Our reporter Su Xiangyi trainee reporter Yang Xiaohan
As of May 12, 85 property insurance companies have announced80sarcadegamesFirst quarter solvency report.
According to the data disclosed by the China Insurance Industry Association, of the 85 property insurance companies that have disclosed solvency reports, 54 are profitable, accounting for 63%.80sarcadegames.5%, with a total profit of 16180sarcadegames74 million yuan; 31 companies lost money, accounting for 36.5 percent, with a total loss of about 783 million yuan.
Fishery mutual help, everyone property insurance, BYD property insurance and other three insurance companies disclosed the first quarterly solvency report for the first time this year, incomparable caliber data. Excluding the above three insurance companies, the 82 insurance companies with a comparable caliber achieved a total net profit of 15.471 billion yuan, down about 8.6 per cent from the same period last year.
In response, Li Wenzhong, former deputy director of the Insurance Department of the Capital University of Economics and Economics and deputy director of the Rural Insurance Research Institute, told the Securities Daily that the decline in the net profit of property insurance companies in the first quarter may be affected by three major factors.80sarcadegamesFirst, the A-share market fluctuated in the first quarter, while the market interest rate continued to fall, which brought challenges to the investment management of property insurance companies and affected profits; second, the market competition intensified day by day, resulting in a decline in underwriting profits, thus affecting the company's profitability; third, after the implementation of the New Financial Instruments Standard, some fluctuations in the value of financial assets are reflected in the profit and loss of changes in the fair value of the company in the current period, resulting in a decline in investment income compared with the same period last year.
From the perspective of the industry pattern, the profitability of the head property insurance company is still strong. In the first quarter, PICC property insurance, Ping an property insurance, PICC property insurance, Guoshou property insurance and Dinghe property insurance ranked among the top five in net profit, with net profits of 7.351 billion yuan, 3.814 billion yuan, 1.933 billion yuan, 850 million yuan and 285 million yuan respectively.
What is particularly remarkable is that in the first quarter, the "old three" property insurance companies (PICC, Ping an and PICC) made a total net profit of 13.098 billion yuan, accounting for 81 per cent of the net profit of 54 profit insurance companies.
Among the loss-making property insurance companies, most of the losses are no more than 100 million yuan, among which the loss of Guoren property insurance is the highest, about 110 million yuan.
Li Wenzhong said that for small and medium-sized insurance enterprises, in order to seek breakthroughs in the market and turn losses into profits, first of all, they need to change their business ideas, stop pursuing market scale, implement differentiation strategies, and attach importance to giving full play to their advantages in market segments; secondly, it is necessary to speed up the development and application of insurance science and technology to improve the efficiency of operation and management. Finally, insurance companies need to strengthen cooperation and make full use of external forces to achieve win-win development.
Underwriting and investment together constitute the net profit of the property insurance company. Among them, the comprehensive cost rate is the core index to measure the operating status of the underwriting side of the property insurance company, which reflects the profitability of the underwriting side of the property insurance company. The lower the comprehensive cost rate is, the stronger the profitability of the underwriting side of the company is. The comprehensive cost rate is higher than 100%, which means that it has lost money in the underwriting business.
According to the first-quarter solvency report, excluding one insurance company that is not applicable, 49 property insurance companies have a comprehensive cost rate of more than 100%, accounting for about 58%.
GE Yuxiang, an analyst at Soochow Securities, told the Securities Daily that disasters such as low temperature, rain, snow and freezing, and the growth of traffic travel have brought challenges to the underwriting business. "Natural disasters drag down the performance of the compensation rate; in 2024, the comprehensive compensation rate of the industry car insurance is high at the beginning of the year, and the new energy car insurance business has brought compensation pressure to all operators."
Li Wenzhong believes that there are two main reasons for the increase in the comprehensive cost rate of property insurance companies in recent years: first, the market competition has become increasingly fierce, and the cost of selling insurance products has increased; second, the average premium per vehicle has dropped after the comprehensive reform of vehicle insurance, and the compensation cost of new energy car insurance has increased significantly.
Relatively speaking, the comprehensive cost rates of the "old three" performed well. In the first quarter of this year, the comprehensive cost rates of PICC property insurance, Ping an property insurance and PICC property insurance were 96.15%, 98.10% and 97.50% respectively, with an average of 97.25%.
Li Wenzhong said: in order to reduce the comprehensive cost rate in the future, insurance companies need to start from two aspects: first, to reduce the comprehensive expense rate, improve the efficiency of management and marketing, and at the same time strictly abide by the "integration of newspaper and bank" rules to avoid vicious competition; the second is to give full play to their own advantages, adjust the structure of underwriting business, reduce high compensation business, and increase low compensation business, especially to speed up the development of non-car insurance business.