In 2021, the premium income of my country's health insurance market will be 880.3 billion yuan, an increase of only 7.8% compared with 817.2 billion yuan in 2020. This has changed the image of health insurance maintaining rapid growth over the years. In addition, from the market point of view, the supply of health insurance products this year seems a bit depressed compared to previous years. The market research and discussion on health insurance has significantly decreased. Except for Huiminbao, which can maintain a certain market popularity, other health insurance products have become more active. decline.
On the surface, this is a situation in the small field of health insurance, but in essence it is a change in the product system of the entire life insurance industry, a change in the development trend of sales channels, and one of the manifestations of the industry entering a period of transformation.
Therefore, from the perspective of product system and channel development in China's life insurance industry, the author analyzes what health insurance means to life insurance companies and how to position health insurance products from the perspective of company operations.
01
The product structure of life insurance companies has shifted: Critical illness insurance has declined, and savings insurance has taken up the banner of stabilizing the basic market
Discussing the significance of health insurance to life insurance companies cannot be separated from the entire product system. In the product system of life insurance companies, the main types of insurance are long-term savings insurance and health insurance. However, the current life insurance market is showing a state of ebb and flow of the two types of insurance.
1. The proportion of new policy premiums for savings insurance has increased
Judging from the total premium income from new policies disclosed in the annual reports of six listed companies (China Life, Ping An , China Pacific Insurance, Taiping, Xinhua , PICC ), from From 2019 to 2021, the two-year average compound growth rate of the individual insurance channel is -8.8%, while the bancassurance channel is +31% . shows that the proportion of new orders of bancassurance products has increased, and the new orders of individual insurance products have increased. The single share is reduced.
This is because industry conflicts broke out rapidly under the impact of the epidemic in 2020. In order to stabilize premiums and the market , various companies began to invest more resources into bancassurance channels. Reflecting on the structural relationship between health insurance and savings insurance:
On the one hand, since the absolute main products sold through bancassurance channels are savings products, the increase in the proportion of bancassurance channels means an increase in the proportion of savings products.
On the other hand, even if we only look at the individual insurance channel, has seen an average annual decline in critical illness insurance new policy premiums of about 40% in the past two years. , corresponds to an overall decline of 8.8%, which means that in the individual insurance channel, Savings insurance is also replacing and squeezing out the share of health insurance.
This conclusion reflects on the micro level of insurance marketing. For insurance salespeople, their sales logic in the past few years has been built around the core of critical illness insurance, because critical illness insurance is easy to sell and can provide sufficient commission returns. This makes critical illness insurance the most popular type of insurance in the life insurance industry.
Products are accelerating iterative upgrades, product marketing and publicity are overwhelming, the market is being rapidly educated, and young people are beginning to take the initiative to learn about serious illnesses, which in turn forces the upgrading of products and marketing skills, creating a thriving situation for health insurance as a whole.
In the current life insurance market, the sales logic has begun to gradually shift toward “centering on savings insurance.” Leading brokerage companies such as Mingya Datong have promoted critical illness insurance in the past few years and played a leading role in accelerating the involution of the critical illness insurance market. However, they have now begun to mainly promote increased whole life insurance and pension insurance. Annuity transformation. For example, many insurance agents from Laoqijia have begun to realize that the critical illness insurance sales skills accumulated in the past few years are outdated, and they are rushing to make up for their mistakes and learn annuity insurance sales skills.
2. Critical illness insurance is not easy to sell.
Why is critical illness insurance not easy to sell? The author wrote a special article last year called " Critical Illness Insurance Prosperity and Decline" to explain the reasons. The core reason is the disappearance of China’s demographic dividend.
In China's population pyramid, the largest group of people is the group of people aged 35-55, that is, the "post-65s" to the "post-85s". Before 2015, critical illness insurance was not successfully sold in the Chinese insurance market. Critical illness insurance was not widely marketed among the post-65s to post-85s generation. However, with the cancellation of the agent qualification examination, insurance companies They began to use the crowd tactic. Tens of millions of people were engaged in insurance sales. These people bought critical illness insurance for themselves and recommended critical illness insurance to those around them. The population covered by critical illness insurance quickly increased in just a few years. to 400 million people.
