An insurance intermediary refers to a unit or individual between insurance institutions or between insurance institutions and policyholders, which specializes in intermediary service activities such as insurance business consultation and sales, risk management and arrangement, value measurement and evaluation, loss identification and adjustment, and obtains commissions or handling fees from them according to law.
At present, there are three main types of insurance intermediaries in China: professional insurance intermediaries, part-time insurance agents and exclusive insurance agents mainly insurance salesmen. The biggest difference between insurance professional intermediaries and non-professional intermediaries is that professional institutions usually focus on insurance-related businesses, such as insurance agencies, insurance brokerage companies and insurance loss assessment companies. Non-professional organizations usually don't focus on insurance-related businesses, such as airlines selling aviation accident insurance at the same time as air tickets.
Insurance intermediary related policies
At present, illegal activities in China insurance market are widespread. In order to further strengthen the supervision of China's insurance intermediary industry and promote the process of insurance intermediary specialization, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a number of policies in 20 19, focusing on rectifying industry chaos and standardizing industry services.
Insurance intermediary channels contribute a lot to premium income.
For a long time, China's insurance intermediary channel is the main channel to realize China's premium income. From 20 15 to 20 18, China's insurance intermediary channel premium income continued to grow, accounting for more than 80% of the original total premium income. Since 20 17, the proportion of premium income in China's insurance intermediary channels has shown a stable trend, fluctuating slightly around 87.5%. It is estimated that the premium income of China's insurance intermediary channels will be about 373 million yuan in 20 19.
The insurance sales scale of salesmen is maintained at a high level, and the development potential of professional intermediaries is great.
During the period of 20 15-20 18, the premium income of insurance salesmen is the highest among the three major insurance intermediaries, accounting for more than 35% of the total premium income in China, and the gap with part-time agents with the second premium income is gradually increasing. At the same time, under the promotion of China's insurance intermediary specialization policy, the proportion of premium income of China's insurance professional intermediaries has increased year by year, and it is expected to exceed 15% in 20 19.
The profit scale of insurance intermediaries is generally small, and agents rank first.
The annual operating income of leading enterprises in China's insurance intermediaries is generally below 3 billion yuan, which is relatively small compared with the premium income of trillions of yuan in China's insurance intermediary channels. The main reason is that insurance intermediaries are different from insurance companies and are equivalent to intermediaries between insurance companies and customers. Even if they have the authority to collect premium income, this part of premium income ultimately belongs to the insurance company, and the insurance intermediary can only collect part of the commission. In addition, it is relatively easy to improve the service quality and expand the business scale because the insurance agency business is relatively weak in professionalism compared with economic business and fixed loss business. Therefore, the overall income scale of insurance agencies in China is higher than that of insurance brokers and assessment agencies.