By CGTN’s Xu Xinchen
FinTech – financial technology – is expanding into the insurance industry.
What's being called InsurTech is aimed at helping the insurance industry to grow, while imposing few additional costs on companies.
For a fraction of the shipping cost, freight insurance offered by Chinese online shopping platform Taobao is being purchased by most of today's online buyers and sellers.
The insurance is designed to cover shipping costs if a customer returns the product, and it's the largest income source for the company providing the insurance, Zhong An.
Zhong An is one of China's first online insurance providers, and is owned by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, Tencent and Ping An Insurance.
During the past three years, Zhong An's income has grown from 2.2 billion (324 million US dollars) to 3.4 billion yuan (500.8 million US dollars).
Students wait in line to pick up their Taobao deliveries after last year’s Double Eleven online sale. The number of returned purchases or cancelled orders usually peaks at this time of the year, and that’s when Zhong An Insurance gets a huge premium. /VCG Photo
Now Zhong An is expanding into online health and auto insurance. Experts say modern technology has been helping insurance companies to offer more attractive products.
“Insurance technology and big data are lifting the customer experience when buying insurance products through mobile devices. For example, Alibaba has just launched auto insurance that replaces much of the human labor in insurance claims by artificial intelligence. Clients can thus upload photos of auto damage and the AI system can analyze the photo and determine the compensation more quickly,” said Wu Jun, CEO of Ensurlink.
Alibaba's rival, JD.com, also started offering insurance products earlier this year. Online discounter VIP Shop is another tech company that has received an insurance license.
Traditional insurance providers still don't see all this as much of a threat, however. They rely on their greater experience in pricing insurance products to ensure profits.
Traditional insurer, AXA Tianping P&C Insurance, has opened a system on company’s website for customers to buy insurance products online. /http://www.axatp.com/
Yuan Yinghui, CEO of the Health Business Unit at AXA Tianping P&C Insurance, said traditional insurers still see room for growth compared with the industry’s landscape in developed countries.
“Healthcare insurance only accounts for 3 to 4 percent of total health care expenditure in China, while it can reach 30 to 40 percent in developed countries. We have developed risk analysis and pricing models as an advantage, and we have more data available from the internet and social media to power those models. Also we are trying out automation and artificial intelligence in our operations as well,” said Yuan.
According to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), the premium income of the country's insurance sector expanded 20 percent annually during the past two years, and the trend is expected to continue in 2017.
According to the CIRC, premium income from January to May this year hit 2.03 trillion yuan, up 26 percent on the previous year.
