On March 23, Brand Finance, a world-renowned brand value rating agency, released the “2024 Global Top 100 Insurance Brand Value” list. Mainland direct insurance companies in this list include industry giants such as Ping An of China, China Life Insurance, China Taibao, China Insurance, and Xinhua Insurance. It is worth noting that Sunshine Insurance, the leading insurance company in the Mesozoic Generation, broke into this list and ranked 6th.
On March 25, Sunshine Insurance announced its 2023 results. The financial report showed that the total assets of Sunshine Insurance were about 513.69 billion yuan (RMB, same below), an increase of 13.3% over the beginning of the year. Total premium income was 118.91 billion yuan, up 9.3% year on year; insurance service revenue was 55.9 billion yuan, up 7.5% year on year. Achieved net profit of 3.74 billion yuan to mother.
At the same time, financial reports show that the profit quality of Sunshine Insurance has improved dramatically. As the only traditional insurance company listed among the 205 insurance companies established in China this century, Sunshine Insurance not only pursues model changes, technological innovation, but also maintains consistent strategic strength. As it approaches the 20th anniversary of its establishment, it has handed over high-quality answers that are both dynamic and steady.
Performance growth and steady improvement in profit quality
In 2023, Sunshine Insurance will continue to adhere to the value development concept of “seeking progress in the best”. The main business developed rapidly, premium income increased dramatically, embedded value continued to increase, and the business structure was continuously optimized.
By the end of 2023, the company had achieved total premium revenue of 118.9 billion yuan, an increase of 9.3% year on year, and insurance service revenue of 59.9 billion yuan, an increase of 7.5% year on year, including a value of 104.06 billion yuan, which can increase 6.4% year on year.
As an important indicator for measuring the profitability of insurance companies, NBV has always received high attention. In 2023, Sunshine Insurance's NBV was 3,596 million yuan, up 44% year-on-year. It is worth mentioning that the Dongwu Securities Research Report shows that from an industry perspective, Sunshine Insurance's NBV growth rate is expected to lead the A+H listed industry for two consecutive years. In fact, the sharp increase in NBV of Sunshine Insurance is not surprising. In fact, in the past few years, Sunshine Insurance NBV was already superior to its peers, and during the general deep adjustment period of the industry in 2022, Sunshine Insurance was the only listed insurer to achieve positive year-on-year growth in NBV.
The rapid growth of NBV not only indicates the high quality of the company's business value, but also indicates that the company's revenue is expected to continue to grow in the future.
What is behind this is that Sunshine Insurance always adheres to value leadership and develops collaboratively through multiple channels in life insurance. Among them, individual insurance channels achieved total premium income of 18.67 billion yuan, an increase of 18.1% over the previous year, and new single premium income of 4.30 billion yuan, an increase of 46.5% over the previous year. Individual insurance channels have concentrated on forging a unique merit system. The team's production capacity and number of high-performing personnel have increased dramatically. The production capacity per capita was further increased to 21,000 yuan, an increase of 44.4% over the previous year, and the number of people who met MDRT standards increased 84.7% year on year.
Furthermore, in terms of building an elite team, Sunshine Insurance promoted team transformation and upgrading in all aspects of recruitment, training, and daily management through various initiatives. The workforce of the elite team increased by 21.6% over the same period last year, accounting for 84.8% with a college degree or above, and a production capacity of 49,000 yuan per capita, which is 2.4 times that of the overall individual insurance team.
Occupational marketing, which is rich in sunshine characteristics, has also continuously increased the breadth and depth of industry coverage. Standardized development models have been established in key industry fields. The value development model has gradually taken shape, and the new single-instalment premium income has more than doubled in 2023.
In terms of financial insurance business, in 2023, Sunshine Financial Insurance will continue to adhere to the development concept of “take the lead, seek progress in good”. The business scale grew rapidly, the business structure continued to be optimized, and profitability continued to increase. The comprehensive underwriting cost ratio was 98.7%, down 0.7 percentage points from the previous year; the original insurance premium income reached 44.24 billion yuan, an increase of 9.6% over the previous year.
In the car insurance business sector, Sunshine Financial Insurance has built a unique competitive advantage in car insurance by continuously deepening the smart life table project and creating a four-algorithm intelligent strategy model. The smart car insurance life table has broken through the “last mile”, achieved industry-leading risk pricing capabilities, rigid risk cost management, and optimal resource allocation. In 2023, Sunshine Financial Insurance's comprehensive underwriting cost ratio was 98.9%, achieving an underwriting profit of 290 million yuan, a 10.8% increase in family car premiums, and 46.4% growth in premiums for new energy vehicles.
In the non-vehicle business sector, Sunshine Financial Insurance is based on serving the national strategy and supporting the real economy, continuously improving the pricing capabilities of non-vehicle products and risk service plans, and has established a non-vehicle data life table system with “one table, two books” as the overall framework to support the improvement of underwriters business quotation capabilities, lead and support the improvement of the sales force's market expansion capabilities, and further consolidate the foundation for balanced development of the non-vehicle business. At the same time, the credit insurance life table has also made substantial progress, effectively improving business quality and further consolidating operational stability.
