How Should We View Insurers Investing in Critical-Illness Crowdfunding and Critical-Illness Mutual Aid?

The commercial value of critical-illness crowdfunding and critical-illness mutual aid—namely as a low-cost channel for customer acquisition—has been recognized by insurers, so it is normal for companies under sales pressure to invest in such firms. I think we should view this neutrally: it is not necessarily bad, and not necessarily good.

Critical-illness mutual aid is more similar to insurance, but industry observation shows that it is not a low-cost source of traffic, so selling insurance through it may not achieve the goal. In reality, what actually brings traffic is still critical-illness crowdfunding.

Critical-illness crowdfunding is a matter with a strong public-interest character. Is it moral to attach a strong sales purpose to it? When people feel that their charitable spirit has been harmed, will the crowdfunding platform still win hearts? This is what worries me more.

So quite a few insurers want to achieve their insurance sales goals through something like a three-stage rocket: gain traffic through critical-illness crowdfunding, convert it into mutual aid users, and then convert those into insurance sales.

While people still cannot see clearly, this approach has already been successfully practiced by some companies, but whether it is sustainable remains to be seen.

I think every model has its essence. Crossing boundaries is all very well, but you must stand on the essence. Mutual aid is mutual aid, insurance is insurance, and public interest is public interest. Conflating them and converting them into one another may seem to bring benefits, but it will inevitably harm something within them. What goes around comes around—it is only a question of how it comes back.

We might as well keep watching.