When critical illness insurance is widely washed and covered among the largest group of people in China, that is when the critical illness insurance traffic dries up.
In addition, the most important reason that cannot be ignored is the change in the customer base. The post-90s and post-00s generations have begun to become the main customer group in today’s critical illness insurance market. Although this group of people is not as large as those born in 65-85, it represents the critical illness insurance market. All incremental markets.
These people are more rational, smart, and have strong information acquisition capabilities. The Internet has broken down information barriers. They understand insurance, and it is harder for them to be marketed. If the ability of agents cannot keep up with the rationality of customers, it means that this is an extremely involuted market.
The above two reasons have greatly increased the difficulty of practicing insurance sales. Not everyone can survive in this environment, so agents quickly drop out, and the dropout of agents will lead to a reduction in product marketing, further accelerating the resumption of sales. Illness insurance sales fell.
According to the author's statistics, in the first five months of 2022, new critical illness insurance orders continued to follow the downward trend in 2021, falling by about 30-40% year-on-year.
3. Savings products carry the banner of stabilizing the basic market
Critical illness insurance is the main value contributor to insurance companies. From the perspective of insurance companies, although they still want to adhere to the sales logic with critical illness insurance as the core, they are unable to do so and their performance has plummeted, which makes the management We had to change our thinking and take stabilizing the basic premium market as our top priority, first maintain our scale and market position, and then talk about value creation. Therefore, scale-contributing products, that is, savings products, began to become the focus of our operations.
However, insurance sales are the result of the joint action of both supply and demand. If supply is strong and demand is weak, it cannot achieve the purpose of stabilizing the market. Therefore, what we need to explore is why savings products can take on the important task of stabilizing the market in the past two years. .
(1) New regulations on asset management break the rigid redemption of asset management products
" Guiding Opinions on Regulating the Asset Management Business of Financial Institutions " will be officially implemented from January 1, 2022, which stipulates that financial institutions carry out asset management business Do not promise to guarantee principal or return at any time, which breaks the rigid redemption of asset management products.
This file makes a fundamental difference between savings insurance and other financial products (such as bank financial management, trust and other products). Other financial products emphasize investment returns, while savings insurance emphasizes the certainty of meeting customers' long-term savings and retirement needs through the design of survival insurance funds.
(2) The supervision of insurance predetermined interest rates is stable
Since insurance is an industry that spans economic cycles, the predetermined interest rates of insurance do not fluctuate as frequently as market interest rates, which will bring periodic development opportunities to savings insurance.
The current market interest rates in China still remain low, and the yield levels of common investment and financial management tools on the market are not performing well. The predetermined interest rate level of 3.5% for insurance products gives consumers a way to lock in long-term interest rates, and the interest rate level Attractive financial instrument.
(3) The customer base of financial products has not yet undergone a major intergenerational migration
Unlike critical illness insurance, the consumer group of savings insurance will not migrate from those born between 65 and 85 to those born between 90 and 90 in just this year. After 00. Because critical illness insurance is a universal product, it is suitable for all customers aged 20-55; while savings insurance is a product for wealthy customers, and it is only suitable for middle-aged people who have accumulated wealth to a certain extent.
In addition, one purchase of critical illness insurance may be enough, but savings insurance can be purchased in stacks. This will lead to the customer base of savings insurance being stabilized in those customers who have accumulated enough family wealth for a considerable period of time. superior.
The author has called on the industry many times to pay attention to the intergenerational migration of insurance customers, because customers born in 65-85 and those born in 90-00 have completely different consumption habits.
Fortunately, those born in the 1990s and 2000s have not yet become the main customer group for savings insurance, and the industry still has time to transform and adapt to the intergenerational changes in the customer base. In other words, the era of involution of savings insurance has not yet come, and the information barriers of products have not been completely destroyed. Marketing information such as critical illness insurance on Zhihu and Xiaohongshu has not yet been reflected in savings insurance. As reflected in the above, the industry can continue to make fuss about the concepts of simple interest and compound interest, absolute level and rate of return, long-term and short-term, insured growth rate and rate of return, predetermined interest rate and customer rate of return.
