Securities Times reporter Deng Xiongying
The life insurance industry is in a period of deep adjustment, and the bancassurance channel has become the main force for growth. The newly disclosed semi-annual reports of listed insurance companies show that the transformation of the life insurance business of various companies has been uneven, but boosting the diversified channels, mainly the bancassurance channel, has become the common choice of many listed insurance companies.
Taking Taibao Life as an example, from 2020 to 2021, the bancassurance channels of Taibao Life will achieve premium income of 2.305 billion yuan and 7.457 billion yuan respectively. In the first half of this year, the bancassurance channel has become the main driving force for the growth of CPIC Life’s new orders. In the first half of the year, the insurance business income was 17.828 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 876.3%, of which the new insurance business was 16.838 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1125.5%.
In China Life, the bancassurance channel has also achieved continuous growth in scale and value, and the importance of the channel has continued to increase. In the first half of this year, the total premiums of the bancassurance channel reached 42.609 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.7%; in the same period, the total premiums of the individual insurance segment were 352.487 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.1%.
The scale support effect of Xinhua Insurance’s bancassurance channel is also very obvious. In the first half of this year, the premium income of Xinhua Insurance’s bancassurance channel was 31.195 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.8%; the premium income of the individual insurance channel decreased by 0.5% year-on-year.
The development of bancassurance channels can be described as twists and turns, including a period of rapid development, a period of barbaric growth, and a period of low tide. From 2012 to 2013, in order to promote the standardized development of the bancassurance market, the regulatory authorities issued a series of measures. In 2016, a series of policies further promoted insurance companies to adjust their business structure, reduce the stock size of short- and medium-term wealth management insurance, and actively develop long-term protection products. During this period, bancassurance products with short-term wealth management as the main feature shrunk, and the market share of bancassurance channels declined rapidly.
In the past two years, when the individual insurance channel has transformed into the deep-water area, the “new bancassurance” model featuring strategic synergy and value-driven has gradually emerged. The listed life insurance company, which is the wind vane of the life insurance industry, has carried out many explorations in increasing the development of the bancassurance channel and exploring the new value of the bancassurance channel.
For example, Ping An of China has built a new bancassurance model based on the synergy advantages of the group, and combined the resource advantages of Ping An Bank and Ping An Life Insurance to provide a full range of asset allocation planning and one-stop comprehensive financial solutions. Currently, the new bancassurance team has more than 800 people.
Regarding the rapidly developing bancassurance channel, Cai Qiang, general manager (CEO) of CPIC Life, said at the 2022 interim results conference that after nearly 10 years of development, the bancassurance ecosystem is completely different from 10 years ago: from Looking at the overseas development trend, the banking channel accounts for half of the country, and I believe this is the same development trend in China. Now banks are more focused on customer needs than just product sales, but also on long-term services and brands. In addition, under the same regulatory system and compliance model, the bancassurance channel is one of the main strategic paths for the company’s two-wheel drive in the future.
There is no good or bad channel itself. The rise of new bancassurance is not only a countermeasure for insurance companies to deal with the in-depth adjustment of the life insurance industry and enrich the diversified channels, but also the only way for value return and channel transformation under the guidance of customer demand. Haitong Securities believes that looking forward to the future development of the bancassurance channel, the external should break through the existing model, seek an integrated bancassurance cooperation model, and achieve a “win-win” effective development, while the internal should pursue deep cultivation and diversified product development.
(Editor: Wei Lu)
Keywords: