Can you even be "unwittingly signed up for insurance" when you scan a QR code to rent a shared bike? The unnoticed, unauthorized automatic insurance deductions are going to be effectively curbed.

Scanning a shared bike, claiming a coupon, tapping "free protection" — these operations that originally only take a few seconds may eventually result in an extra insurance policy that you barely noticed.

Worse still, some products are indeed free for the first time, but after you "claim for free", you may be charged for subsequent renewals; some pages hide insurance in processes such as code scanning, payment, and travel, and consumers do not realize that they have authorized the purchase until they see the bill.

One of the things internet insurance has long been best at is embedding insurance into various high-frequency scenarios.

Now, this business model may need to be redesigned.

According to media reports, regulatory authorities have recently solicited opinions from some institutions on further standardizing the operation of internet insurance, covering issues such as code-scanning hijacking, drainage without actual insurance demand, illegal free insurance giveaways, "conversion of free insurance to commercial insurance", silent renewal and non-perceived deduction.

It is worth noting that what has been disclosed so far is information in the stage of soliciting opinions and discussion, not the final formal regulatory rules that have been officially implemented.

However, the signal it sends out is already very clear:

The focus of competition in the next stage of internet insurance may no longer be who hides the entry deeper, but who can enable consumers to complete a purchase with full transparency.

Why is insurance increasingly easy to be "hidden" in daily life?

In the past, buying insurance was a very ceremonial thing.

You would find an insurance agent, learn about the product, fill in the information, sign and pay.

Later, the Internet shortened this process to a few minutes.

Then later, even the action of "specifically going to buy insurance" began to disappear.

When booking a flight ticket, you can buy aviation accident insurance by the way; when renting a car, you can buy travel protection; when buying a mobile phone online, you can buy screen breakage insurance; different forms of insurance products may also appear in food delivery, cycling, travel, payment, and membership services.

For insurance companies, this is a huge revolution in customer acquisition efficiency.

Because the most expensive part of traditional insurance sales is to find a person who is willing to listen to insurance introductions at the moment.

Internet platforms are different.

Platforms already have hundreds of millions of users, and they know clearly when a person is taking a flight, riding a bike, traveling, buying a mobile phone or applying for a certain service.

As a result, insurance can be accurately embedded into specific scenarios.

This is the so-called "scenario-based insurance".

There is nothing wrong with it in essence.

The problem arises in another step:

When insurance is embedded deeper and deeper into other consumption processes, do consumers actually know that they are buying insurance?

Once this boundary gets slightly blurred, the business model may completely go awry.

For example, a page tells you "claim free protection", the keyword consumers see is "free", but what the enterprise really cares about may be the paid conversion after the free period ends.

The first payment is 0 yuan, and the second month will be deducted automatically.

From a business perspective, this is called a conversion funnel.

From the consumer's perspective, it may turn into another problem:

When on earth did I agree to long-term payment?

What "free insurance" is really valuable for may not be the first order

This is also why "free insurance giveaway" has always been a very attractive customer acquisition tool.

Suppose a platform directly sells an insurance product that costs dozens of yuan per month to users, most people may not even click to view it.

But if it is replaced with:

"Claim 30 days of free protection."

The psychological threshold drops immediately.

Enterprises first pull users into insurance products at a very low or even zero price, and then try to convert them into long-term paying customers.

This is not unfamiliar from the perspective of Internet business models.

Video memberships have free trials, software has experience periods, e-commerce has new user discounts, and insurance can also be designed as experience-based products.

The real problem is not "free" itself, but what happens after the free period.

If the user is very clear that:

The first stage is free of charge;

Charges will start from a certain date;

How much will be charged each month;

How to cancel the subscription;

Whether auto-renewal is enabled.

Then consumers are at least making choices with full awareness.

What really tends to cause disputes is another kind of design:

The word "free" is made very large, while the auto-renewal clause is written in very small font;

The claim button is very eye-catching, but the cancellation entry is hidden very deep;

Consumers just want to finish scanning the code, ride a bike or make a payment, but insurance is bundled in the process.

As a result, a design that was originally used to lower the threshold for buying insurance may evolve into a way to increase conversion rate by taking advantage of information asymmetry.

This is also a particularly noteworthy point in this round of regulatory information:

The boundary between "free insurance giveaway" and "conversion from free insurance to commercial insurance" is being re-examined.

The so-called "conversion from free insurance to commercial insurance" simply means that free insurance is given away at the front end, and then converted into a commercial paid product at the back end.

Whether this model can be implemented obviously does not only depend on whether the first stage is free, but also whether the subsequent commercial charges have obtained real and clear authorization from consumers.

Why was "non-perceived" once a profitable business?

The Internet industry has been pursuing one thing for the past decade or more:

Reducing operation steps.

It is best to log in without perception, pay without perception, renew without perception, and switch services without perception.

Every button removed may reduce part of user churn.

Assuming 100 people reach the payment page, if every additional confirmation step causes 10 people to churn, the business team will naturally want to minimize the number of confirmation steps.

This logic is easy to understand when applied to ordinary Internet products.

However, financial products have a particular feature:

Some steps themselves are part of consumer rights and interests.

For example, confirming the price.

Confirming the risks.

Confirming the authorization.

Confirming the renewal.

These steps may be "friction costs" for Internet product managers; but for consumers, they are very important processes to obtain full information.