02
Savings insurance has a fatal "flaw": it is highly substitutable and cannot build a moat for life insurance companies.
1. Savings insurance is a product that depends on the external environment.
Changes in the economic environment and regulatory environment will lead to unstable sales of savings products. . For example, the consequences of the extensive development of the industry in 2018 have begun to appear, and "a good start or a bad start" has become the main theme of the industry. One of the important reasons is the change in the interest rate environment. From 2016 to 2018, China entered a period of interest rate hikes, leading to savings-oriented Insurance was not attractive enough in the prevailing interest rate environment.
For another example, the 4.025% annuity product is the product of the fee reform in 2013, but under the interest rate environment in 2019, it will bring greater spread loss risks to insurance companies, so the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission began to pass it in the second half of 2019 Measures such as lowering the assessment interest rate will gradually guide the industry to withdraw from 4.025% products.
In addition, Document No. 134 of 2017 postponed the first survival benefit payment of annuity insurance to 5 years after its effective date, which reduced the liquidity of savings products and made sales more difficult. The industry adopted the bancassurance policy of individual insurance products. The method is to shorten the release period of annuities (from lifetime annuities to 10/15-year annuities, and even 7/8-year annuity insurance will appear in 2022) to increase product appeal.
The current domestic interest rate environment is at a low level in the context of the epidemic. Whether insurance reservation interest rates will be lowered in line with market interest rates also depends on the regulatory authorities’ predictions of interest rate trends. Insurance companies must respond accordingly to various situations. measure.
2. Mainstream savings insurance products do not have long-term stability
Looking at the two mainstream savings insurance products in the market, they do not have the stability of product supply or customer demand satisfaction.
(1) Insurance, on the other hand, is long-term. The reason why insurance types such as X-year annuities appear in today’s agent channels is because life insurance companies compromised on customer needs after Document No. 134.
html Document No. 1134 postpones the return time of the first survival payment to five years after it takes effect. The sales logic of the product has undergone major changes compared with the previous immediate annuity. Since customers cannot be overly concerned about the time of the first survival payment, then It is necessary to shorten the payment cycle of survival benefits as much as possible.
However, there is a limit to the shortening of the issuance cycle. The shorter it is, the shorter the duration of the asset and the reduction of investment income. Investment income must not only pay customers enough survival benefits, but also pay enough sales expenses to maintain the huge life insurance company. Agent team.
The final evolution path of such products is that the X-year annuity insurance itself will become a tool to maintain agent sales fees, while the real customer benefits will be reflected through universal insurance accounts..
In other words, universal insurance accounts are a scarce financial product (with guaranteed interest rates, floating settlement rates, and low initial deductions), but since is scarce, customers have to pay a price for insurance, and the price is to buy an X-year term annuity insurance. Since annuity insurance is not as transparent as a universal account, actuaries can incorporate the sales fee into the annuity insurance pricing, allowing customers to pay a higher fee level without any sense.
Since customers purchase universal accounts, will this type of product completely evolve into universal insurance ? The author believes that it will not happen in the short term. First, universal insurance cannot make too high an initial deduction, so it cannot support its current agents; second, the premium income of universal insurance cannot be included in premium income according to the current accounting standards . Insurance companies There is also no incentive to supply such products.
When people born in the 1990s and 2000s become the main customer base for savings products, can such products still be sold? Since these customers have been speculating in stocks and buying funds since college, they will rely on their experience and knowledge in investment and financial management to choose savings insurance, just like they do today when purchasing critical illness insurance.
(2) There is a logical paradox in incremental whole life insurance: the product advantage comes from the pricing model, and the actual profit may be significantly different from the pricing.
The author needs to emphasize a point. Increasing whole life insurance is by no means “increasing insurance amount”. "Whole life insurance" is popular in some channels because it provides higher customer returns.
Currently, the three channels of agency, bancassurance and individual insurance sell incremental whole life insurance, but the products of the three channels can almost be regarded as three completely different products.
