the company’s auto insurance products.
“Tesla sells car insurance”The news once triggered the market attention, but unfortunately, after it officially launched the insurance service on the official website, it was offline in less than 4 hours, and the official website showed that “the algorithm is being upgraded.”
According to foreign media reports, this is mainly because some car owners found that after the Tesla website calculated the rate, the premium is even higher than other companies. After several hours of maintenance, Tesla re-launched the insurance service page, but there are still owners who have reported that the cost is too high. It does not seem to meet Tesla’s claim that “the effect of 20%-30% reduction”.
As early as April 2019, at the first quarter of the Tesla Financial Analyst Conference, CEO Elon Musk revealed for the first time that Tesla was considering launching an insurance product, which was first introduced in May. At the annual general meeting in June, Musk also said that the insurance service planned to be launched in May is actually still in progress. “We are very close to being able to implement this business, but before that, we need To complete a small acquisition, you also need to write some software.”
The implication is that Tesla wants to buy an insurance license in order to launch its own insurance products. However, it is not an insurance company license, but like many domestic technology companies, it first acquired a The insurance brokerage company license has obtained the qualification to operate the insurance brokerage business.
According to Reuters news, although Tesla did not disclose its partners, the California State Insurance Agency website shows that Tesla has obtained an insurance broker license to sell Markel Corp’s US national insurance company. Insurance products.
Huibao World has inquired about the service agreement of the Tesla official website insurance section, indicating that the payment is exactly “Tesla insurance Service Inc.”, indicating that Tesla does have an insurance brokerage license.
In addition, according to the official website of Marker, Marker was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in Virginia, USA. It is a financial holding company that mainly underwrites and sells professional insurance products in the US and internationally.
02 Tesla lost more than $1 billion in the first half of the year, pushing insurance business or relieving financial pressure
In fact, this auto insurance is not the first time Tesla has been involved in the auto insurance industry. Since 2016, Tesla has been involved in the design of insurance products for its vehicles.
In 2016, Tesla launched a custom insuranceInsure My Tesla is underwritten by a large insurance company designated by the local authorities. Among them, the partners in Hong Kong and Australia are AXA Insurance and Queensland Insurance Group of Australia. This is the first step in Tesla’s true water testing business.
How does Tesla’s philosophy of operating insurance business change from simply engaging in insurance business with insurance companies to directly obtaining insurance brokerage licenses?
In June 2017, foreign media reported that Tesla had a dispute with auto insurance provider AAA. According to AAA, based on the analysis of the US Highway Loss Data Institute and other data sources, the Model S and Model X models have unusually high frequency and cost of claims, and have decided to increase Tesla’s premiums by 30%.
In this regard, Musk responded that the insurance cost of the two models is 5% lower than other luxury models. “If the insurance premium of the Tesla owners is improved, it is a good solution, and an insurance company” . Therefore, in 2017, Tesla made optimization adjustments to the cooperative insurance suppliers.
Until 2018, Tesla hired Alex Tsetsenekos, the former executive of the US insurance company Liberty Mutual, to take charge of the insurance business development of Insure My Tesla. The US insurance company also submitted the Tesla insurance plan to the relevant departments. Application.
In April 2019, the California Insurance Regulatory Authority approved the Tesla Insurance business applied by the National Insurance Company.
There is news to speculate that Tesla is actively promoting insurance services or to ease financial pressure. The data shows that Tesla’s revenue in the first half of 2019 was about $10.8 billion, but the net loss has exceeded $1 billion. Among them, the first quarter of 2019 revenue of 4.5 billion US dollars, a net loss of 700 million US dollars, the second quarter, revenue of 6.3 billion US dollars, a loss of more than 400 million US dollars.
03 Automakers sell insurance, the real grave-digger of the auto insurance business?
The news that Tesla started selling auto insurance has caused widespread concern among the insurance industry. On the one hand, it focuses on the development of new energy auto insurance, while on the other hand, it focuses on auto manufacturers selling auto insurance directly.
Automotive manufacturers are involved in insurance business and are no strangers to the domestic insurance industry. In June 2011, Zhongcheng Auto Insurance Co., Ltd., which was established by Guangzhou Automobile Group, was established and became the first professional auto insurance company led by automobile manufacturers in China.
After one year in June 2012, Xinan Automobile Insurance Co., Ltd., which was initiated by a number of subsidiaries of China FAW Group, was officially announced.
Since Zhongcheng Auto Insurance and Xin’an Auto Insurance were established, relevant auto manufacturers directlyDiscussions about the impact of the insurance business on the insurance industry have never stopped. In the eyes of some people, these automakers and their insurance companies and insurance intermediaries will truly become the grave-diggers of auto insurance.
The most important reason is that automakers occupy a central position in the automotive industry chain, while supply, sales, service, etc. are all serving the core, and insurance is just one of many services around the car. Only the item. In this case, automakers’ insurance has always been regarded as a major “threat” in the auto insurance industry, especially in the current popularity of Internet of Vehicles technology. Automakers have the right to speak in hardware. Compared with insurance companies, it is clear that they have a stronger advantage in setting up a vehicle networking operation platform, and are more likely to play a leading role.
One example is that auto dealers have already occupied a very important position in the auto insurance business due to the large number of customers and excellent auto insurance sales scenes, not to mention the automakers in the upstream of the industrial chain.
However, at present, at least two professional auto insurance companies in China have not shown enough “threats”.
As of the end of 2018, Zhongcheng Auto Insurance achieved the original insurance premium income of 1.299 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.35%, which was lower than the industry’s overall year-on-year growth rate of 11.52%. Although Xinan Auto Insurance has a high growth rate of 24.42%, it has been established for 6 and a half years. Its original insurance premium income in 2018 was only 628 million yuan, still a small-scale insurance company.
Some professionals in foreign countries are not optimistic about Tesla’s attempt to use insurance to get out of trouble. The stock god Warren Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting that automobile companies ventured into The probability of success in the insurance industry is probably similar to that of insurance companies entering the automotive industry, and Tesla may be in trouble due to venture into the insurance business.