Library: McKinsey – How the Asian insurance market is adapting to the future

China is focusing on cost structures

In this episode of McKinsey on Insurance, a podcast featuring discussions of trends, disruptions, and strategies reshaping the insurance industry, Bernhard Kotanko, a McKinsey senior partner, convenes a panel of fellow McKinsey partners Charlene Wu and Sumit Popli for a wide-ranging discussion of the Asian insurance market.

From the outlook for China and Southeast Asia to new commentary on the opportunities specific to Japan and India, the conversation focuses on ways to capture growth and evade foreseeable challenges.

In China, change brings opportunity

Bernhard Kotanko: We will focus today’s discussion on life and health partly because in Asia–Pacific, that is still by far the largest area of insurance. We also want to build on a recent McKinsey report on the global life insurance agenda. Charlene, can you start us off with perspectives on China?

Charlene Wu: Thanks, Bernhard. I think the China insurance market, especially the life insurance market, experienced the most difficult couple of years in the past two years. After a one-and-a- half-year transformation, the market is starting to stabilise, and finally, in the first half of 2022, we’ve started to see positive 3 percent growth.

In past years, the growth rate in China was in the double digits, but a couple of things have changed. To start, selling insurance products today requires integrated knowledge of wealth management and insurance protection. Second, the cost model became very important, as did the cost structure of different life insurance companies. We are starting to get into the same mode Europe was in maybe 10 years ago, after the financial crisis, when the market was really starting to focus on the cost structure, because the zero cost of growth will never come back again.

It’s also very important for life insurance companies in China to identify new opportunities, such as the wealth management market. China has developed the second-largest wealth management market, just behind the United States. Another opportunity will probably come around the pension market. China just opened the door to individual pension accounts—known as the third pillar in China—which is a quite good regulatory incentive for the whole market to capture new opportunities.

China’s life insurance companies are also focusing on transformation of the whole agency model by both moving to a high-end, advisory-based agency business model and by transforming the branch structure. In the past, it was usually three-layer or five-layer different branch models. Simplifying these operational models is a key topic.

We see big challenges ahead of us. For example, after China introduced what we call the C-ROSS [China Risk-Oriented Solvency System] in the China market, the pressure on small and medium-size insurance companies to be solvent will be huge. We expect the market, in the next three to five years, to experience a large integration. Who will lead in the integration in the China market? Who can really win the market in the future? It’s actually a very interesting topic going forward.

One final note on China’s health insurance market. In China, health ecosystems and senior care ecosystems are two very important trends for the life insurance market going forward. Health insurance is actually the only segment still keeping two-digit growth even in the toughest years. We foresee rising demand for health insurance products and for health coverage, including future senior care, in the Chinese market.

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