Incremental whole life insurance through agency channels is the product with the most radical benefits for customers. The insurance company bears the fee difference loss (the sales fee is higher than the predetermined price) and also bears the surrender rate risk (explained later). It is precisely because of the radical nature of the product that this type of product is popular among clients.
The bancassurance channel is the origin channel of incremental whole life insurance and is also the channel that contributes the largest amount of premiums. The long-term regular premium business of the bancassurance channel is almost all contributed by incremental whole life insurance. For large insurance companies, under the business strategy of regular payment and strict value assessment, incremental whole life insurance has become their optimal solution to capture the bancassurance channel. The benefits of 's radical incremental whole life insurance products in the bancassurance channel are comparable to those of the agency channel, but the customer benefits of most products are lower than those of the agency channel. However, since the bancassurance channel still has a large number of single payment business and regular payment business, the premium proportion of incremental whole life insurance in the bancassurance channel is not as concentrated as that of the leading agency companies.
Increased whole life insurance through insurance channels is the most embarrassing existence. Its customer benefits are low and it has not achieved a large market share. This is because the strategic positioning of individual insurance channels is value channels. The product benefits of value channels are bound to be incomparable with scale channels (bancassurance, agency). They only imitate their form design without introducing their soul (high customer benefits). It cannot become a successful product.
Why added whole life insurance is more market attractive than annuity insurance? There is a logical paradox. In fact, the demands of customers who buy these two types of products are the same, which is to obtain relatively long-term and stable survival benefits, but the methods of realization are different: incremental whole life insurance is realized through cash value, while annuity insurance is realized through year-by-year survival. To achieve gold refund.
However, from the perspective of actuarial pricing, since annuity insurance has a certain survival payment, its asset duration is shorter, and the total investment income that the product can create is less; The surrender of incremental whole life insurance is contingent. It even does not reflect customer surrender at the pricing model level. Therefore, the asset duration on the model book can be lifelong, and the investment income it creates is higher than annuity insurance. investment income contributes to customer interests and sales expenses. The higher the investment income, the higher the customer interests and the higher the sales expenses.
The author calls this phenomenon "model profit". A similar phenomenon is the inflated surrender margin in critical illness insurance pricing. Because of this, regulation has been tightening on incremental whole life insurance, and product design does not allow such products to be overly flexible (such as premium additions and partial surrenders).
When the insurance company discovers through operations that there is a huge difference between the actual profit performance of the product and the pricing, and determines that the model profit is indeed fictitious and has brought losses to the company, the company's management will start to pay attention and call it a halt.
3. The insurance industry may not be the beneficiary under the grand pension strategy
China is accelerating its aging. The pension market must be a big market, but insurance is not the only participant. In 2018, the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Program of Personal Tax-Deferred Commercial Pension Insurance" was issued, and the pilot program of personal tax-deferred commercial pension insurance was launched; the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the " Pension Target Securities Investment Fund Guidelines " to start the pension FOF Prologue; In September 2021, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Program of Pension Financial Management Products", and pension financial management products were hot in December; on December 17, the "Opinions on Promoting the Development of Personal Pensions" was reviewed and approved, and personal pension fund accounts The funds can be used to purchase bank financial management, savings deposits, commercial pension insurance , public funds, etc. that comply with regulations. The personal pension product framework has been officially established.
The above information combined means that in the future pension market, banks and funds will be the two major competitors in the insurance industry. This competition is essentially a competition for customer resources and professional capabilities.
Unfortunately, the channel resources and professional capabilities currently accumulated by the insurance industry are difficult to compete with banks and funds. Their customers are those who have accumulated the most wealth, and their sales staff are the most professional financial product sales staff. Their sales scenarios are The most suitable scenario for savings and wealth management.
At present, there are 168 public pension FOFs, with a total management scale of 129.85 billion yuan, and the number of holders is about 3 million; it has been half a year since the advent of pension financial products, As of the end of the first quarter of 2022, there are 4 pilot institutions A total of 16 retirement financial products were launched, and more than 165,000 investors subscribed for approximately 42 billion yuan..
This is the strength of our insurance industry competitors.
