Liu Yifei endorses Ant Insurance: Young people are also starting to buy insurance.

On October 10, the topic "#Liu Yifei Endorses Ant Insurance#" topped the Weibo trending list, sparking heated discussions among netizens.

As an Internet insurance preferred platform under Ant Group, Ant Insurance has been low-key in recent years. Now, it has high-profilely launched its first brand spokesperson. Why is it Liu Yifei?

In the past two years, "A Dream of Splendor", "Meet Yourself", and "The Story of the Rose" have been huge successes, making Liu Yifei, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years, popular again. Her fan base spans from the post-70s to the post-00s. On social platforms, "Every Liu Yifei" has become a nickname among girls. Liu Yifei's popularity among the public has soared.

Ant Insurance responded that Liu Yifei's independent, professional, and clear-headed image is very in line with Ant Insurance's service concept. It hopes to upgrade the Ant Insurance brand through the brand spokesperson and at the same time make more people aware of insurance and Ant Insurance.

Liu Yifei said in an interview that endorsing insurance is a very meaningful thing. "Insurance can provide people with a sense of security, just like an umbrella. You may not feel it usually, but it is important to have an umbrella to open for you when it rains."

One is a top star with a "clear-headed" image, and the other is a national-level Internet insurance platform. Behind the equal "status" of the two is, first of all, the matching of user groups: Data from the Ant Insurance platform shows that users born after the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s account for more than 80% of its platform. Data from Jumei Engine shows that among Liu Yifei's fans, those born after 1995 account for the highest proportion, reaching 32%, followed by those born after 1985, accounting for 30%.

Secondly, when the first batch of post-95s are also about to enter the life stage of 30, contemporary young people have already started to buy insurance for themselves and their families early. This endorsement between Liu Yifei and Ant Insurance has keenly caught this trend.

01 Young People Are Starting to Buy Insurance

Jiang Yang, a 35-year-old Internet practitioner, as a middle-aged person with "an elderly mother in her 70s and a 3-year-old child", he has to consider many "what if" situations - what if he is laid off and his income is interrupted, what if both parents fall ill, what if there is an accident at home...

After careful consideration and comparison, Jiang Yang bought a children's medical insurance for his child and an elderly cancer insurance for his parents on Ant Insurance in Alipay. After thinking for a while, he also arranged a pet insurance for the family cat.

After a series of operations, Jiang Yang felt a lot more at ease. This sense of ease comes both from having insurance as a safety net and from having done all the efforts he should have made.

Jiang Yang represents the widespread anxiety of the current pillar group. At the beginning of 2018, an article "A Beijing Middle-aged Man Under the Flu" went viral on WeChat Moments, greatly stimulating the sense of crisis among young and middle-aged people with elderly parents and young children. Half a year later, the movie "Dying to Survive" was released, which directly triggered a buying spree for medical insurance.

When "A Beijing Middle-aged Man Under the Flu" went viral on the Internet, Ant Insurance's Good Medical Insurance Million Medical Insurance had just been launched for a few months. For a 30-year-old young person, the annual premium for Good Medical Insurance Million Medical Insurance is only more than 300 yuan. With the extreme cost performance and the catalysis of "A Beijing Middle-aged Man Under the Flu", that February became the first insurance application peak in the history of Good Medical Insurance. Half a year later, "Dying to Survive" became a hit. Coincidentally, Good Medical Insurance launched the industry's first "Guaranteed Renewal for Six Years" version. Under the joint effect of internal and external factors, Good Medical Insurance became popular. With the launch of the monthly installment payment function, by the end of 2018, the number of users of Good Medical Insurance directly exceeded 10 million.

Wang Nian, a post-95s, was touched by a trending topic. In October 2022, when Wang Nian was browsing Weibo, she saw the trending topic "#A Post-95s Guy with Leukemia Received 88 Claims in 2 Years#". She thought that several indicators in her physical examination were abnormal, and she already had mild fatty liver and superficial gastritis. Thinking about the millions of mortgage on her shoulders, she felt the need to hedge the risk. After some research, she placed an order for the Good Medical Insurance Long-Term Medical Insurance on Ant Insurance and bought a peace of mind with an annual premium of three or four hundred yuan.

This may also be the mentality of many young people. The "2024 Insights Report on the Awareness Trend of Post-95s' Insurance" shows that 80% of the interviewed post-95s choose to add health insurance in addition to medical insurance, and 30% of the post-95s will choose to buy commercial insurance for their parents. Data from the Ant Insurance platform shows that one-third of users will also buy insurance for their families while insuring themselves.

Xiao Jing insured her parents with health insurance when she was 28 years old. Unexpectedly, it came in handy a year later: Her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In order to accompany her mother to see a doctor with full attention, Xiao Jing resigned and became a "full-time child". After more than two years of fighting cancer, she made 36 claims for her mother, totaling 820,000 yuan.

