Hu Feng of Hetai Life Insurance: Accelerate digital transformation Life insurance has made greater contributions to the construction of pension finance

Reporter Chen Jingjing reports from Beijing

On December 12, 2023, the "Science and Technology Finance, Integrated Development - 2023 Competitive Finance Summit" organized by China Business News was held in Beijing.

At the meeting, Hu Feng, deputy general manager of Hetai Life Insurance Co., Ltd., said in a keynote speech: "The Central Financial Work Conference proposed to 'accelerate the construction of a financial power' and 'do a good job in science and technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance', which pointed out the direction for the innovation and development of the life insurance industry. The life insurance industry should not forget its original intention, accelerate digital transformation, greatly improve risk management capabilities, return to risk protection in a low-cost manner, promote the high-quality development of the industry, and make greater contributions to the five major articles such as pension finance. ”

The dynamics of the development of the life insurance industry have changed fundamentally

Hu Feng first talked about that insurance technology makes the life insurance industry more beautiful and more "volume".

In terms of becoming more beautiful, it is mainly manifested in three aspects, including insurtech has enabled insurance companies to shift their sales from traditional offline to online, and realized the integration of online and offline, and insurtechnology has enabled insurance companies to sell low-cost and high-frequency policies at low cost and across regions.

For example, as of the end of June 2023, 297 Huimin Insurance products have been put on sale across the country. Technology has enabled these insurance products to reach more low-income people beyond geography, and insurance technology has made it easy for personal pensions to cover all people.

Insurtech has promoted the life insurance industry to become more "volume", which is reflected in the volume of products, volume fees, and volume services.

"After InsurTech made pricing transparent, insurers have adopted an 'insurance + service' approach to differentiate themselves and find bright spots for sales. Models such as 'insurance + health', 'insurance + pension' and 'insurance + trust' are in the ascendant. Hetai Life is determined to be an explorer in the field of Internet insurance, actively embraces insurance technology, and continuously optimizes the chain of 'insurance + technology + policy services'. At present, the online security service rate of Hetai Life Insurance has reached 99.9%. Hu Feng said.

However, Hu Feng further said that the continuous use of insurance technology is ostensibly to make the life insurance industry more beautiful and "volume", but the logic behind it is that the progress of insurance technology has fundamentally changed the development momentum of the industry.

"In the past, the life insurance industry was in a stage of rapid development, and its main driving force was the rapid growth of GDP and per capita income, the rapid expansion of institutions and manpower, the institutional and policy dividends provided by regulation, and the sales opportunities brought by information asymmetry. In the current stage of pursuing high-quality development, the main driving force for the development of the industry is to provide insurance products and services that meet social expectations and the real needs of customers, an efficient business model, strong digital capabilities, a sales model that conforms to the trend of younger and online, and more transparent and simple insurance products. Hu Feng said.

Hu Feng believes that the fundamental factor for the fundamental change in the development momentum of the life insurance industry is the application of insurance technology and digital transformation. Digital transformation has great potential to promote the high-quality development of life insurance, and insurance companies can focus on three aspects: First, vigorously promote digital product development to truly achieve accurate product pricing and transparent customer returns. The second is to vigorously promote digital product marketing, encourage online and offline integration, and reduce marketing costs. The third is to vigorously promote digital internal management, realize the company's process reengineering, and reduce management costs.

Digital transformation takes a long time

Hu Feng pointed out that digital transformation is very urgent and the prospects are very bright, but the road is relatively long.

Hu Feng said: "Digital transformation is a systematic project, and the use of new technologies to improve efficiency is to build 'tangible work' with an 'invisible hand'. Insurance companies should stand at the height of enhancing the company's core competitiveness, attach importance to digital transformation, and do a good job in digital planning. It is necessary to change the organizational structure, adjust the assessment mechanism, establish digital thinking, and promote the implementation of digital projects. The launch of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence language model, this year has accelerated the pace of AI development. The development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) will further change the competitive landscape between industries, further change the competitive landscape between companies, and further expand the differences in work ability between people. ”

At the same time, Hu Feng pointed out that insurance companies should actively explore how to connect with the financial model, develop and use their own vertical model as soon as possible, and match the company and employees with an AI "superman" to solve various pain points in development.

However, digital transformation has led to an increase in operational risks for insurance companies, which has put forward new challenges and requirements for information security.

"The more advanced the technology, the higher the degree of informatization, and the more risks the company's systems are subjected to, the more important information security becomes. Recently, there have been some information security incidents that have attracted everyone's attention. These events tell us that there is no such thing as a 100% secure network, and that the network is vulnerable. Information security incidents such as network outages, hacker intrusions, customer information leakage, and data loss have a huge impact on the company and the industry. The company should attach great importance to it, increase investment, clarify responsibilities, and do a good job in information security. Hu Feng said.

It should be noted that digital transformation to achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing efficiency requires not only the efforts of companies, but also more policy support.

Hu Feng further pointed out that truly effective digital transformation, like truly effective innovation, must continue to promote the industry and companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Hu Feng said: "The life insurance industry should use digital transformation to improve its risk management capabilities, and shift from providing long-term savings products to providing risk management products for the society. The life insurance industry should have great ambitions and aspirations, return to security in a low-cost and high-efficiency manner, accumulate pensions for urban and rural residents over 60 years old based on supplementing the national old-age security system, and vigorously increase the proportion of commercial insurance in medical reimbursement based on supplementing the national medical security system, so as to make greater contributions to solving the future pension gap and solving the difficulty and high cost of medical treatment. We must realize that the development of supplementary pension insurance and supplementary medical insurance is highly affected by the basic pension and basic medical care system and national taxation policies. Fortunately, policymakers have seen the role of taxation in promoting the development of personal pension business, and relevant systems have been introduced. We expect that the support of taxation for personal pensions should better reflect fairness, reflect the universality of helping everyone establish pensions, and give full play to the positive role of the personal pension system in promoting consumption and improving the economic circulation mechanism. ”

(Editor: He Shasha Proofreader: Yan Jingning)