03
Why life insurance companies should always pay attention to health insurance: it cannot be replaced, this is the foundation of insurance companies
1. The protection function is the essential difference between insurance products and other financial products. Health insurance is a unique product of insurance companies
The protection function is the essential attribute that distinguishes insurance products from other financial products and even all commodities. The right to operate health insurance is also the exclusive authority granted to the insurance company by the insurance company's license.
If insurance companies pay too much attention to savings insurance, they will expand their competitors to the entire financial industry, while health insurance ’s only competitors are social medical insurance . When commercial health insurance and basic medical insurance form a complementary relationship, competition will Only within the insurance industry.
This exclusive attribute of health insurance means that "Customers can buy funds and bank finance, but they must have health insurance, so they have to give the insurance salesperson an opportunity to establish a relationship, and then the insurance sales channel takes advantage of this opportunity. , selling point savings insurance." In other words, if insurance companies want to gain the opportunity to seize market share with banks and funds, they must do a good job in health insurance.
2. Medical demand is superimposed on nursing demand. It is expected that health insurance demand will reach 2.6 trillion yuan in 2030, which still has great growth potential.
How to predict the future premium growth space of health insurance? The author recommends dividing health insurance demand into medical demand and nursing care. Demand, the sum of the two is the growth space for health insurance.
From the perspective of medical demand, a country's medical and health expenditures are positively correlated with GDP levels (less correlated with aging). According to relevant scholars' forecasts of future GDP growth, it is expected that by 2030, total medical and health expenditures will increase to 17 trillion, of which personal cash payments will drop to 25% (the goal of Healthy China 2030). Assuming that the proportion of government health expenditure remains unchanged, it means that the proportion of social health expenditure will increase from the current 41% to about 45%. .
The main financing sources of social health expenditure are basic medical insurance and commercial health insurance, and commercial health insurance currently accounts for 27% of social health expenditure. Assuming that the proportion of commercial health insurance can increase to 30% by 2030, from the perspective of medical demand, the premium scale of commercial health insurance in 2030 will be 17 trillion × 45% × 30% = 2.3 trillion yuan.
From the perspective of nursing demand, the aging of the population will boost the development of this market. Different scholars apply different forecasting methods, but the difference in magnitude is not significant. The demand for nursing care is expected to be about 3 trillion yuan by 2030. At present, social security long-term care insurance is still in the pilot stage, and the contribution of social security in the 3 trillion yuan is still unclear. If we assume that the contribution of commercial insurance expenditures is 10%, the premium scale of commercial nursing insurance can reach 300 billion yuan.
Adding the two types of demand, the total size of commercial health insurance in 2030 will be approximately 2.6 trillion yuan. Correspondingly, CICC Securities predicts the size of the personal pension market in 2030 to be 2.3 trillion yuan.
3. Health insurance has three sources of profit, which is more stable for insurance companies than savings insurance.
Unlike savings insurance, which only relies on investment as a single source of profit, health insurance has three major sources of profit: investment, mutual aid leverage, and payment leverage. .
Investment, investment income from health insurance is often easier to obtain than savings insurance. takes critical illness insurance as an example (it represents long-term fixed benefit health insurance). The primary source of profit for such products is often investment income. Long-term insurance products often accumulate a certain level of investable assets (reserves) due to the characteristics of early financing during the hesitation period. This is especially true for whole-life health insurance that includes death liability. This results in such products often having a certain long-term savings connotation. This is reflected in the fact that the cash value of such products in the later part of the policy year can often exceed the premiums paid.
But it is also a matter of long-term savings. Critical illness insurance is significantly different from annuity insurance or increased whole life insurance. This difference is reflected in the purpose of customer purchase: The purpose of customers purchasing health insurance is protection, while the purpose of purchasing savings insurance is investment and For savings, in the former, customers pay more attention to the protection connotation and ignore the savings connotation, especially the rate of return that the savings connotation brings to customers. However, when customers purchase savings insurance, they will compare it with other savings investment tools. This difference makes health insurance products with savings connotations often bring huge investment returns to insurance companies.
In addition, even medical insurance , there is a certain time difference from premium payment to compensation payment, can still bring investment income of up to one year, and this income does not need to be shared with customers.
