Reporter Li Hui reports from Beijing
The slowdown in the overall growth rate of traditional insurance types and the public's demand for more refined insurance protection have made market participants begin to target new tracks.
A few days ago, three insurance companies, Chinese People's Health Insurance, Ping An Health Insurance and Pacific Health Insurance, jointly launched an innovative insurance product "Tsingshan Income Protection Insurance" on the Internet insurance ** platform "Ant Insurance".
The reporter of China Business News learned that the product is mainly designed for office workers and family pillars. After applying for insurance, if the income is unfortunately interrupted due to illness or accidental incapacity, you can get the agreed amount of compensation from the insurance company every month in accordance with the claim rules like receiving a salary, with a maximum of 20,000 yuan per month and a maximum of 100 months.
Shen Ye, general manager of Ant Insurance's health insurance business department, said that the product positioning of health insurance will become clearer and clearer in the future with the clarification of user needs, and there are many innovative points that can be explored on how to help users cover the loss of income in the event of health risks while covering users' medical expenses.
Special attention is paid to new citizens
Compared with the well-known medical insurance, critical illness insurance, accident insurance and other types of insurance in the market, income protection insurance is not mainstream in China.
Income protection insurance belongs to the category of health insurance "disability income loss insurance", which is based on the condition of payment of insurance benefits for the insured's loss of working ability caused by illness or accident as stipulated in the insurance contract, and provides insurance coverage for the insurer's income loss or income interruption within a certain period of time. Relevant data show that in 2022, the scale of disability income loss insurance in China's commercial health insurance will be less than 02%。
According to the product page, the insurable age of "Tsingshan Income Protection Insurance" is 16-55 years old, and the payment period and protection period are both 10 years. The monthly insurance amount is divided into three levels: 5,000 yuan per month, 10,000 yuan per month and 20,000 yuan per month, and the maximum compensation time is 100 months.
From the perspective of product coverage, the product covers most of the situations that cannot work due to accidents and diseases in daily life: in addition to covering daily surgical hospitalization such as fractures and acute appendicitis, it also includes disability caused by 70 high-incidence serious diseases such as severe malignant tumors (such as lung cancer, liver cancer, etc.), severe acute myocardial infarction, and 4 major types of functional injuries such as craniocerebral and limb.
It is understood that "Tsingshan Income Protection Insurance" is the only disability insurance product on the market that includes temporary disability protection liability. Shi Huining, a product expert at Ant Insurance's financial strategy department, told reporters that the traditional "disability" is easy to understand as a long-term loss of self-care ability, but in fact, the scope of "disability" is very broad, including long-term loss of self-care ability (such as blindness, paralysis, etc.), as well as temporary loss of work ability (such as temporary fractures, surgery, mental illness, etc.), resulting in income loss including both complete income interruption and a certain degree of income decline.
From the perspective of adaptation groups, income protection insurance also has a certain target group. Zeng Ying, senior manager of the product management department of PICC Health Internet Insurance Division, revealed that this product was designed with special attention to the 300 million new citizen group. "In our research, we found that even new citizens will have some basic medical insurance compensation products to a greater or lesser extent. Their biggest risk is that their income is unstable, and in the event of an accident or illness, their income will plummet or even be interrupted. ”
The biggest difference between this income protection insurance and other fixed payment products is that it can be reimbursed exactly to a specific loss. Some functions of medical insurance and critical illness insurance cover the direction of throttling when people are in an unhealthy state, while the open source of income protection insurance allows policyholders to have a continuous inflow of funds. Shi Huining said.
It is complementary to medical insurance and critical illness insurance
Relevant statistics show that among the four major types of health insurance products in China, critical illness insurance and medical insurance occupy the absolute main market share, accounting for about 45% each, and disability insurance and nursing insurance account for a relatively low proportion, totaling less than 10%. In mature foreign markets, disability insurance accounts for more than 30%. This also means that the development of domestic disability insurance is still in its infancy, and there is still a huge demand that has not been met.
At the same time, the domestic health insurance market has entered a bottleneck period. According to data from the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration, the premium income of health insurance in 2023 will be 903.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%。Affected by factors such as the mixed product functions and the impact of medical insurance such as Million Medical Insurance and Huimin Insurance, the negative growth of critical illness insurance has continued for many years.
Industry insiders told reporters that from the traditional design ideas of medical insurance and critical illness insurance, medical insurance is based on the reimbursement of expenses in the diagnosis and treatment process, and critical illness insurance is a one-time payment. Although critical illness insurance has long been considered to have a certain income compensation function, due to the low overall leverage ratio and the overlap of some functions with medical insurance, the protection efficiency is limited, and the cost performance is not outstanding.
This has also prompted the industry to increase the exploration of new positioning products. According to Fei Jingjie, head of the product planning department of Ping An Health Insurance, at present, the definition trend of critical illness insurance has not kept up with the trend of medical treatment, resulting in many unmet market demands. When designing income protection insurance products, we integrate the characteristics of critical illness and medical treatment through a large amount of data to make their pricing more friendly and accurate. In terms of positioning, it can also be superimposed and complementary with critical illness insurance and medical insurance.
From the perspective of claim standards, critical illness insurance and medical insurance are based on the diagnosis of diseases. Income protection insurance, on the other hand, is based on the loss of income. Different from the one-time payment of critical illness insurance, disability insurance is paid on a monthly basis, with an average claim period of nearly three years, providing users with long-term and stable compensation.
Because it is paid on a monthly basis, the claim design of this product is more complicated. According to Fei Jingjie, the three insurance companies and Ant Insurance have designed a lot of claim rules for establishing personal disability standards, and ensure that the claims standards implemented by the three companies are consistent.
The above-mentioned joint development and co-construction involving multiple parties is also expected to promote the innovation process of China's health insurance products. Guo Jinlong, director of the Insurance and Economic Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the joint development of such innovative products by insurance companies and Internet platforms has released the leverage effect of commercial health insurance to a greater extent, so that people can buy better products with more inclusive products, which is also another innovation and expansion of disability insurance in China, which is conducive to the sustainable and balanced development of commercial health insurance.
Editor: He Shasha Proofreader: Yan Yuxia).