Zhong An teardown

Last week, Zhong An Online, China’s first online-only insurer, filed to raise $1.5B on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the back of some big numbers: 7.2B insurance policies sold, 492M customers served, and close to $500M in gross written premium in 2016.

There is a lot to learn from Zhong An’s IPO application, which offers a meaningful case study into insurance innovation in China today. While Zhong An has built both an efficient operation productizing innovative insurance offerings as well as a broad ecosystem to distribute its products built on China’s thriving Internet economy, it also faces challenges.

We took a deep dive into Zhong An’s IPO prospectus, analyzing its product portfolio, partnerships, and regulatory landscape. Here are some tidbits from the analysis:

While GWP from Zhong An’s flagship shipping return insurance more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, GWP from shipping return products fell on a year-over-year basis in 2016.

One of the most impressive facets of Zhong An’s business is its deep integration into China’s Internet economy. But Zhong An also relies heavily upon a select few of its ecosystem partners – 68.6% of GWP in 2016 were generated from sales on its top five partner platforms.

Read the full deep dive here.

“Insurance capital of the world”

Last week, Aetna announced it would move its HQ to New York, as “the company places greater emphasis on creating digital tools for people to manage their health care.”

At our Future of Fintech Conference, Travelers VP of Strategy Beth Maerz alluded to the challenge of attracting data science talent to Hartford. And according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people who work in the insurance industry in Hartford has fallen from more than 60,000 in 1990 to 37,000 people in 2017.

Our question to you is: will there be an “insurance capital of the world” in 10 years time and, if so, where will it be? (We’ll publish some responses next week).

Have a great weekend,

Matt
@mlcwong