This is especially true for insurance.

It is not a cup of coffee, nor a movie ticket.

What consumers actually buy is a contractual relationship, which includes a large amount of information such as coverage scope, exemption clauses, payment cycle, and renewal conditions.

If you blindly pursue "no perception", a paradox will eventually arise:

Operations do become more and more convenient, but consumers are increasingly unclear about what they have bought.

Therefore, the regulatory signal released this time essentially targets not just a deduction button, but a deeper problem in the Internet financial industry:

Can efficiency be built on the basis of weakening consumers' awareness of relevant information?

The answer is becoming clearer and clearer.

The most valuable entry for internet insurance will change in the future

The impact of this incident on insurance companies and internet platforms may be greater than it appears on the surface.

In the past, internet insurance attached great importance to two metrics:

Traffic and conversion rate.

Where there are more users, insurance entries are placed there.

Whichever page has a higher conversion rate will be continuously optimized.

As a result, shared mobility, e-commerce, travel, payment and even various QR codes may become insurance channels.

However, if the requirements for links such as authorization, renewal, and conversion from free insurance to commercial insurance become increasingly clear in the future, the conversion obtained simply by "hiding the entry deep" will be more and more unsustainable.

Enterprises need to answer another question:

Does this user have real insurance demand?

For example, a person who is preparing for an overseas trip does need travel insurance.

A person who has just bought a new energy vehicle may be willing to learn about auto insurance.

A person who buys high-priced electronic products may also actively compare extended warranties or accident protection plans.

The common point of these scenarios is that the insurance demand itself can be understood by consumers.

The truly valuable internet insurance does not let users "buy it unconsciously", but provides a sufficiently simple solution exactly when consumers realize the risks.

Therefore, the competition of internet insurance in the future will gradually shift from "competition for traffic entries" to "competition for demand scenarios".

It seems that there is only a difference of two words, but the underlying business logic is completely different.

The former cares about:

Where can we find the largest number of people?

The latter cares about:

At what moment do people need insurance the most?

Platforms may lose some conversion rate, but gain something more valuable

For platforms, a clearer authorization mechanism may mean a very realistic result in the short term:

The conversion rate will decline.

The process that was originally completed in one step may now require one more confirmation;

The auto-renewal that was originally enabled by default requires active selection from users;

Users who were originally attracted by the word "free" may exit directly after seeing the subsequent price.

All these changes will increase the so-called "friction".

But if we look at it in the long run, things may not necessarily be bad.

Insurance is a business that relies extremely heavily on trust.

A non-perceived deduction of dozens of yuan may contribute a premium, but if consumers later find out that they have no idea when they bought the insurance, what is lost may not only be an insurance policy, but also the trust in the platform.

Especially for financial products, factors such as "whether it is easy to cancel", "whether the deduction is clear" and "whether there is hidden auto-renewal" are increasingly becoming important indicators for users to judge whether a platform is reliable.

This means that enterprises need to recalculate an account:

Is a higher one-time conversion rate more important, or a long-term retained customer more important?

From this perspective, the changes that internet insurance is undergoing are actually very similar to the changes that have taken place in video memberships, e-commerce memberships, and software subscriptions over the past few years.

All subscription-based business models will eventually encounter the same problem:

Auto-renewal can increase revenue, but it cannot replace real demand.

If a product can only continue to charge by relying on consumers forgetting to cancel, then its business model itself has hidden risks.

What ordinary people really need to pay attention to is not "1 million yuan of protection"

For consumers, this change also reminds people of a very practical thing.

In the future, when you see products marked with "0-yuan protection", "free claim", "get it by scanning the code" and similar descriptions online, do not only look at the protection amount at first glance.

"Up to 1 million yuan of protection" is certainly very eye-catching.

But what you really need to look for are several other pieces of information:

Until when is the first free period valid?

How much will be charged after the free period ends?

Is auto-renewal enabled?

Where will the money be deducted from?

Where is the cancellation entry?

What exactly is the coverage scope?

Because the largest number on the insurance page is usually the sum insured, but the factor that actually affects the balance of your bank card may be hidden in smaller text.

Of course, we cannot regard all internet insurance as "tricks" because of this.

Scenario-based insurance itself has greatly reduced the purchase cost of many insurance products, and also made it possible for some small-sum and short-term insurance products that used to have excessively high sales costs to exist.

What the regulation really needs to solve is not to make internet insurance return to the era of tedious procedures.

Instead, it is to redraw the line between "convenience" and "full awareness".

An ideal state should be:

The purchase process is simple enough, but consumers know clearly that they have made a purchase;

The renewal process is convenient enough, but consumers have clearly given their consent;

Insurance can be embedded in scenarios, but the purchase behavior cannot be hidden.

This is actually a transformation that the entire Internet business is undergoing.

In the past, many platforms believed that:

The shorter the process, the better.

But financial consumption is telling the market:

Some buttons cannot be omitted, some reminders cannot be hidden, and some confirmations are better to be as clear as possible.

When QR code scanning, pop-ups, membership services and insurance have been deeply intertwined, what internet insurance really needs to compete for may no longer be just the entry with the highest click-through rate.

Instead, it is whether consumers are still willing to trust you after clicking.

This article is from the WeChat official account "BT Finance", written by Shu Yan, and published by 36Kr with authorization.