After achieving a valuation of RMB 50 billion 17 months after its founding, ZhongAn Insurance has become one of the largest technology company IPOs in Hong Kong this year.

With the support of high valuations and rising investor enthusiasm, Zhongan also handed over a report card of losses in the first quarter. The company's updated prospectus showed that in the first quarter of 2017, Zhongan Online's net profit was -202 million yuan.

At the same time, the company expects to record a significant net loss in 2017.

Since its inception, discussions about Zhongan Insurance and its major shareholder Ant Financial have never stopped.

In 2013, Zhongan Insurance came into being relying on Taobao's return shipping insurance. In the following years, it spared no effort to get rid of its dependence on Ant Financial.

On the other hand, Ant Financial’s support for Zhongan is also decreasing day by day, and it is quietly planning its own insurance platform ambitions.

Listing, or the beginning of another story.

1. Make a fortune on Alibaba, and then "de-antize" it. Return shipping insurance, which was born based on Alibaba's ecosystem, is the starting point for some imagination created by Zhongan Insurance. This classic Internet insurance product is popular on Double Eleven every year.

It shines brightly, but it also raises questions about Zhongan's "reliance on shareholders."

From 2014 to 2016, return shipping insurance generated total premiums of 613 million yuan, 1.298 billion yuan, and 1.194 billion yuan respectively. Although the proportion of return shipping insurance in the company’s premium income dropped from 77.2% and 57% to 35%, return shipping insurance still remains

It is an important source of Zhongan Insurance business income.

According to statistics on the property and casualty insurance e-commerce market in 2017, among online sales of non-auto insurance products, ZhongAn ranks first in terms of the number of policies and the scale of premiums, with return insurance.

The initial traffic tilt from shareholders and subsequent cross-border cooperation allowed Zhongan to obtain valuable scenarios, but this cooperation is not exclusive and is becoming more and more expensive.

Scenarios are an important bargaining chip for Zhongan’s valuation, but they are also constraints to their business development.

Not having its own scenes and traffic means that the lifeblood of the company is in the hands of others.

Consulting fees and service fees have always been one of ZhongAn Insurance's main operating expenses. They are mainly fees paid to ecosystem partners, including sales service fees and claims.

Data show that from 2014 to 2016, this expense accounted for 13.3%, 30.7% and 33.9% of the net premiums earned, reaching 94.462 million yuan, 590 million yuan and 1.093 billion yuan respectively, and the expenditure pressure increased significantly.

In the past few years, Zhongan’s various actions have been demonstrating its determination to get rid of shareholder dependence and try its best to give a new interpretation of Internet insurance.

After Taobao, ZhongAn has added Xiaomi, Mogujie, Secoo, Tongcheng and other companies to its list of partners. At the same time, it has successively launched car insurance and flight delay insurance based on travel scenarios, and broken screen insurance based on mobile phone usage scenarios.

Products such as "Bubu Bao" combined with wearable devices.

The auto insurance business was also launched as an income pillar in addition to the low-premium small business, but the specific progress was not smooth. Its auto insurance income in 2016 was only 3.724 million.

Compared with traditional property and casualty insurance companies, this scale is almost negligible.

Public information shows that in the past three years, the insurance products sold by ZhongAn Insurance through its ecosystem partner platforms accounted for 99.8%, 97.9% and 86.5% of the total premiums in the same period respectively.

Despite the overall downward trend, it is difficult to hide the fact that its product sales are extremely dependent on partners.

In addition, Zhongan has also begun to build an open platform for financial technology and export technology to create profits in the future. In July last year, Zhongan Technology was officially established. As Zhongan’s internal information technology platform, this company mainly researches the latest

The application of new Internet technologies includes the research and development of artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies, as well as the automated application of underwriting and claims settlement.

This company not only serves Zhongan, but also serves the entire insurance industry.

In June this year, Zhongan Technology and Hengqin Life Insurance reached an in-depth cooperation. Zhongan Technology will complete the construction and implementation of more than 80% of Hengqin Life's Internet platform, and further construction will include the customer operation center decision-making platform, data monitoring platform, etc., but

The specific amount of cooperation was not disclosed.

2. Ant Financial’s insurance roadmap For Ant Financial, ZhongAn is not everything to them either.

Not long ago, Ant moved the open platform model used in funds to insurance.

Two weeks before Zhongan Insurance announced the IPO details, Alipay launched a new insurance service section, which has transformed from the original shelf-style product display into a comprehensive platform including online interaction, intelligent insurance, algorithm recommendation, and policy management.

The original sales color is diluted.

According to data disclosed by Ant Financial, 18 insurance companies have launched data product cooperation with the Ant Insurance Platform, and more than 20 insurance companies are in the process of docking.

In the insurance industry, Ant Financial is more often mentioned as a shareholder of Zhongan.