Written by Chen Jiying
Edited by Wan Tiannan
In the winter of January in Beijing, there is no snow and wind, and the coldest is more than ten degrees below zero.
When Ma Haixin, a post-95 generation who went out early in the morning to meet the customer, was waiting for the car, he was so cold that he stomped his feet.
He rubbed his hands together and flipped through the address book and looked at the list of clients, all of which were the resources he had accumulated from his time as a real estate agent.
Now, Ma Haixin has changed from selling his house to insurance.
The decision to change careers was made in August last year.
That month, Ma Haixin did not open a single order, and his income was 0, and he fell into unprecedented anxiety. After three or four years in the industry, Ma Haixin once had a highlight moment of monthly income of more than 30,000 yuan.
But the good times came to an abrupt end in 2023, "I didn't make any money, and I relied on the savings of previous years."
Ma Haixin is not an isolated case, and several of his peers in his service area have already moved to the insurance industry.
Liang Hao, who is also engaged in real estate, smelled the crisis a few years ago, and he submitted his resignation in September 2020, and under the introduction of the former leader who changed careers first, he started insurance**.
In Shenzhen, in the past three or four years, the number of real-name registered real estate agents has dropped sharply from more than 60,000 at the peak to more than 20,000.
Affected by the reduction of the scheduled interest rate, the demand for asset preservation has been thoroughly stimulated, and the insurance industry has ushered in a sustained high growth trend. According to statistics, in the first seven months of 2023, the five major listed insurance companies have collected a total of 189 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 77%。In July last year, CPIC Life Insurance premium income increased by 89% year-on-year8%。
In the past two years, more and more people have taken the initiative to ask Liang Hao how to buy insurance, "In the past, only when you buy a house, everyone will be so active." ”
Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet. Liang Hao, born after 85 and Ma Haixin after 95, two generations of real estate people have coincidentally found another way, which seems to be a coincidence of individual fate, but in fact implies the inevitability of the economic cycle.
Non-stop, catch up with the next new cycle
Unlike Ma Haixin, who was forced to transform, Yang Bo, a post-90s real estate agent, took the initiative to enter insurance. Yang Bo firmly believes that "if you want to get ahead, you must seize the new cycle".
In July 2015, Yang Bo entered a high-end real estate agency, mainly selling villas and other high-value properties, serving the elite crowd, catching up with the good time of the real estate skyrocket.
For four consecutive years, his performance has ranked in the top ten of the company, and his annual income has soared to more than 60 yuan.
During this period, he found that there was a poor information, many customers would take the initiative to buy large insurance policies, "the amount is not less than real estate investment, and it can increase in value steadily, and I think there is a great opportunity in this track."
So, in 2020, Yang Bo resigned from a high-end real estate agency and held two positions, working as an independent real estate agent and an insurance person at the same time.
Compared with the decision of young agents to change careers, it is not easy for real estate veterans to say goodbye.
Fang Wan, who is in her early 40s, has been working in real estate for more than 20 years, and has experienced the first era of the industry throughout the whole process, and her annual salary has risen all the way to one million yuan. Once, she thought she would do real estate for the rest of her life.
Until 2022, the company abandoned the Beijing market, and Fang Wan faced a choice - either to be stationed in the field with the project or to leave.
The insurance ** person with free time has become her new choice. According to Fang Wan's observation, it is very common to change careers from real estate to insurance, and nearly eighty percent of the ** people around her have changed careers from real estate.
Although Fang Wan's average monthly income in 2023 will just exceed 20,000 yuan, far from catching up with before, she does not regret it, "At least you have entered an upward industry and have a head."
When he left the real estate industry in 2020, Liang Hao had just crossed the 35-year-old workplace red line, and if he crossed into a new industry as a "social animal", "no experience, and young people can't fight physically, it's a dead end".
But the insurance industry is an exception, and age is not an obstacle, "Even the older you get, the more popular it is", Liang Hao joked.
"Old", which means the precipitation of network resources, and the income of peers around him has risen to a considerable level, "In Beijing, the annual family income is more than three or five hundred thousand, and there is a high probability that there is a high probability that there is more money to buy a large policy."
Liang Hao, who has been in transition for three or four years, is also satisfied with the current state, and the income he will receive in 2023 will basically be equal to the annual salary of the real estate company, "but there is a lot less overtime, and the cost performance is higher."
Data shows that in the first 11 months of 2023, Chinese life insurance premiums increased by 10% year-on-year8%。In horizontal comparison, the insurance penetration rate of developed economies in Europe and the United States is as high as 12%, while the penetration rate in China is only 39%, there is still room for several times growth.
Real estate veterans have joined the new insurance industry, and selling life insurance has become a "sweet spot".
However, from real estate to insurance, it is not easy to catch. A newcomer who has just entered the industry, "Don't fantasize about ascending to the sky in one step, everyone has an annual salary of one million", Yang Bo warned, and it took him more than three months from doing insurance to selling the first impersonal insurance policy.
With the challenges ahead, insurance intermediaries must find a strategic bull's-eye - select the most popular insurance categories and anchor the core target groups.
Savings life insurance with considerable growth rate, such as annuity insurance and increased whole life insurance, is the consensus of the above-mentioned insurers.
Liang Hao, a post-85 insurance person who changed careers from real estate.
