'Million Medical' insurance market to exceed US$31b in 2025
China’s “Million Medical” insurance policies will maintain an annual growth rate of 25-40 percent in the next few years, and by 2025, the premium scale of the whole market will reach 201 billion yuan (US$31.1 billion), according to an industry white paper.
The study, by third-party information provider iResearch and ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance, estimates that there were over 90 million “Million Medical” insurance policyholders in 2020, and a market penetration rate of around 7.4 percent.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the public’s risk awareness has kept rising and demand for health insurance has grown fast.
Designed as a middle-end protection product, these high-deductible, high-reimbursement policies have become the most popular medical insurance in China in the past few years.
They have helped fill the gap between the national basic medical insurance scheme and expensive, high-end medical policies by expanding health coverage, according to the white paper.
According to 2019 data, the proportion of individual out-of-pocket medical payments was as high as 44.3 percent, significantly higher than in major developed countries, and the compensation expenses of commercial health insurance only accounted for 5.6 percent.
The average price of “Million Medical” products is about 540 yuan, with most customers in the 30-45 age range, the study found.