Mutual aid leverage is risk diversification in the traditional sense of health insurance, where the costs of a few insured persons are shared by the majority of insured persons. Mutual leverage creates incidence differentials for insurance companies. Insurance's monopoly position in operating risks enables it to obtain excess profits in operating mutual aid leverage . Mutual aid leverage is the main source of profit for low-frequency compensation health insurance.
Payment leverage is a unique lever that distinguishes health insurance from other insurances. It means that the payment of insurance premiums increases consumers’ willingness and ability to pay when purchasing medical care goods (services), creating additional funds for society. Effective demand and consumption of medical care goods (services). The leverage of makes providers of medical care products willing to transfer marketing costs or excess profits to insurance companies, forming a source of profit.
Payment leverage is the main source of profit for high-frequency compensation health insurance.For example, in dental insurance , its insurance leverage is composed of mutual aid leverage and payment leverage, and the effect of payment leverage exceeds mutual aid leverage. Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies in overseas markets have also tried different forms of innovative payment models. The essence of this is that insurance provides payment capabilities for the effective demand for innovative drugs, and pharmaceutical companies are willing to transfer profits to insurance companies.
4. Health insurance can provide stable sales revenue for the channel
The income frequency brought by savings products to insurance sales staff is low, because not every customer has the purchase demand for savings products. Even those customers who have demand, other The accumulation of wealth takes a long time. Although high-income customers can make multiple purchases throughout their lives, the time between each purchase is longer, which results in the commission income earned by insurance salespeople selling savings products being unstable. of.
Health insurance is more inclusive. It is suitable for a wider customer base. At the same time, the payment period of health insurance is also longer. If the commission structure is more balanced, the salesperson can accumulate a certain amount of health insurance customer base. Obtaining stable sales income from renewal premiums makes insurance sales a lifelong career rather than a short-term career.
However, because my country’s insurance market pays too much attention to short-term growth, the commission structure is concentrated towards the first year to attract a large number of agents to enter the insurance industry. However, without considering the long-term survival of agents after the industry’s new orders slow down or even decline, these people quickly fall out. , the result of this is to overdraw the resources that can be realized by those agents who are truly capable of staying in the industry for a long time (because a large amount of customer resources are wasted by those short-term practitioners).
04
Health insurance and individual insurance channels are heading towards the ultimate conclusion: health insurance guarantees the bottom line, and savings insurance creates additional income, helping agents grow into risk management experts
The author believes that life insurance companies, individual insurance channels and health insurance cannot be separated.
1. Life insurance companies and individual insurance channels cannot be unbundled: bancassurance channels are difficult to create value
Life insurance companies and individual insurance channels cannot be unbundled.
The author believes that the bancassurance channel is just a channel that life insurance companies must borrow from in their development, because the development of banks is usually earlier than the development of the life insurance industry. The development maturity of China's banking industry is higher than that of life insurance companies. The public's attitude towards banks Reliability is higher than that of insurance, and banks have better customer resources than life insurance companies. In order to develop, life insurance companies have to borrow banks' outlets and sales power at the cost of paying high handling fees and even giving away profits.
However, the bancassurance channel does not necessarily exist. For example, in the United States and the United Kingdom, building a strong team of agents and brokers is enough to support the development of the life insurance industry. The bancassurance channel contributes very little to life insurance marketing.
The bancassurance channel occupies a place in some markets, such as the French market, due to some deep-seated reasons. As the birthplace of the bancassurance channel, the French bancassurance channel has developed and grown with various government dividends. For example, the French government (the government controls both banks and insurance companies) has given certain insurance products (and (similar to bank savings) tax preferential policies make it more attractive than bank savings, strengthening the position of French bancassurance.
If the insurance products in the Chinese market are more attractive than other financial products that banks can sell, bancassurance is a sales channel with commercial logic. Otherwise, the combination of banks and insurance can only be the exchange of premiums and profits.
The current advantage of insurance lies in ultra-long-term pension savings, but this advantage has not been highlighted today when the people lack pension awareness. In addition, tax preferential policies are not only open to insurance. In this environment, the combination of insurance and banks I'm afraid it will be difficult to create value for the insurance company.