According to the Swiss Re Research Institute, life insurance, including life insurance, continues to stabilize and improve, and the growth rate of the Chinese market is expected to reach 8 in the next year4%。
The high-net-worth clients served by Yang Bo are highly favored by life insurance to achieve wealth inheritance, asset risk isolation, and reasonable tax avoidance. They often set up their children and family members as beneficiaries of the relevant savings insurance policies to pass on their wealth and avoid the high inheritance tax that may be levied in the future.
In addition, as China gradually enters an aging society, it is inevitable that pension life insurance will be popular.
Most of the groups served by Yang Bo are middle-aged middle-class families, whose parents are old, and high-end life insurance with the rights and interests of the pension community is favored by this group, "Many of my customers have an average premium of 3 million yuan, paid in 5 years, and then send their parents to the pension community."
On August 1 last year, the scheduled interest rate of domestic life insurance was increased from 35% to 30%。During the July window when the old and new products were switched, the number of customers who took the initiative to buy life insurance from Liang Hao increased by three or four times, and large orders were frequent.
Liang Hao recalled that it is not common for a large single life insurance with a daily premium of 300-500,000 yuan, and in the current month, a large single life insurance with a premium of 200-3 million yuan is not uncommon"It's another good start of the year, and this kind of rush to buy has only been seen before when I was grabbing a new house. ”
Data from Alipay's insurance platform Ant Insurance also shows that in July 2023, the number of users actively searching for and buying savings insurance on the platform increased by more than 10 times. This is only a conservative estimate, and the market is improving.
In terms of user selection, the consensus of the above-mentioned insurance leaders is that the main customer groups for one-to-one offline conversion are mostly middle-aged users over 35 years old, mainly family units. This group has abundant funds in their hands, and they pay relative attention to factors such as favors, services, and customization when buying insurance, which are the advantages of offline ** people and brokers.
Young people who are looking for convenience, speed, and flexibility are more inclined to Internet platforms.
According to public information, among the users who buy savings insurance on Ant Insurance, the post-80s and post-90s generations together account for 78%.
96-year-old Ding Qiwan worked as a beauty marketer in an e-commerce company in Hangzhou, and five years after graduating from university, she bought her first insurance on Alipay. She has mild social fear, she said, "The personal service is really good, but the pressure not to buy after talking is also very great." Later, she studied the strategy evaluation on Xiaohongshu and placed an online order to buy it herself.
In Ding Qiwan's view, the Internet platform products are rich and transparent. What she values more is that the overall insurance threshold of Internet insurance is low, with a minimum of 100 yuan per month, which can be saved, while offline payment is generally annual, and the minimum is 5,000 yuan per year.
Before buying insurance, Ding Qiwan and her friends also did some exchanges, and after comparison, they found that "offline ** people focus on serving an insurance company, while offline brokers and online insurance platforms have a variety of products to choose from, and they can choose the best of the best." ”
Liang Hao and Yang Bo both believe that the main groups of Internet platforms and offline ** people are obviously different, they all have their own advantages, and users will be stratified by themselves, "The key is that the whole ** is still growing." ”
Hometown, Don't Come Unharmed", the insurance broker describes the job positioning.
From real estate to insurance, Chinese's "certainty" and "sense of security".
In Yang Bo's view, real estate and insurance, on the surface, seem to be two completely different types of targets, but the handover of the two bull markets, in essence, is that Chinese have been pursuing "security" and "certainty".
From the beginning of this century to 2017, before the big turn in housing market regulation, it was the first era of China's property market, and investing in real estate was almost a steady win.
However, under the trend of housing for living in and not for speculation, the average price of second-hand housing in China's 100 key cities has fallen for 11 consecutive months. Not only real estate, but also other high-quality investment targets are becoming more and more scarce.
For example, deposit interest rates have also continued to fall, and since June 2023, major state-owned banks have lowered deposit interest rates three times in a row. And **also bottom**, in January this year, A-shares have lost 2,800 points many times.
Low interest rates are the trend of the times, and at this time, the advantages of savings life insurance with mandatory savings function and compound interest can be locked in advance are highlighted", Liang Hao analyzed.
Many customers have placed orders after seeing the income table (cash value) listed by him for the next ten or twenty years.
In the past three or four years, Liang Hao has not only left enough for family expenses, but also continued to take out insurance, and the total amount of family premiums has more than doubled.
Fang Wan is a first-hand witness of the great migration from real estate investment to insurance investment. Previously, she and her husband had invested in real estate more than a dozen times and basically achieved financial freedom. But after experiencing the roller coaster of the industry, she attaches more and more importance to the bottom-up effect of insurance, "the insurance that her family should buy is neatly configured".
She also bought a savings insurance with considerable premiums for her daughter, "in the future, it will be used for studying abroad, or the dowry when she gets married, or even starting a business**, it's up to her", which is the confidence she left to her daughter.
Younger people also value certainty and security. Although Ding Qiwan currently has a monthly salary of nearly 20,000 yuan, because she has bought a small house, her monthly mortgage is also under certain pressure.
Now, she invests 3,000 yuan per month in Alipay. "This is a small treasury that I have saved for myself, and my goal is to save 300,000 to 500,000 yuan. ”
In the past ten years, the sense of security and certainty pursued by Chinese has created the first era of the property market, and now, this sentiment may have opened a new cycle of insurance.
The intermediaries who switched from real estate to insurance have become witnesses of the mirror image of the times. (Fang Wan and Ding Qiwan are pseudonyms in the article).