** Deep Blue Finance.
Written by |Wang Xin.
Relying on the frantic expansion of bancassurance channels, the first brother of "bank-based" life insurance, China Post Life Insurance, has suffered a huge loss of 11 billion yuan, and is gradually becoming the "public enemy" of financial management for some rural elderly people.
Deposits become "annuity insurance".
In January this year, Lao Wang, who went out to work, returned to his hometown in Sichuan for the New Year and wanted to prepare some cash, so he went to the business hall of the Postal Savings Bank in the town to withdraw money.
But who would have thought that what could have been done quickly, Lao Wang spent a full afternoon.
It turned out that Lao Wang met a very enthusiastic female account manager of the bank, a brother Wang, who not only invited Lao Wang to lunch, but also drove Lao Wang around the town. In the process, the account manager talked about her "financial management", she told Lao Wang that now they are selling an annuity insurance product, and there are more than 20 points of income in a few years, which is much higher than the deposit interest rate, and many people who bought it have earned, and she herself has bought more than 100,000 yuan.
Lao Wang is a high school student in the 80s, 57 years old this year, but he is very lacking in financial knowledge. He didn't understand this sudden "wealth", but he thought to himself that the Postal Savings Bank was a big state-owned bank and would not cheat people. After hesitating, Lao Wang still signed an insurance contract with the account manager, paid a premium of 30,000 yuan for the first year, and bought an annuity insurance for himself.
In the evening, Lao Wang read the insurance contract, and was completely confused about the "cash value" or something, so he couldn't hold back his ** and told his son Xiao Wang. Xiao Wang has some financial knowledge, read the terms of the contract word by word, figured out what kind of product it is, and found that there are tricks such as inducing customers to buy and exaggerating returns.
Xiao Wang told Deep Blue Finance that the final income of this product on the basis of partial guarantee is actually uncertain, and the loss of surrender is also large. However, the account manager did not clearly inform the information, and just blindly exaggerated the benefits.
Under his son's analysis, Lao Wang took advantage of the 15-day hesitation period to go to the account manager to terminate the contract, and finally let go of his hanging heart.
My father's money is mainly saved for the elderly, and it is not excluded that it can be used at any time, so this product is not suitable. In Xiao Wang's view, even if you buy insurance, you should give priority to basic insurance such as critical illness insurance and health insurance, but unfortunately my father can't buy it. He once suggested that his father buy high-dividend bank stocks with higher returns than depositing in the bank, but his father refused as soon as he heard that he was buying **.
Product design of chicken ribs.
Lao Wang bought the "China Post Rich Surplus Wealth Jia No. 8 Annuity Insurance (Dividend)" (hereinafter referred to as "Fortune Jia No. 8") issued by China Post Life Insurance, which must be paid for 3 consecutive years, agreed to pay 30,000 yuan per year, with a total premium of 90,000 yuan and an insurance period of 8 years.
Screenshot of Fortune No. 8 insurance contract.
Whether this product is suitable for Lao Wang, let's take a look at the core terms:
The contract stipulates that at the end of the 5th, 6th and 7th years, if the insured is still alive, a "survival annuity" of 1,110 yuan will be paid. Then if you pay for 3 consecutive years, it is 3,330 yuan.
If you are still alive at the end of the 8th year of insurance, you will be paid a "maturity benefit" of 108% of the premium paid. i.e. 108% of 90,000, 9720,000 yuan.
Simply calculated at simple interest, the total yield of these two payouts at the end of the term is 117%, corresponding to an annualized return of 146%。
However, if the insured dies during the insurance period, only the "death benefit" will be paid according to the greater of the premium paid and the cash value at the time of death, and the contract will be terminated.
What does this mean?
First of all, you have to understand what is cash value, cash value refers to the money that can be returned by surrendering the policy halfway. Fortunately, the contract contained a cash value table. For example, if you want to surrender the policy at the end of the second year, you have paid a premium of 60,000 yuan, but you can only get back 51,570 yuan, and the actual loss is 8,430 yuan, which shows that the cash value is very low. The money that is withheld is generally used by the insurance company to pay the salesman's commission and operating expenses.
Screenshot of Fortune No. 8 insurance contract.
According to the principle of maturity and high school, if the insured dies before the 6th year and the premium is higher than the cash value, the premium will be refunded, but it is only a refund of the premium, and the funds have been used by the insurance company for several years, and only by living to the 6th year and beyond can some income be earned. What's more, if you surrender the policy before the 6th year, you can only get a lower cash value.
In addition, the contract clearly states that the amount of policy dividend distribution is uncertain and not guaranteed.
In fact, the specific dividends of this kind of participating annuity insurance depend on the investment results of the insurance company and its willingness to pay dividends, which cannot be guaranteed or transparent.
In summary, Fortune Jia No. 8 has a part of the guaranteed income when it is held to maturity, but the annualized rate of return is only 146%, far less than the current 5-year bank fixed deposit interest rate of 2%, or even worse than the 1-year deposit interest rate, the deposit interest rate of city commercial banks can not catch up. And the surrender loss is indeed large.
The benchmark of the deposit interest rate announced by the Postal Savings Bank.
