A report has been made by the Chinese regulator that the position of China’s insurance industry in the entire national economy has further improved, as insurance penetration is on the rise.
According to statistics from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), relayed by China Banking and Insurance News, the insurance penetration in the first half of 2020 reached 5.95%, an increase of 0.73 percentage points over the same period in 2019.
Insurance penetration is one of the important indicators for analysing the current development of the insurance market. It is the ratio of local premium income to gross national product (GDP). Data show that at the end of 2019, my country’s insurance penetration was 4.3%, an increase of 0.08 percentage points from 4.22% in 2018; the insurance penetration in the first half of 2020 reached 5.95%, an increase of 0.73 percentage points from the same period in 2019.
Judging from the situation of various provinces, compared with the same period in 2019, in the first half of 2020, the insurance penetration of Heilongjiang Province still holds the top spot, reaching 11.86%.
Beijing and Gansu are still in the top five provinces, as the insurance depth was 7.84% and 7.61%, respectively; the insurance depth of 20 regions (autonomous regions and municipalities) including Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shandong and Hubei increased.
Among them, the insurance depth of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Beijing, Gansu, Hebei, Shanxi, and Ningxia all reached more than 7%; except for Tibet, Fujian, Guizhou, and Yunnan, the insurance depth of other provinces (regions, cities) reached more than 4%.
In terms of growth rate, Tianjin has the highest growth rate, which is 2.76 percentage points higher than the 3.55% in the first half of 2019; Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shandong, and Hubei have also increased by more than 1 percentage point.
In addition, in the first half of the year, in addition to the first and second-tier cities with higher population density, the third- and fourth-tier cities and many towns were also affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This means that the scope of insurance consumer groups has further expanded and sunk. Hubei, where the pandemic is most severe, is an example of said. The insurance coverage in this province has increased by 1.15% compared with 2019.
From the perspective of insurance types, the depth of property insurance in China is relatively low, reaching 1.36% in the first half of 2020, a year-on-year increase of 0.05%; the depth of personal insurance is relatively high, reaching 3.42% in the first half of 2020, a year-on-year increase of 0.12 compared to 2019 Percentage points.
It is worth noting that due to the impact of the epidemic, in addition to the overall increase in insurance coverage, the health insurance coverage in 2020 will be 1.04%, a slight increase of 0.16 percentage points from 2019.
In addition, from the perspective of the depth of life insurance and health insurance, its growth rate is basically positively correlated with the overall insurance depth of the province (region, city). Heilongjiang, Jilin, Beijing, Gansu, Ningxia, etc. are still among the top; Guizhou, Fujian, Tibet, etc. In the provinces (regions, cities) that rank lower in depth, the growth rate of insurance depth in life insurance and health insurance is also slower.
On the whole, although the growth of insurance depth in various provinces (regions, cities) fluctuates slightly, the overall trend is upward; at the same time, due to the large differences in the maturity of the insurance market between provinces (regions, cities), insurance depth is also showing year by year The trend of polarization, the insurance depth of Heilongjiang, which ranks first, is four times that of Tibet, the last.
