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With the help of developed social media, self-media with low threshold and high openness has become the main battlefield for many industry marketers to expand their business, and the insurance industry is no exception. However, driven by high commissions, unlicensed operations, misleading sales and other behaviors that harm the legitimate rights and interests of consumers have followed, laying a lot of hidden dangers for the sustainable and healthy development of the entire insurance industry.

On August 22, a Beijing Business Daily reporter learned that the Financial Regulatory Administration's Property Insurance Supervision Department recently issued a "Notice on Further Regulating Internet Insurance Business Related Matters" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), directly pointing out that Internet self-media violated regulations in promoting and selling insurance products. What are the tricks and risks of self-media selling insurance? How can consumers distinguish the "real and fake" service personnel in front of them?

Crack down on self-media "hanging on" behavior

On August 22, the Financial Supervision Administration issued a "Notice Letter" stating that recently, the media reported that a certain Internet self-media had violated regulations by "hanging" business qualifications and personnel professional registration to promote and sell Internet insurance products, causing confusion and misleading insurance consumers. At the same time, the regulatory authorities found that some insurance professional intermediaries and individual agents violated regulations by promoting and selling non-insurance financial products through the Internet.

The self-media described in the "Notice" "affiliated" sales of Internet insurance products was reported in detail by Beijing Business Daily in the article "Uncovering the Chaos of Self-media Insurance Sales: Inducing Policyholders to Lie, Qualifications and Licenses Like a Fog" published on June 27. According to the reporter's investigation, Meng from Shenzhen Yunshi Internet Information Technology Co., Ltd. affiliated his qualifications with the Guangzhou Sales Department of Baotong Insurance Agency Co., Ltd. to sell insurance products. During the sales process, Meng not only induced policyholders to use false addresses to insure, but even the intermediary service agent shown on the insurance policy was not Meng, but someone else.

Selling insurance in this way is very misleading for consumers to understand and purchase insurance, and is not conducive to the healthy and orderly development of the insurance industry. Li Wenzhong, deputy director of the Rural Insurance Research Institute of Capital University of Economics and Business, said that unqualified self-media "hanging" to sell insurance poses a variety of potential risks to insurance consumers. These include the risk of being misled. These self-media may exaggerate the protection and benefits of insurance products, misleading consumers to buy insurance products that do not meet their needs. Fund security risks. Such self-media may lack sufficient risk control and fund security measures. Consumers who purchase insurance through these channels face the risk of financial loss. There is also the risk of information leakage. Self-media will collect consumers' personal information in the process of selling insurance. The lack of security management technical measures can easily lead to the leakage of consumers' personal information.

The regulatory authorities have strengthened supervision and inspection of such illegal and irregular behaviors, and have severely investigated and punished the relevant institutions, personnel and the affiliated insurance institutions in accordance with the law. The "Reminder Letter" mentioned that the behavior of institutions and personnel "affiliating" without qualifications will be severely cracked down. Institutions or personnel that have not obtained business licenses and other qualifications are not allowed to "affiliate" with insurance institutions or register for practice in such institutions, and conduct related Internet insurance business in violation of regulations.

The regulator also stressed the "red line" of illegal sales of non-insurance financial products. The "Notice" pointed out that insurance institutions and their practitioners must not illegally promote or sell non-insurance financial products through the Internet. Partner institutions that provide Internet insurance marketing and promotion services to insurance institutions should strictly isolate themselves from the promotion or sales of other products and services, and remind consumers to distinguish between different responsible entities in a conspicuous location.

We-media chaos is hard to guard against

An insurance agent told Beijing Business Daily that the threshold for self-media participation is low, and the information review is weak, the forwarding and dissemination are fast, and more and more entities are involved, which brings about very prominent problems. For example, in order to pursue high commissions, self-media will ignore compliance requirements and mislead consumers.

