Jack Ma calls on all people to buy insurance. How can blockchain mutual aid open up the market correctly?

Recently, at the 2016 China Insurance Industry Development Annual Conference, Jack Ma, who never stops making shocking remarks, spoke the "truth" again: It is abnormal for everyone to speculate in the stock market, and it would be healthier for everyone to buy insurance.

Indeed, as a veteran in finance, the insurance industry has developed for hundreds of years but has not kept pace with the times. It is plagued by chronic problems and mudslides. Today, this trillion-yuan market really needs a breath of fresh air to attract the participation of the entire nation, reform the system, and return to the "original intention" of insurance - to provide protection for a wider audience in a planned financial manner.

Especially now, in the era of mobile Internet, on the one hand, the cost of obtaining information is getting lower and lower, big data technology is becoming more and more mature, and insurance actuarial science can break the shackles of simple statistics, and determine the possibility of accidents and the price of protection in a more multi-dimensional and instant manner, so that premiums can be greatly reduced and more project-oriented and personalized; on the other hand, the "ledger" technology of blockchain is constantly being verified, and the insurance credit system no longer has to rely on a contract from a large company and its corporate behavior guarantee. Instead, everything from agreement, operation to execution and compensation can be completed through the Internet, which is completely transparent and cannot be defrauded, allowing insurance to restore its original "mutual aid organization" form.

Therefore, "blockchain mutual aid" acts on the supply side of insurance and becomes the reform pioneer of "national insurance purchase" in Jack Ma's words, and continues to enter the public's sight. "It is not only a triple jump from consumers' NEED to 'WANT' and then to 'VALUE', but also a new change from 'product view' to 'market view' and then to 'value' in insurance." Yang Yongzhi, founder of Tongxin Mutual Aid, explained. Because traditional finance is limited by cost structure and management margin, it has to give up long-tail and segmented needs and focus on the "head" market. Blockchain mutual aid can cover the long-tail market that traditional finance is unwilling or unable to reach under the effect of decreasing marginal costs, and rivers converge into the sea, and sand gathers into a tower.

It generally takes a long time for cutting-edge technology to go from academic to practical application. Unlike the entrepreneurial wave of O2O, which relies on money and execution to conquer the world, the implementation of technologies such as blockchain must rely on careful research of technology and seeking niche scenarios that can be cut into. Especially in the market of online mutual assistance, as a technology company, it is necessary to cut into the "unfeasible" market of traditional insurance and find a reasonable path for the business model. At the same time, accelerate the implementation of technology, accumulate experience, seek a "runway" similar to blockchain mutual assistance, and expand horizontally in a platform-based manner.

Dao: Technology is the core

There is no doubt that all the leaders of the new generation are not following the old track to catch up and overtake, but to find a truly innovative fork. Yang Yongzhi firmly believes in this principle, so he sold the "Dolphin Browser" for $200 million. After an 18-month lock-up period, he gathered his old friends who worked in the underlying technology of Microsoft and once again devoted himself to the blue ocean of blockchain entrepreneurship. He finally decided to use blockchain mutual assistance to "break through at a single point and gather energy to form a trend." Comparing the major technical directions, he believes that AI and VR are the dishes of large companies in the short term and are not suitable for startups, while Fintech is closer to money and will have breakthrough development in recent years.

After all, after the popularity of Bitcoin, the blockchain technology that serves as its foundation is no longer mysterious. The efficient hash algorithm turns the blockchain into a holographic, tamper-proof giant ledger, and the insurance mutual aid contract is written into it. Combined with the review and execution of the insured persons and matters by third-party institutions, blockchain mutual aid can automatically implement insurance and update the insurance contracts, accident conditions, specific compensation and other details to all members in real time and transparently. Compared with traditional insurance, it saves money on renting high-rise buildings and hiring a large number of sales staff, and its operating costs can be reduced by more than 20 percentage points.

Obviously, in blockchain mutual assistance, mutual assistance is the method, principle, and means of insurance, while blockchain is the absolute core of technical realization, which directly affects the degree of optimization of the traditional model. This is not just a matter of going from 0 to 1, but more of going from 1 to 100. Therefore, technology geeks like Yang Yongzhi are willing to devote themselves to deeply explore the "sweet spot" of each rule and process of blockchain technology and insurance mutual assistance, in order to achieve error-free and good experience, optimize details to the greatest extent, and give full play to the effectiveness of blockchain.