The reason why life insurance companies cannot get rid of the bancassurance channel is that the capabilities of individual insurance agents are not yet monopolistic.If there is such a marketing team in the Chinese market, they are proficient in investments, pensions, insurance and related tax and legal knowledge, and they are more professional than bank financial managers in marketing financial instruments or pension instruments, then the value of the bancassurance channel will cease to exist.
It can also be seen from this that what life insurance companies have to do is to compete with banks to build pension insurance sales force. Although it is very difficult, if you don’t invest, you will only be kidnapped by the bank. Only if you invest, can you achieve “customer freedom”. "Only by accumulating your own customers can you create excess profits.
2. Personal insurance channels and health insurance cannot be unbundled: health protection experts are the optimal development target for Chinese personal insurance agents.
As mentioned above, the race to build sales force with banks is undoubtedly extremely difficult, especially Even more difficult to achieve with the current initial endowment of the current insurance agent or broker. We can only reconcile with bancassurance and admit that it is a channel that exchanges profits for scale, and that it competes with this large channel through handling fees and other financial products. In this case of , we need to pay more attention to the agent channel, because it holds the last position in creating value.
Let’s go back to the previous paragraph: “Customers can buy funds and bank finance, but they must have health insurance, so they have to give insurance salespeople an opportunity to build relationships, and then the insurance sales channel uses this Opportunity to sell savings insurance."
Under this channel positioning, individual insurance agents should not be greedy about becoming pension experts or financial management experts, but they must become health security experts or even health management experts. If we abstract personal insurance agents into a sales profession, financial products, financial products and even pension products can be sold by sales staff in many fields, but health insurance can only be sold by personal insurance sales staff, because either they do not have sales qualifications, Or there is no sales scenario (although banks can sell health insurance, such a savings and financial management scenario is not suitable for selling health insurance products). Therefore, health protection experts are the best development path for individual insurance channels in the Chinese market environment.
3. Evolution direction of individual insurance channels: Agents grow into risk management experts based on health protection and wealth management
The starting point of the deduction is the current market situation, critical illness insurance sales continue to decline - Critical illness insurance sales are likely to shrink to a peak in 2022 Less than half of the year - insurance companies pay more attention to bancassurance channels. The sales logic of individual insurance channels is built with savings products as the core. However, due to the rapid shrinkage of critical illness insurance sales, savings products have higher requirements for agents’ ability and quality. requirements, the two worked together to accelerate the elimination of agents, and the number of agents returned to the level before the agent qualification examination in 2015.
The reduction in the number of agents has allowed excellent agents to remain, and the number of customers served by each agent has increased. 2 million agents serve approximately 400 million customers, and each person serves 200 customers, which makes even the average number of cases lower Health insurance (such as medical insurance and some consumer health insurance with extended payment periods and flat commissions) can also provide agents with a guaranteed and stable income every year.
The prerequisite for an agent to gather these 200 customers is that he is a health insurance expert who has rich health insurance sales skills and professional health and medical knowledge reserves.
Hundreds of health insurance policies put huge operational pressure on agents, such as insurance renewals and claims settlement, but insurance companies provide agents with an efficient operation platform through technology channels, allowing insurance agents to become experts based on this platform .
In addition to insurance products, insurance agents also sell or give away some valuable health management services, such as personal doctors or health managers who provide chronic disease management. Agents can regularly ask customers about their satisfaction with these services and their physical condition to maintain high-frequency interactions with customers.
Insurance companies have abundant health insurance reserves, which are sufficient to meet the protection needs of the families served by agents in different life cycles.
Based on the irreplaceable touch point of health insurance, agents begin to talk to customers about their needs for long-term savings, retirement and asset allocation, especially when they learn that customers have excess savings during daily interactions. Through the sales of large-amount pension and savings products, agents' income has been greatly increased on the basis of health insurance guarantees. Agents can stay in the industry for a long time and continue to build their own professional capabilities, eventually becoming a company based on health insurance and wealth management. risk management experts.
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