The robot was hit and the compensation was 400,000 yuan. Is it more expensive than hitting a luxury car?

If a robot collides or causes damage, how should the compensation be handled? Since the beginning of 2026, property insurance companies have continued to make efforts in the embodied intelligence insurance sector.

In the view of the industry, as the commercialization of the embodied intelligence industry accelerates, the embodied intelligence insurance market is expected to become an important emerging growth area for the property insurance industry in the next three years.

Differentiated Layouts of Three Major Insurance Companies

Currently, the applications of embodied intelligent robots cover multiple fields such as industrial manufacturing, logistics and warehousing, and commercial services. The equipment is highly precise, with high operation and maintenance costs, and new types of risks occur frequently. Traditional property insurance products are difficult to meet their special protection needs.

The "Research Report on the Development of the Humanoid Robot Industry (2024)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in January 2025 predicts that from 2035 to 2040, humanoid robots will generally reach the Lv3 level, and the overall market scale of the whole machine is expected to reach 100 billion to 300 billion yuan.

According to the latest data released by market research institution QYResearch in March this year, the global sales of the embodied intelligence insurance market reached 150 million US dollars in 2025, and are expected to reach 711 million US dollars in 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.9% (2026 - 2032).

Eyeing this field, PICC Property and Casualty Company, CPIC Property Insurance Company, and Ping An Property Insurance Company have successively launched customized insurance products to protect commercial scenarios of embodied intelligence since 2025, trying to find breakthroughs in the scope of protection and insurance application methods.

A relevant person in charge of CPIC Property Insurance told China New Jingwei that in September 2025, its Ningbo branch launched the country's first exclusive insurance for humanoid robots, "Smart Protection". This product breaks through the limitations of traditional annual policies and supports insurance applications on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, providing risk protection throughout the entire chain of "production, sales, leasing, and use". The person in charge revealed that currently "Smart Protection" is mainly targeted at whole - machine manufacturers. CPIC Property Insurance has launched the nationwide promotion of this product, and a policy has been issued in Suzhou.

PICC Property and Casualty Company features a dual - track protection system of "body loss insurance + third - party liability insurance". A relevant person in charge of PICC Property and Casualty Company introduced that since 2025, the company has launched a special insurance solution for the whole process of humanoid robots moving from the laboratory to commercial use. It covers body losses caused by traditional disasters, human operation errors, electrical and network reasons, as well as third - party liabilities caused by accidents.

The person in charge gave an example that for the more than 470 humanoid robots in the first batch of a robot leasing platform in the Yangtze River Delta region insured by PICC Property and Casualty Company, if they are damaged due to collisions or broken transmission devices, each robot can receive a maximum compensation of nearly 400,000 yuan for repair costs.

Ping An Property Insurance has also extended its product coverage to the leasing field. At the beginning of January 2026, Ping An Property Insurance, in cooperation with Shanghai Electric Finance Leasing Co., Ltd. and others, issued an "insurance + leasing" policy for embodied intelligent robots, allocating the insurance premium into the rent to reduce the upfront one - time investment pressure on enterprises. This product breaks through the limitations of conventional hardware protection and includes comprehensive protection such as third - party liability, product quality liability, and information leakage liability. It uses AI algorithms to achieve dynamic pricing of risks and real - time risk control.

Facing Problems such as High Risks and Lack of Data

As an emerging type of science and technology insurance, the industry still faces many development bottlenecks.

A relevant person in charge of PICC Property and Casualty Company told China New Jingwei that compared with traditional enterprise property insurance, the risks of humanoid robots present new characteristics: First, the sources of risks are complex. In addition to natural disasters and hardware failures, they may also come from algorithm deviations and system vulnerabilities. Second, the definition of liability subjects is complex. Determining whether the accident liability lies with the hardware manufacturer, software developer, or user is more complicated than that of traditional equipment. Third, emerging risks such as network security, algorithm security, and information leakage cannot be covered by traditional enterprise property insurance.

Wang Guojun, a professor at the School of Insurance of the University of International Business and Economics, believes that humanoid robots face new types of systematic risks such as algorithm decision - making errors and network security hijacking, and there is no historical claim data. The technical routes are diverse, and the software is updated monthly. The core contradiction lies in the mismatch between "high risks, rapid iteration, and lack of data" and the requirements of "large numbers, stability, and quantifiability" for insurance.

Bai Wenxi, the chairman of Zhonghe Kunlun Asset Management Co., Ltd., pointed out that as the embodied intelligence scenarios continue to penetrate, professional insurance protection is expected to become an important growth point in the property insurance field. However, the industry still faces three core problems: First, there is a lack of risk identification and data, and traditional actuarial models are ineffective. Second, the liability boundaries are blurred, involving multiple parties such as algorithm developers, hardware manufacturers, and operators. Third, long - tail risks and systematic risks are superimposed. Robot clusters may experience "cascading failures", breaking the basis of the law of large numbers.

Regarding the issue of pricing, a relevant person in charge of PICC Property and Casualty Company said that the historical claim data is almost blank. Currently, PICC Property and Casualty Company's approach is "dynamic assessment" + "cross - border cooperation". On the one hand, it refers to the underwriting data of mature categories such as industrial robots and service robots, and dynamically improves the accuracy in combination with dimensions such as the safety level, operation scenarios, and maintenance costs of new robots. On the other hand, it deeply cooperates with robot manufacturers and jointly conducts "physical examinations" on robots with enterprises in the industrial chain, disassembling the risks into the "brain", "cerebellum", and "body" to improve the dynamic risk assessment system.

Wang Guojun believes that in the next step, insurance companies need to use means such as data co - construction, dynamic rates, modular clauses, and simulation + real - machine hybrid pricing to transform "uncertainty" into tradable "risk products".

To solve the industry problems of embodied intelligence insurance, Bai Wenxi suggests constructing a three - in - one solution of "data - ecosystem - regulation": establishing a sharing alliance at the data level, promoting the "insurance + service + technology" model at the ecosystem level, and establishing industry standards and compulsory insurance at the regulatory level. For pricing, use scenario - based grading in the short term and the UBI (Usage - Based Insurance) model in the medium and long term. The core is to shift from "loss compensation" to "risk reduction", making insurance change from a cost center to a value partner and achieving "risk co - governance".

The views in this article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Investment involves risks, and you should be cautious when entering the market. 

This article is from the WeChat official account “China New Jingwei” (ID: jwview), author: Li Ziman, published by 36Kr with authorization.