Weixun Psychology: Building a Mental Health Defense for Enterprises Through an Insurance-Inspired B2B Model

After years of obscurity, the mental health industry has garnered increasing market attention over the past two years and has gradually embarked on a trajectory of rapid growth.

16%–17% of the population suffers from various mental and psychological issues, with nearly 100 million people affected by depressive disorders. Behind these statistics lies a sustained rise in public demand for mental health services. Consequently, an increasing number of innovators and investors are entering this field, charting their respective courses in line with their unique strengths.

Amid market development, the B2B sector has gradually become a key strategic focus for some enterprises, a trend partly driven by the negative impacts stemming from employees’ mental health issues.

In its recently released “2022 Global Risk Outlook” report, International SOS pointed out that employees’ mental health issues are becoming a focal point of global concern. Moreover, more than one-third of respondents in the report believed that mental health issues would be the primary factor reducing employee productivity in 2022.

Thus, employee mental health has become an indispensable aspect of modern enterprise development.

Founded in late 2019, Beijing Xunbao Technology Co., Ltd. (brand name: “Weixun Psychology”) is a mental health service provider specializing in delivering professional Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) for corporate employees and clients. To date, it has successfully served numerous clients across sectors such as insurance, banking, health management, and human resources management, reaching a customer base of over 200,000 individuals.

From a business perspective, Weixun Psychology appears somewhat unconventional—focusing on the B2B sector and specializing in group mental health services.

In the past two years, driven by heightened public health awareness, health insurance on the payer side has undoubtedly become one of the hottest niche segments. According to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), in 2020, the original premium income from health insurance business reached RMB 817.27 billion, a year-on-year increase of RMB 110.67 billion, representing a 15.7% growth rate. This growth outpaced that of major insurance categories such as life insurance, property insurance, and accident insurance.

The rapid development of the market has also enabled Li Qingxin, who has spent more than 20 years in the insurance industry, to identify relatively untapped areas within the sector.

Li Qingxin, Founder of Weixun Psychology

In Li Qingxin’s view, both policy-driven initiatives and the steadily growing public demand are currently promoting the widespread adoption of mental health services. However, in the insurance sector, there remains a notable gap in insurance products specifically covering mental health. Although some health insurance plans include limited mental health services, overall, such coverage is still largely absent from insurance offerings.

It is precisely for this reason that Li Qingxin has sought to leverage her service experience and data acquisition and analytical capabilities to achieve breakthroughs in the development of insurance products related to mental health. Against this backdrop, she founded Weixun Psychology in 2019.

Although the general market direction has been established, the subsequent challenge lies in determining the optimal angle for business implementation.

Although public awareness of mental health services has significantly improved in recent years, there remains a notable lack of willingness among users to pay for these services, meaning that the effective individual demand capable of driving commercial conversion is still quite limited. From this perspective, entering the mental health market from the consumer (C-end) side was not the most suitable business development direction for Weixun Psychology at that time.

In light of current market conditions, Weixun Psychology primarily provided value-added support services to insurance companies during its early stages—empowering B-side clients—while also delivering professional Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) for corporate mental health to enterprise employees.

The ability to make this choice is, in fact, closely tied to Li Qingxin’s years of accumulation in the group insurance sector. His past professional experience, centered on group insurance, has not only enabled him to amass substantial B-side resources but also allowed him to gain a deeper understanding of B-side needs and provide more targeted services. Furthermore, both insurance services and mental health services rely relatively little on medical scenarios and hardware equipment, creating an inherent compatibility between the two.

As the company has grown, Weixun Psychology has gradually expanded its business to provide mental health value-added services to corporate clients, including health management companies, physical examination institutions, and human resources firms. This approach not only significantly reduces customer acquisition costs but also enables the conversion of a portion of end-users (C-end) while serving business clients (B-end).

With its unique business approach, Weixun Psychology participated as an organizer in the “Implementing Healthy China Action | National Mental Health Promotion Project,” which was guided by the Office of the Healthy China Action Promotion Committee and the Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control of the National Health Commission, and jointly initiated by Health News and professional institutions such as the Psychoanalysis Professional Committee of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association. The project focused on making breakthroughs in serving children, adolescents, and the workplace population. In 2021, Weixun Psychology became an incubated enterprise of the Peking University Medical Science Innovation Center.

In the EAP services provided to corporate employees, Weixun Psychology places greater emphasis on scenario-based service delivery, adopting “Scenario-Based EAP” as its core philosophy to break through the physical boundaries of accessing mental health services.

To this end, Weixun Psychology establishes "Mental Energy Recharge Stations" for enterprises, offering a suite of services that includes the creation of health corners, online video counseling, psychological support hotlines, on-site psychological counseling, mental health lectures, and group psychological assistance activities. By integrating more technological products into these services, Weixun Psychology effectively helps enterprises and employees improve work efficiency, enhance team collaboration, address employee concerns, and foster a sense of belonging.

Throughout the service delivery process, to ensure service standards and accurately respond to user needs, Weixun Psychology has established a corresponding front-, mid-, and back-office management system along with standardized operational procedures. Meanwhile, it can provide more targeted and flexible services based on customer requirements, thereby achieving the productization of services.

In alignment with the characteristics of insurance services, Weixun Psychology’s mental health offerings place greater emphasis on preventive care—“treating before illness occurs”—aiming to provide preventive mental health services to a broader population of individuals who are currently asymptomatic.

Looking ahead, Weixun Psychology aims not merely to offer mental health services as a value-added feature of insurance products, but to genuinely integrate mental health care with insurance offerings, launching more products and services akin to international mental health insurance models.

However, from the perspective of industry development, although there have been significant changes in public attention and growth rate, the phenomena of small-scale, fragmentation, and disorder remain prominent. In the future, with continuous policy promotion, the industry is bound to move towards standardized development.

In this process, Weixun Psychology will continue to refine its operational and service standard systems while rigorously selecting its counselor team to fully ensure service quality. This will not only lay the foundation for the company’s rapid market expansion but also bring more high-quality services to the market, benefiting a broader population.