Interest in the insurance technology sector continues to heat up.
Founded in 2017, Mintbao (薄荷保) announced a new capital injection from Sequoia. It has positioned itself as an Internet insurance consulting platform since its founding, connecting customers and professional insurance consultants.
The initial business model was through an independently developed system, providing business channels to the insurance brokers. After one year of development, Mintbao further extended to the customer acquisition link last year. Conceived, according to its founder and CEO Jennifer Hu (胡天睿), as a portal for customers, it can identify the intended buyers through paying consultations and matching professional insurance brokers on the platform.
Traditional insurance organizations have been embracing the new era with technology and big data. The purchasing habits of the new generation of people have undergone tremendous changes, which push the traditional offline sales model to transform. Therefore, the innovative Internet insurance platform is an active sector in Fintech in recent years.
If focusing on the domestic market, most of the listed insurance companies strengthen the importance of technology and transformation in their semi-annual reports. The first listed Internet insurance company Zhongan (众安保险) also reported that in this accounting period, the number of online service users was 350 million; the number of insurance orders reached CNY 3.33 billion, with a total sales of about CNY 5.9 billion, with a growth ratio of 14.5%. Compared to the CNY 656 million loss in the same period last year, the net profit reached CNY 95 million.
This chart summarizes the financing activities of the insurance industry from 2015 to 2019. It's obvious that insurance technology companies are attracting increasing financing on a global scale. Among all the 98 events in 2019, there were 13 which valued more than USD100 million, including USD 375 million contributed by Oscar Health in the US. In terms of the investors, many well-known investment institutions are showing interest in the insurance technology sector, such as BAI Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund, ZhenFund, and IDG Capital.
Looking forward to the end of 2019, Asia will see tremendous growth in insurance technology investment. As of September 28, a total of 28 insurance companies in China received investment in 2019. The largest amount of financing was RMB 3.3 billion in Aeonlife (百年人寿), followed by the Shuidi Huzhu’s (水滴互助) C-round of CNY 1 billion. At the same time, Duobaoyu (多保鱼) has secured three investments in 9 months with the last being CNY 200 million on September 17, 2019.