Technique: Adhere to "Scenario is Demand"

It goes without saying that scenarios are needs, and needs are everything. Because there is no need to explain a great model, just restore it to a scenario and it will run smoothly; there is no need to desperately promote a product with popular potential, just put it into a scenario and people will feel the innovation that targets pain points; there is no need to spend a huge amount of money on marketing with viral effects, just put it into a scenario and it will arouse the infectious power of spontaneous spread. Therefore, disruptive innovators all discover and adapt to specific new scenarios and new situations, and blockchain mutual assistance is no exception.

For example, the "IT Clan Health Plan" launched by Tongxin Mutual Aid is based on the scenario of high-intensity work and less leisure life for the vertical IT group. With the help of big data analysis, life actuarial calculations are carried out, which not only clarifies the possibility of general serious illnesses and accidents, but also determines the risk of sudden death from overwork, thereby filling the gap in traditional insurance in this regard. At the same time, because it is a big data calculation in a specific scenario, the risk ratio is more accurately grasped, so participants only need to pay a deposit of 299 yuan to obtain a maximum coverage of 900,000 yuan. Similarly, when the technology matures and information collection becomes more convenient, accurate, and complete, this type of scenario-based mutual aid can also be extended to various vertical segments of the population, such as participants in a marathon. This scalability is far beyond imagination.

It can be seen that, unlike traditional insurance, blockchain mutual aid, under the influence of various scenarios, will focus more on certain work characteristics, certain lifestyles, and certain specific circles, creating a corresponding mutual aid service model with a sense of scene involvement and identity. In this way, related brands are no longer planned, but more easily detonated, and product marketing is narrowed down to a community of lifestyles for different groups of people, forming an explosion.

This is the best tactical choice for blockchain mutual aid players in the initial stage - concentrate superior forces, single-point pressure, and sharp knife breakthrough. From this perspective, the indiscriminate crowd products promoted by various platforms are undoubtedly just Internet tactics. They use a large amount of subsidies to blindly circle users. How much value can the users who finally settle down generate is really a knife hanging over each platform. This is also something that all platforms, including Tongxin Mutual Aid, need to think clearly. In other words, the more users are burned, the greater the risk of compensation. This is a matter in the professional field of insurance, and it cannot be solved by burning money and marketing.

Method: Marginal expansion into a platform

But it must be understood that this breakthrough is only a means of initial development of blockchain mutual assistance. After gathering energy and showing off its strength to investors and users, it is necessary to prove that its industry track is "wide enough" and has the ability to change tracks, that is, to promote the implementation of blockchain in more vertical fields and complete marginal expansion. Only in this way can the platform that outputs standards and value systems maintain the "market dream rate" in the uncertain capital environment.

"Being too geeky can only give you a glimpse of the greatness of blockchain, but you can't open the door to the future business world. Being too limited to a single vertical field will limit the vision of corporate development and miss a more exciting future." Yang Yongzhi described it this way. Therefore, blockchain players must strive to seek platform expansion, form intersections with more vertical fields, and attract fans with multi-dimensional strengths in order to build their own business "moat". Because, according to Metcalfe's law, in the Internet era, the value of a company is proportional to the square of the number of users. In other words, only when the platform is large enough can it attract the ecology of the upstream and downstream of the value chain, achieve the ability to grow itself, and move towards the smooth road of "winner takes all".

Therefore, players who only focus on blockchain technology and mutual aid models will inevitably find it difficult to hold their own future. They do not understand the inevitability of "economy of scale and scope must give way to platform economy and ecological economy", and become a counterexample to the prediction of management guru Drucker. As a result, they will lose the "sea of ​​stars" that combine blockchain with stock trading, currency issuance, real estate trading, etc., lose the path to achieve "blockchain +", and lose more dynamic mechanisms that reshape the industry and explain the future...

Yes, in this era of technological boom, users never lack demand, but what they lack is high-quality supply. Whoever can use blockchain to connect the industrial chain, release chain resources exponentially, increase market efficiency exponentially, and then enhance user experience exponentially, will be able to transform into a platform as soon as possible and escape the fate of "either waiting for dawn with a gloomy face, or begging for rewards from giants".

The above three methods, namely, the way to clarify the direction, the technique to determine the strategy, and the law to establish the foundation, can enable blockchain mutual aid players to dominate the market, just like the protagonist in Walden: "I fish in the sky, fishing for a pool of crystal clear stars."