What is the future development direction of the insurance industry? In this regard, we can think about it from four aspects: insurance essence, risk management, insurance innovation and insurance supervision.
As far as the nature of insurance is concerned. The essence of the insurance industry is to manage risks. The operation of the insurance industry is to manage risks by worrying about adverse changes such as death, health, disease, pension and wealth transferred by customers, so as to obtain reasonable profits. The essence of insurance determines the basic positioning of insurance industry and insurance products. From the development of China's insurance industry, it can be seen that the insurance industry, especially the life insurance industry, has begun to deviate from the essence of insurance, which has led to a series of problems and risks in the life insurance industry. The development of anything can't deviate from its essence, so the essence of returning to insurance at this stage is the internal demand of life insurance industry.
For insurance companies, this requires that their insurance products should not deviate from the fundamental direction of "guarantee", that the guarantee component should be dominant in the products, and that the guaranteed insurance products should be dominant in the insurance business structure. For the insured, this requires them to pay attention to the awareness of protection and not blindly follow the trend. But it needs a process, so we agree with the direction of "risk protection+moderate financial management" advocated by Vice President Chen Wenhui. Universal insurance and investment-linked insurance are not bad products in themselves, but excessive touting has led to chaos in the current market. I suggest that regulators formulate some guidelines on the appropriate sales ratio of guaranteed and investment products to regulate the healthy development of companies.
As far as risk management is concerned. Like the Basel Accord of banking, European insurance industry is developing towards solvency management based on risk assessment. By paying attention to the risk of each fund, we can understand the operational risk and its financial risk, and compare them from various levels, such as credit risk, asset risk, equity risk, longevity risk, property risk or injury risk, so as to evaluate the efficiency and overall risk of economic capital.
In view of the current international financial situation and the development of insurance market, we believe that the core of insurance company management lies in product pricing, liquidity, company operation and asset-liability management, and it is also the focus of risk management. In terms of product pricing, it is also important to consider relevant economic risks, such as investment, interest rate, inflation risk, credit default and surrender, which will have an important impact on product pricing. In terms of liquidity management, one of the biggest risks of insurance companies comes from liquidity, and the bankruptcy of most insurance companies comes from short-term liquidity tension rather than insolvency, which is particularly important for the management of policy invalidation and surrender. At the operational level, a key risk of life insurance comes from the customer's behavior, that is, will the customer surrender? Does the product itself promote, prohibit or limit this behavior? If we have a good product, a good price and a good credit rating, but customers can surrender at will and free of charge, this will increase the possibility of surrender and bring us risks, and with the spread of mass media and information channels, the potential risks brought by this situation to the business may be increasing. Finally, asset-debt matching. If those long-term assets and long-term debts cannot be well matched, it will obviously face greater interest rate risk, which will eventually harm the interests of shareholders and customers. Regulators are currently studying the introduction of the European SolvencyII system. I think this is the most important thing and we must be cautious. We should know that at present, most products in the life insurance industry are dividend-paying products with guarantees. SolvencyII is very rude in capital requirements for guaranteed products, and a little carelessness will impact the stability of the whole industry.
As far as insurance innovation is concerned. We should vigorously develop insurance innovation, which not only refers to the innovation of insurance products, but also includes the innovation of insurance management mode, insurance sales channels and insurance services. Judging from the development of life insurance in China, whether it is the innovation of marketing system marked by personal agents, product innovation marked by investment in dividend products, sales channel innovation marked by bank insurance or fund management system innovation marked by the establishment of insurance asset management companies, every major innovation in the insurance industry has brought great leap to the development of the industry and promoted the leap-forward development of the life insurance industry. Therefore, both the government, insurance companies and the public should take an encouraging and supporting attitude towards insurance innovation. Insurance companies should pay special attention to their main position in insurance innovation and firmly grasp the initiative in insurance innovation.
In the process of insurance innovation, insurance companies should pay attention to customer demand-oriented, and see the differences of customer demand. China's urban and rural development and the development of the eastern and western regions are characterized by "duality", and the life insurance needs of people from different regions and classes are characterized by multi-level, diversification and specialization, which poses challenges and requirements for China's insurance innovation. Only the insurance innovation that best understands the needs of customers and is widely accepted by consumers can be a successful and effective innovation. In addition, we should keep up with market changes, especially study the influence of macro-economy, interest rate changes, capital market environment, residents' income structure, social age structure and many other factors.
Finally, as far as insurance supervision is concerned. As a necessary supplement to social insurance, the positioning of commercial insurance is very important. There should be a clear division of labor and cooperation between the basic insurance guarantee function and the commercial insurance function in serving the public and society. Social insurance provides the most basic risk requirements such as insurance, medical care and old-age care, while commercial insurance is conducive to encouraging entrepreneurs to innovate, transferring risks, helping the society to save and invest, as a beneficial and necessary supplement to social insurance, and improving the overall welfare and social stability of society. If the social basic insurance undertakes commercial functions, it will lead to the country's long-term living beyond its means, and if the business undertakes too many social functions, it will also affect the enthusiasm and initiative of enterprises. After all, the operation of insurance enterprises is a modern enterprise behavior, aiming at obtaining reasonable income to meet the needs of shareholders.
Therefore, insurance supervision should reasonably locate the commercial insurance characteristics of insurance companies, take strengthening the ability of insurance companies' governance structure and preventing risks as the main functions of supervision, and grasp the appropriateness of insurance supervision. Too loose supervision will lose the effectiveness of supervision and cannot effectively control the risks of insurance management, while excessive supervision will inhibit the enthusiasm of insurance innovation and insurance operators, which is not conducive to the development of insurance market and insurance supervision. In addition, insurance supervision should also promote reasonable market competition, create a good competitive environment for the insurance industry, reduce unnecessary administrative examination and approval, reduce unnecessary intervention in insurance enterprises, and create a good external environment for insurance enterprises. Generally speaking, insurance supervision should be more managed in providing a fairer environment, providing a reasonable competitive environment, regulating the bad behavior of enterprises and avoiding excessive risk taking.
Although the insurance industry is facing difficulties at present, and some employees are even quite pessimistic about the development of the insurance industry, we still tend to think that it is still a problem in development and needs to be solved with a development perspective. The slowdown of 20 1 1 year gives the insurance industry a wake-up call and reflects some problems existing in the rapid development of China's insurance industry, which also provides an opportunity for insurance companies to rethink. I believe that after a period of growth slowdown, the insurance industry will definitely get more stable and quality development in the future.
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