As for its dividends, it is even more difficult to count on. The income of more than 20 points verbally said by the account manager is based on the good dividend record in the past, but the past is not equal to the future. In the era of declining investment yields, the net profit of insurance companies is getting worse, and the distributable surplus used for dividends is naturally a downward trend, and the investment ability shown by China Post Life Insurance is not flattering, with a huge loss of more than 11 billion last year, and the "three differences" are not ideal, how many dividends can be paid?
Xiao Wang's concern is indeed very reasonable.
* Chaos is rampant.
It is not uncommon for Lao Wang to terminate the contract and the elderly to be induced to buy insurance when they go to save money.
On the black cat complaint platform, many people complained that the staff of China Post Life Insurance did not sell insurance products according to the suitability of customers, and there were inducements to deceive elderly customers to buy insurance.
Why can China Post Life's insurance products become popular in the Postal Savings Bank, and even rely on the credibility of the Postal Savings Bank to induce customers to buy them?
Because they are a family.
According to public information, China Post Life Insurance Co., Ltd. was established in 2009 with a registered capital of 2866.3 billion yuan, the controlling shareholder China Post Group *** holds a total of 7501% shares. China Post is also the controlling shareholder of Postal Savings Bank (A-share 601658, Hong Kong stock 01658), so Postal Savings Bank and China Post Life Insurance are "brothers", and they have a lot of cooperation in business.
Relying on the huge outlets of the "Big Tree" Postal Group and the Postal Savings Bank, China Post Life Insurance has achieved rapid growth in recent years, becoming a veritable "bank-based" life insurance brother. In 2023, its premium income is 10986.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2016%, becoming the eighth insurance company with a premium scale of more than 100 billion yuan after the "old seven" of life insurance such as Chinese Life and Ping An Life.
Through the insurance of China Post Life, the wealth management business of PSBC has also achieved rapid development, which is in line with the direction of its retail banking transformation. According to last year's semi-annual report, in the first half of 2023, the Postal Savings Bank will pay 810 new premiums for long-term terms0.9 billion yuan, of which the income realized by ** China Post Life Insurance was 247.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 112%.
Therefore, it seems that the customer complaint, this pot should be borne by the Postal Savings Bank in the first place. Think of a company with total assets of more than 15 trillion yuan and more than 6 individual customersIf a big bank with 500 million yuan is not compliant and prudent in the distribution of insurance, how many people will be "deceived"?
Of course, the deeper level of product compliance, product training, etc., China Post Life's responsibility cannot be escaped.
On December 1, 2023, the fine disclosed by the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration showed that China Post Life Insurance had 9 major violations of laws and regulations and was fined 1.47 million yuan, and 4 relevant responsible persons were fined. The fine exposes a lot of problems, such as China Post Life's "selling insurance products with uncertain policy benefits through bancassurance channels, and some policyholders do not meet the age requirements in regulatory regulations and are not manually underwritten", "failure to truthfully provide training courseware information", and "imprudent bond investment".
What's even funnier is that in order to *** China Post Life Insurance actually provided a false complaint data report, but this did not escape the "keen eyes" of the regulator. In the same month as the above-mentioned punishment, China Post Life received a new fine after 14 days, fined 150,000 yuan, and the two relevant business executives were fined together.
Tens of billions of losses.
Whether it is a large number of complaints or a flood of fines, it reflects that the crazy expansion of China Post Life Insurance has a lot of hidden dangers, and a more direct indicator is to look at the surrender money.
According to the data, from 2019 to 2022, the surrender benefit of China Post Life was divided into 1236.8 billion yuan, 330.2 billion yuan, 125400 million yuan and 680.6 billion yuan, which has been high.
According to the solvency report for the fourth quarter of 2023, the top three products with the highest surrender amount of China Post Life are all products sold through the silver mail channel, among which, the annual cumulative surrender scale of China Post Surplus Wealth Plus C Both Insurance (Participating Type) is as high as 308.2 billion yuan.
Some people in the industry bluntly said that the annuity insurance and increased life insurance mainly sold by China Post Life Insurance are often regarded by consumers as a substitute for financial products in daily sales, with the characteristics of "light protection" and "heavy financial management"; For insurance companies, the business value rate is low, the capital occupation is seriously consumed, and they are facing greater maturity pressure and liquidity tests.
From the perspective of performance, in 2023, the net profit of China Post Life Insurance will be -1146.8 billion yuan, becoming the "loss king" among non-listed insurance companies, losing all the profits in the past nine years, and even having to post backwards.
China Post Life Insurance also gave some explanations, saying that the company's losses in 2023 were mainly affected by the discount rate of reserves and investment income that were lower than expected. Among them, the discount rate of reserves directly reduced the profit by 112$100 million, which was due to the impact of the new accounting standards.
However, the sharp drop in "spreads" caused by poor investment returns should not be underestimated. In 2023, the ** volatility will be large, and the investment ability shown by China Post Life Insurance is not optimistic, with an annual return on net assets of -6931%, return on investment 270%, comprehensive investment return of 301%, which is not only significantly lower than its average level in the past three years, but also the lowest level in the whole industry.
It can be said that the crazy expansion of China Post Life Insurance has reached a crossroads that urgently needs transformation.
References: 1"The performance of bank-based insurance companies has risen sharply, and the "first brother" China Post Life Insurance has lost more than 10 billion? , titanium**.
2."Huge loss of 11.4 billion! China Post Life has lost all profits since its establishment", Insurance Associated Press.