InsGeek Files IPO Prospectus, Pioneering an Integrated Loop of Group Health Insurance and High-Frequency Medical Management
In 2020, the health insurance industry resembled a speeding train, racing along the tracks of high-speed growth. Behind a series of major developments—including the introduction of landmark policies, venture capital firms increasing their investments against the trend, and several financing rounds exceeding RMB 100 million—the commercial health insurance sector was undergoing profound and continuous transformation.
Discussions on the innovation and development of health insurance have remained vigorous, providing ample substance for the Medical Insurance Technology and Commercial Health Insurance Forum to become the most hotly debated sub-forum during the Future Healthcare Top 100 Conference. At the sub-forum, Li Shuo, Co-founder and COO of Insgeek, shared his insights on health insurance: “In 2020, the health insurance market size reached RMB 817.3 billion. Among this, the market for high-frequency, low-severity supplementary medical insurance amounted to RMB 236 billion, firmly establishing itself as the mainstay of commercial health insurance. As the core vehicle within supplementary medical insurance, corporate group insurance will also become the most pivotal product in the health insurance sector.”
From the perspective of China’s healthcare payment structure, the country exhibits a pattern dominated by social insurance, followed by out-of-pocket payments, with commercial insurance playing a supplementary role. The basic function of social insurance is to “provide broad coverage and ensure basic protection,” but it lacks refined management capabilities. This situation is related to China’s level of economic development and its large population base. Therefore, Li Shuo believes that China is highly likely to gradually reduce the proportion of individual out-of-pocket payments in the future, allowing commercial insurance to provide supplementary support in this area.
From the perspective of healthcare payment coverage, medical expenditures for common illnesses such as colds and fevers are characterized by high frequency and low cost, accounting for a significant proportion of total spending. According to publicly available data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, there were 8 billion outpatient and emergency visits nationwide in 2019, averaging six visits per person annually. In terms of market size, supplementary medical insurance with new premium volume of RMB 236 billion accounted for nearly 30% of the health insurance market share in 2020, becoming the dominant product category within health insurance. Li Shuo stated that, referencing the current proportion of group health insurance in the U.S. health insurance market, China’s group health insurance market is conservatively estimated to have a growth potential of 20 to 50 times.
InsGeek is a data-driven insurance technology company that has focused exclusively on the corporate group insurance sector since its founding in 2014. Currently, it serves over 7,000 corporate clients, covering hundreds of thousands of employees, and has achieved a 100% premium renewal rate, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in the global insurtech industry.
2018 was a year of significant growth for InsGeek. During this year, InsGeek not only completed a RMB 100 million Series B financing round jointly invested by the National Small and Medium Enterprise Development Fund (established by the Ministry of Finance) and Legend Holdings; but also achieved updates and iterations in its own business. The release of "Geek+" 3.0 extended group insurance services to "group insurance + medical services," creating a complete closed loop of health data that integrates group insurance coverage with health management, focusing on employee health and disease risks within enterprises. Furthermore, it leveraged data power more extensively to help companies enhance their digital transformation in human resources.
Prior to 2018, Insgeek was dedicated to driving the digitalization of the group insurance industry. To this end, Insgeek pioneered the “Cloud Group Insurance SaaS” system and took the lead in introducing “mobile claims services,” shifting offline operations to an online platform. This transition enhanced operational efficiency and user experience in group insurance. With the launch of the “Geek+” platform, group insurance entered an era of customization, achieving personalized coverage solutions tailored to individual employees (“a thousand faces for a thousand people”).
Since 2018, Insgeek has entered its third phase of significant growth. Driven by big data, Insgeek has further enhanced its operational efficiency and service experience, readily meeting the flexible and personalized operational needs of corporate clients while improving service quality. Insgeek has also launched a segmented claims settlement product solution. This solution supports more comprehensive product customization and claims processing requirements, allowing for personalized claims workflows based on claim amounts and individual insured persons. This approach achieves an optimal balance among operational efficiency, product risk control, and customer satisfaction. Meanwhile, medical and health management services have been comprehensively upgraded, with the introduction of features such as internet hospitals, real-time video consultations, and specialist consultations. These enhancements address customer needs across the entire healthcare journey. Furthermore, by integrating underlying data with medical and health services, Insgeek can match customers with more precise products and services.
In the capital markets, InsGeek has largely maintained a pace of completing one round of financing per year. In January 2020, InsGeek received further recognition from the capital market by closing a $25 million Series C funding round, setting a new record for the largest single financing amount in China’s corporate group insurance sector in recent years. Li Shuo shared that over the past six-plus years, InsGeek has established branches in 12 cities across China, with its business operations spanning the entire country and covering a large number of emerging industries and high-growth enterprises.
Within Insgeek’s service closed loop, a stable underlying system serves as the foundation for building a flexible group insurance framework. Therefore, since its inception, Insgeek has established its own proprietary underlying data architecture and IT systems. It continuously integrates cutting-edge big data, AI, and BI technologies to upgrade and refine these systems, while leveraging industry ecosystems and cross-sector integration to construct a multi-layered product and service ecosystem. This approach enables Insgeek to provide enterprises with group insurance products that are better tailored to their employees’ needs.
Targeting the characteristics of group insurance—“short-term, high-frequency, and low-value”—InsGeek has developed its underlying core system to facilitate data integration with underwriting insurance companies and medical health management institutions. Meanwhile, InsGeek has independently established product risk control, claims and service, and comprehensive operational systems, integrating the capabilities generated by these systems into the “Geek+” platform to serve both B-side enterprises and C-side employees.
On the B2B side, Insgeek leverages its proprietary product risk control system and a robust team of actuaries, empowered by technology, to deliver customized solutions to corporate clients within 24 hours. To enhance the efficiency of enterprise HR operations, Insgeek has digitized the entire workflow of corporate insurance enrollment, policy administration, data management, and premium payments. It also introduces corporate health reports that quantify employee health data, enabling companies to gain intuitive insights into their workforce’s overall health status. This facilitates dynamic adjustments to corporate health benefits and supports the digital transformation of human resource management.
For consumer-facing services, user needs are at the core of InsGeek’s business. Therefore, the health management services provided by InsGeek place significant emphasis on accessibility and user perception. For instance, InsGeek’s group insurance products include online healthcare and health management services such as virtual consultations, outpatient appointment registration, expedited access via green channels, and internet hospital services. Meanwhile, the group insurance system offers AI-driven personalized plan recommendations. Employees can select coverage options according to their needs and also configure insurance plans for their family members.
In terms of claims processing, employees can upload reimbursement documents via WeChat anytime and anywhere, addressing the issues of slow workflows, poor service quality, and suboptimal employee experience inherent in traditional insurance claims services. In short, “fully inform customers of the availability of services, maximize user convenience, and explore the depth of service offerings.”
Health checkup services are a typical case of InsGeek’s deep integration of “medical insurance payment and healthcare.” InsGeek provides customized health checkup services for clients, conducts professional health assessments and analyzes the results based on the checkup findings, generates health records to implement health interventions, and delivers comprehensive health management services covering all scenarios, including medication guidance, consultations with renowned specialists, and offline green-channel access.
Building a comprehensive protection and medical health management platform that covers both individuals and families, and co-creating an ecosystem for the insurance and healthcare industries with industry participants, is the direction and goal of insgeek’s development. Li Shuo shared that moving forward, insgeek will consistently adhere to its innovative “to-B service” model, leverage the entry-point advantage of “high-frequency medical services,” and build a clearer, more tiered health service system tailored to the differentiated needs of diverse populations and scenarios.