As early as five or six years ago, regulatory authorities had taken action to rectify non-compliant insurance self-media. For example, in 2018, the former China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Self-Media Insurance Marketing Behavior", requiring all insurance companies and insurance intermediaries to raise their awareness of the importance of self-media insurance marketing and publicity behavior management, establish and improve the self-media insurance marketing and publicity behavior management system, and strengthen compliance education and professional ethics education for practitioners. The former China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission also issued the "Notice on Carrying out Self-Inspection and Rectification of Compliance of Internet Marketing and Publicity by Insurance Institutions' Sales Personnel" last year, requiring insurance institutions to conduct self-inspection and rectification work on Internet marketing and publicity.

Despite repeated regulatory corrections, insurance self-media violations continue to occur, and even the main violators have "spread" from insurance agents to unqualified Internet self-media practitioners. Zhi Peiyuan, a master's student enterprise tutor at the School of Management of China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), said that the root causes of insurance self-media violations are complex. In pursuit of high commissions or profits, some self-media ignore compliance requirements and adopt illegal sales strategies, damaging the industry's reputation. In the fierce market competition environment, compliance costs and difficulties have become one of the reasons why some self-media adopt illegal means. This requires the joint efforts of industry self-discipline and regulatory guidance to maintain market order. From the perspective of consumers, the contradiction between consumers' lack of knowledge of insurance products and self-media's improper marketing using information asymmetry highlights the importance of consumer education and information transparency. In addition, the rapid development of Internet technology poses challenges to the regulatory mechanism. Regulatory gaps may provide space for illegal behavior, requiring regulatory agencies and technical means to be upgraded simultaneously to meet the regulatory needs of Internet insurance business.

In order to prevent self-media from "crossing the line", the "Reminder Letter" once again strictly regulates Internet insurance marketing and publicity activities, and clearly distinguishes the boundaries between traffic diversion and insurance sales: non-insurance institutions provide Internet insurance marketing and publicity services such as insurance product traffic diversion and commercial publicity and promotion, and shall not engage in Internet insurance product sales, consulting, premium calculation, quotation comparison and other commercial activities. For those who provide network transfer channels for insurance consumers to purchase insurance products, the insurance page that jumps to should belong to the self-operated network platform of the insurance institution.

If practitioners of insurance institutions use self-media to carry out Internet insurance product marketing and promotion, they should obtain authorization from their institutions and indicate the full name of the insurance institution and personal name, practice certificate number and other information in a prominent position. Insurance companies and insurance professional intermediary institutions should monitor and inspect the Internet insurance marketing and promotion content released by practitioners and deal with problems in a timely manner.

How to verify your identity?

The development of self-media is booming. Although some unqualified self-media practitioners are passing themselves off as genuine, there are also many insurance practitioners who market insurance products and popularize insurance knowledge through self-media platforms.

For insurance consumers, before being attracted by articles, short videos, and grass-planting posts from insurance self-media and deciding to buy a policy, they need to "verify their identity" to determine whether the service personnel in front of them are certified and whether the institution they are in is licensed.

Li Wenzhong reminded that before buying insurance, consumers need to check whether the salesperson has a legal professional qualification certificate, which is generally produced by the insurance agency. It is also necessary to check the qualifications of the insurance company or intermediary agency and check the operating license of the insurance company or intermediary agency on the website of the regulatory agency. For insurance products, the insurance product filing information should be checked and the insurance terms should be read. Consumers should read the insurance terms carefully and ask the salesperson to explain and illustrate them, and check the insurance product filing information through the official website of the regulatory agency. After purchasing insurance, the insurance policy can be checked through the official channels provided by the insurance company to confirm the authenticity of the policy.

Previously, in the process of self-media promoting insurance products, some insurance products were often exaggerated or suspected of misleading, but there has been a lack of effective supervision. In the future, insurance companies will need to bear the main responsibility for the violations of sales staff.

The "Reminder Letter" stated that insurance institutions should earnestly fulfill their main responsibilities for the management of Internet insurance business, strictly manage the business qualifications of practitioners, standardize Internet insurance marketing and publicity activities, be responsible for the entire process of Internet insurance product sales, resolutely put an end to sales misleading, and bear corresponding responsibilities for insurance contract disputes.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Xiumei