In 2023, Sunshine Financial Insurance's non-auto insurance business achieved original insurance premium income of 18.1 billion yuan, an increase of 14.9% over the previous year. The comprehensive underwriting cost ratio was 98.6%, achieving an underwriting profit of 290 million yuan.
Model innovation combined with scientific and technological innovation to comprehensively cultivate new quality productivity
The insurance industry is the oldest industry, but revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading have also provided more development opportunities for traditional industries.
Sunshine Insurance has always adhered to the idea of “finance for the people”. It is rooted in continuous cultivation, innovation and transformation in the important functions of the insurance industry, implementing the customer-centered concept, superimposing technological innovation with model innovation, and embracing and cultivating its own new quality of productivity.
In terms of model innovation, Sunshine Insurance actively explores a “vertical and horizontal plan” for individual family customers, focusing on the question of “how many insurance policies does a person actually need in a lifetime”, promoting large-scale surveys of over 20,000 people. Based on deep understanding and understanding of customers, Sunshine Insurance creatively launched the “three insurance policies for one lifetime, five insurance policies, full of colorful sunshine” (“three five seven” for short) product configuration concept to build a product system and supporting value-added service system that meets the needs of the entire life cycle of the customer.
At the same time, for enterprise customers, a “partnership action” was innovatively launched, focusing on the innovation and practice of the “insurance+service+technology” model to effectively help customers identify and deal with potential safety hazards, and truly manage risks together from the customer's perspective. In 2023, a total of 14,000 enterprise customers were provided with technological disaster mitigation and professional risk consulting services.
Looking at it now, Sunshine Insurance's customer-centered concept has achieved good results. Not only is it strategically implementing the “Smart Sunshine” concept, promoting the “Love and Responsibility” concept within the team, and meeting the diverse financial service needs of the people in terms of business, all of which have been reflected in data. According to the 2023 annual report, Sunshine Insurance's 13-month and 25-month premium continuation rates were 93.9% and 86.6% respectively, up 3.4% and 8.1% from the previous year.
Technology and AI are currently the hottest terms, and they are also powerful breakthroughs in cultivating new types of productivity. For Sunshine Insurance, technological innovation is like fresh blood flowing through the company, and since the company was founded, it has continuously contributed vigorous vitality to the company. Since its inception, Sunshine has attached great importance to technology data. Whether it is technology investment as a share of revenue or the overall strength of technology data, it has always ranked at the top of the industry.
Last year, along with the development and application of AI big model technology, Sunshine Insurance seized the opportunity of the times and listed the self-developed AI big model as the company's strategic project, pioneered the construction of the Sunshine Zhengyan GPT model in the vertical field of insurance with independent intellectual property rights, and has already applied it in customer service, sales support, and intelligent claims processing scenarios.
For example, on the service side, the customer service robot built by Sunshine has upgraded the personal assistant-style service guidance function for business processing, using the Lingxi Experience Plan to respond to customer needs in a timely manner, achieve a seamless connection between consultation and processing, greatly improve service timeliness and customer satisfaction, and continuously optimize the customer service completion rate.
On the sales side, Sunshine Life's sales robot continues to refine the core functional experience based on differentiated research of user groups, uses a virtual digital form to achieve full face-to-face voice interaction with customers, and initially achieves “four meetings” capability output that “can introduce products, give opinions, answer questions, and impress customers”, providing strong support for the intelligent upgrading of first-line business scenarios.
Over the past year, Sunshine Insurance has also continued to strengthen the five core capabilities of digital customer insight, digital marketing, digital operation, digital risk control, and digital product innovation, and achieved outstanding results.
Continuous R&D investment and technological innovation provide technical guarantees for the future growth of Sunshine Insurance, and also provide the company with continuous consolidation of its competitive advantage in the insurance industry.
epilogue
Sunshine Insurance has always been a unique presence in the industry. As the only company that has experienced the original entrepreneurial process among more than 5,200 financial institutions and 237 insurance companies in China, Sunshine Insurance's entrepreneurial spirit of “daring to challenge and persevere” has injected strong genes of “struggle” into its development. At the same time, as an enterprise that always sticks to the development of its main business, maintains strategic strength, and adheres to scientific and steady corporate governance, Sunshine Insurance has also cultivated its own strong resilience, steadily crossing multiple industry cycles.
It can be said that Sunshine Insurance is like a microcosm of the development of the industry, and continues to advance towards high-quality transformation and development. In the future, along with the steady development of China's economic fundamentals, continued strengthening of policies, and the continuous release of residents' security needs, it is expected that the insurance industry will further open up space for development. At the same time, the insurance industry will also contribute more to the construction of a financial power and provide impetus for the high-quality development of China's economy and society.