Source: asiainsurancereview.com

High premiums, a lack of understanding of insurance and distrust are major barriers hindering the sale of insurance products in China despite the rapid growth of its online insurance sector.

Seeking to address these issues, Tencent’s insurance platform WeSure provides carefully selected and low-cost medical, accident, life, travel and auto insurance products which lowers the threshold for users to purchase insurance.

Unlike typical marketplaces, the platform works with just the top 15% of local and MNC firms in the insurance market based on over 10 criteria ranging from capital adequacy to service capabilities.

“By pre-selecting only the best underwriters and most competitive products, we help to lower the adoption barrier for what is probably one of the most complicated financial products that a normal consumer will come across,” said WeSure executive director and CEO Alan Lau in an interview with Asia Insurance Review on the occasion of WeSure’s second anniversary in December 2019.

He also said that the platform works closely with reinsurers like Gen Re and Hanover Re to assimilate best practices in product design and risk management into its offerings. In fact, 90% of products on WeSure’s platform now are co-designed by its in-house team along with insurers and reinsurers. “Through Tencent, we bring our intimate understanding of users into product design. We also take an obsessive user-centric approach and do extensive research before we launch each product,” said Mr Lau.

As a result, the platform launched several ‘first in market’ products including China’s first standalone cancer drug coverage priced at CNY1 ($0.14) per month to cover treatment that could cost CNY10,000 per month.