The COVID-19 pandemic has unexpectedly raised the sense of urgency in insurance purchase in China, paving the way for industry players to embrace notably ‘half-ready’ users through curated portfolio and user cultivation backed by technology, according to Alan Lau, CEO of Tencent WeSure.
Educating the largely under-insured population, building trust among users, and employing technology for accurate pricing are thus the three thrusts to gain an edge in China’s vast yet less penetrated insurance market, Lau addressed a high-profile webinar on innovative insurance practices in China on Tuesday.
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The event held online this year due to the novel coronavirus was organized by The Digital Insurer, a trade group focused on accelerating the digital transformation of insurance. Lau was joined by industry peers from ZA Tech Global, Ping An Cloud Accelerator, as well as consultancy Oliver Wyman via a virtual panel discussion, where panelists elaborated on a wide range of topics from China’s ecosystem-driven insurance landscape to the role of technology.
“People often say that insurance is important but not urgent. But the pandemic did create quite a large group of what I would call ‘half-ready’ users, whose risk appetite or sensitivity to risk have grown but aren’t quite ready to buy,” Lau said, citing the doubling of WeSure’s quarter-on-quarter revenue during the height of the outbreak in China.
The outbreak confirms the notion that a major public health event could, to some extent, stimulate demand for insurance. With the lockdown of Wuhan on Jan 23 at the height of the outbreak, demand for insurance saw rapid explosion as newly confirmed COVID-19 cases skyrocketed. With the development of the contagion, the number of total newly-added policy holders, the number of visits to WeSure’s mini program site-a critical indicator gauging prospective insurance needs, as well as annualized health insurance premium have all expanded, meanwhile registering substantial jump compared with same period in 2019.
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