02 From Being Sold Insurance to Buying Insurance Actively

Some research shows that the average age of insurance policyholders of traditional insurance companies in China is 45 years old, mainly customers around 40 years old. After the emergence of Internet insurance, the awareness of protection among young people has increased, and the channels to access and purchase insurance have become more and simpler. People like Jiang Yang, Wang Nian, and Xiao Jing, who are born after 1985 and 1995, are the main insurance policyholders on the Ant Insurance platform. The Internet has gathered small and scattered protection needs, allowing the insurance awareness of young insurance policyholders to grow rapidly and the user structure of the insurance industry to gradually become younger.

At the same time, the insurance consumption habits of the younger generation of insurance policyholders are also completely different from the previous generation. It can be said that most of the commercial insurance of the post-60s and post-70s was successfully traded through offline agent sales. However, most of the younger generation of insurance policyholders, especially those who buy insurance through the Internet, initiate and purchase it actively.

Whether on the Ant Insurance platform or on social media, consumers' willingness to actively search for insurance is getting stronger. The search for the keyword "insurance" on social platforms has been increasing exponentially for several consecutive years. For example, on the Ant Insurance platform, the largest search terms are auto insurance and medical insurance, which means that more and more users are actively searching for and buying insurance.

For insurance, a complex decision-making commodity, this generation of netizens has used Internet tools to form their own closed-loop strategy: They usually go to social platforms to find relevant products or strategies, compare and study by themselves, supplemented by some experiences or evaluations of friends around them, and then place an order and purchase on a professional platform.

Before buying insurance, Jiang Yang studied on Xiaohongshu and Zhihu for two or three days. On various platforms, various experts will post various strategies for buying insurance, including product comparisons, insurance company introductions, pit-avoidance guides, and claim settlement manuals, everything is available. On the basis of understanding the basic information of the products, he can also take a look at the real evaluations or claim settlement experiences of the purchasers.

Jiang Yang has only two requirements: First, the cost performance should be high, using a small amount of money to do big things. He only considers medical insurance, and critical illness and life insurance are not considered at this stage. Second, he hopes to buy it directly on the Internet, so that he can take the initiative and not be passively recommended by a broker. After repeated research, Jiang Yang returned to Alipay to complete the insurance application.

Wang Nian also compared and studied by herself after reading that trending topic, and then insured the "Good Medical Insurance" long-term medical insurance underwritten by PICC Health on Alipay.

Jiang Yang and Wang Nian are not isolated cases. Due to the high cost performance, convenient insurance application, and online claim settlement, more and more young people are starting to buy insurance online. And insurance companies have also seen this trend and are paying more and more attention to operating on Internet platforms to gain new business increments.

03 An Increasingly Complete Internet Insurance Experience

With the joint efforts of insurance companies and Internet platforms, the experience of buying insurance on Internet platforms has indeed become more and more transparent and perfect.

In addition to the convenience of purchase, platforms like Ant Insurance have also begun to provide insurance plan planning and online claim settlement services. However, the Internet relies more on technical solutions rather than manpower.

In April last year, Ant Insurance launched the intelligent insurance configuration function "Worry-Free Configuration". After Jiang Yang entered information such as age, budget, and region, "Worry-Free Configuration" output a basic configuration plan for him including medical insurance, critical illness insurance, accident insurance, and life insurance. "If you don't know anything about insurance and are too lazy to learn new knowledge, then this is the most worry-free option," Jiang Yang said.

Wang Nian values the "Peace of Mind Claim Settlement" service of Ant Insurance more. "I hope that when there is a problem with the claim settlement, there will be a trustworthy, professional person who can help communicate. I don't ask for favoritism, but it must be objective and fair."

The positioning of the Ant Insurance platform has well alleviated Wang Nian's concerns.

On the one hand, "Peace of Mind Claim Settlement" can achieve full-process claim assistance. The AI + human customer service provides full-process guidance. Different types of insurance have claim settlement time limits. For example, the claim settlement time limits for outpatient insurance and medical insurance are 2 days and 4 days respectively. On the other hand, Ant has the "Ant Mediation Studio" authorized by the Zhejiang Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission Mediation Committee. If the claim settlement dispute between the user and the insurance company is really difficult to clarify, both the Ant Insurance platform and the mediation studio can provide claim settlement mediation services.

Such a service system makes the Internet insurance platform no longer just a sales channel in the eyes of insurance companies and users, but truly carries the entire insurance service full-link. Coupled with consumer protection actions such as traceable management of insurance applications, it also makes more and more people feel at ease to buy insurance on the Internet. Technology and platforms can eliminate the asymmetry of professional information, which is very suitable for complex financial products like insurance.