Impact Of The Epidemic,Internet Insurance,and Premium Income Of Life Insurance Companies

The COVID-19 that broke out at the beginning of 2020 not only had a huge impact on various industries,but also seriously threatened people’s life,health and property safety.Although China has effectively controlled the spread of the epidemic,the negative impact of the epidemic on economic operation and people’s lives continues and will remain for a long time.The market environment of life insurance companies has naturally changed greatly.The COVID-19 has seriously affected the income level of residents and the traditional insurance marketing channels.Most life insurance agents are suspended from business,affecting the normal development of life insurance companies’ insurance business,and leading to the shrinkage of life insurance business.Internet insurance,however,can help life insurance companies provide online services to insurance consumers during the impact of the epidemic by virtue of its advantages of being free from geographical restrictions and rapid transmission,reducing offline contact and providing customers with convenient purchase methods.Based on this background,this paper selects the life insurance industry with a higher proportion of premium income in the insurance industry,discusses the internal mechanism of the COVID-19 affecting life insurance and the mitigation effect of Internet insurance,and deeply explores whether the COVID-19 has had an adverse impact on the premium income of life insurance companies,and whether the development of Internet insurance can effectively mitigate the adverse impact of the epidemic on the premium income of life insurance companies,What is their internal mechanism? Through these studies,on the one hand,we can clarify the channels of life insurance premium income changes under the impact of the COVID-19,expand the research perspective in this field,and provide data support for subsequent scholars’ research;On the other hand,it is also of great significance for insurance companies to stabilize their own operating conditions and improve their anti-risk ability in the face of public health events.It can not only help life insurance companies better survive the epidemic crisis,but also provide theoretical basis and reference for the regulatory authorities in emergency management in the face of public health events and the formulation of subsequent macro-control policies.This paper first reviews the research background and significance,and reviews the literature on the impact of the COVID-19,the impact of Internet insurance on the operation and business development of insurance companies,and the mitigation effect of Internet insurance on the negative impact of the epidemic.It puts forward the hypothesis that the impact of the COVID-19 may have a beneficial impact on the development of life insurance companies,and that the development of Internet premiums can help life insurance companies better weather the epidemic crisis,And establish the literature basis for the design of the empirical model.Subsequently,40 life insurance companies established in 2016 and with complete data available from2017 to 2021 were selected as empirical samples,2020 and 2021 were selected as the impact period of COVID-19,and 2017,2018 and 2019 were selected as the control period of COVID-19,and the double difference model was used for empirical analysis.The empirical research of this paper is divided into three parts.The first part analyzes the impact of the epidemic impact on the premium income of life insurance companies,and then carries out a parallel trend test on the benchmark model and a robustness test on the regression results.The second part analyzes the mechanism of the impact of the epidemic on the premium income of life insurance companies.The COVID-19 epidemic affects the premium income of life insurance companies by affecting the personal income of consumers,thus affecting the income effect of insurance purchases,and the channel effect of insurance agents’ business.It also conducts a robustness test on the regression results.The third part analyzes whether Internet insurance can mitigate the adverse impact of epidemic impact on premium income and tests the robustness of the regression results.The empirical results show that the COVID-19 has a direct and significant negative impact on the premium income of life insurance companies,and it is generated by reducing the income of insurance consumers and limiting the offline business of personal insurance agents.At the same time,Internet insurance helps to alleviate the negative impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the premium income of life insurance companies.All robustness analyses show that the above conclusions are robust and reliable.Finally,based on the empirical results obtained,suggestions are made on how insurance companies and regulators can effectively respond to the COVID-19,including accelerating the digital transformation of life insurance companies and improving the Internet insurance model;The supervision department should improve the supervision system and improve the supervision efficiency;Insurance consumers accelerated the popularization of Internet insurance knowledge.