Shangyong Technology Launches Protein Mass Spectrometry Platform for Cancer Early Screening and Risk-Based Insurance Pricing

“I don’t want healthy customers to subsidize unhealthy ones. My original intention in founding Shangyong Technology was to ensure that every customer receives fair policy pricing.” Emphasizing her initial motivation for starting the business, Xing Jing, founder of Shangyong Technology, stated this.

Xing Jing graduated from Peking University’s School of Economics, majoring in Risk Management and Insurance. After graduation, she worked on insurance-related project management at renowned institutions such as Ping An Life Insurance and ICBC-AXA, accumulating many years of experience in insurance planning. In Xing Jing’s own words, “Every product manager has the heart of an insurance salesperson, but traditional sales methods have lost their novelty.” Subsequently, in 2015, Xing Jing resigned from her position at the insurance company and embarked on a more than two-year journey in online insurance sales. Leading a project team of over ten people, she achieved annual sales revenue of nearly RMB 25 million within one year.

Xing Jing, Founder of Shangyong Technology (Photo provided by the company)

From insurance planning to sales, the more Xing Jing learned about the traditional insurance industry, the more she realized that it struggled to meet the evolving market demands. While consumer demand for health insurance has grown increasingly strong, traditional health insurance products suffer from outdated designs, with insufficient optimization in customer segmentation and risk control. Insurance companies have blindly pursued higher customer acquisition by slashing premiums; in some specific insurance products, premiums have even hit the red line of minimum pricing. Selling such products only increases the insurers’ risk of claims payouts.

Xing Jing stated bluntly, “The core of insurance lies in capturing the time value during periods when customers do not file claims.” She illustrated this with an example: If an insurer anticipates that a particular customer will trigger a claim payment within the current year, but the company employs intervention measures to defer that payment until the following year, the intervening period becomes a source of profit for the insurer. “The profit logic of the insurance industry inevitably unfolds along the timeline,” Xing Jing added.

How can the timeline for claim payouts be extended? “By segmenting our customer base, we can effectively extend this timeline,” replied Xing Jing. “We distinguish between customers who are already ill and those who are not. For insured individuals with critical illnesses, we provide health insurance products—such as critical illness coverage and medical insurance—supported by medical rehabilitation measures and pharmaceutical interventions.” The company designs personalized insurance plans for sick clients. As long as customers adhere to the health management protocols outlined in their policies for treatment and rehabilitation, the insurer can leverage data analytics to calculate and mitigate the risk of insurance claims.

Shangyong Technology currently categorizes customers in detail across six major dimensions and more than 400 tags, enabling differentiated insurance pricing for different customer segments. This aligns with the emphasis placed by Xing Jing that healthy customers should purchase insurance at lower premiums, while those with pre-existing conditions naturally pay higher premiums. The two groups should not be conflated, thereby avoiding a scenario where healthy customers subsidize the costs of less healthy ones.

For hospitalized patients, Shangyong Technology customizes insurance plans centered on personalized health and medical services, requiring users to adhere to stipulations such as regular medication intake and rehabilitation exercises. Xing Jing added, “While Shangyong Technology cannot monitor in real time whether each customer’s behavior fully complies with contractual requirements, we have already accounted for the probability of patient non-adherence when designing our customized insurance risk control models.”

For clients deemed too risky by traditional insurers, Shangyong Technology can customize insurance policies for them by accurately identifying customer risk profiles and tailoring coverage plans. Xing Jing stated, “Through precise customer profiling, Shangyong Technology is able to provide insurance coverage to both in-hospital and out-of-hospital clients. This represents a key competitive advantage for the company.”

When insurers tailor coverage for policyholders with pre-existing conditions around treatment plans, they must comprehensively assess which therapeutic approach offers the highest success rate and optimal cost-effectiveness, thereby enabling accurate risk control. Determining the optimal treatment plan for patients requires medical expertise.

Xing Jing responded, “Behind Shangyong Technology lies a robust health evaluation and analysis system. By leveraging AI technology, we can accurately predict risks and formulate management plans, provided we have data on the therapeutic efficacy and related metrics of each medication.”

In August this year, Shangyong Technology launched an in vitro diagnostic project in the United States—proteomic mass spectrometry testing. This big data analytics platform analyzes the proteome of cancer patients to assess their tumor microenvironment and determine their suitability for therapies such as PD-1 inhibitors. Currently, the cancer detection rate for this test is approximately 85%. Through this approach, Shangyong Technology can identify customers’ cancer risk three to five years in advance.

Shangyong Technology designs insurance products tailored to specific customer segments at the request of insurance companies. The insurers handle front-end marketing, while Shangyong Technology charges them a percentage-based fee. Xing Jing revealed that the health insurance products launched by Shangyong Technology once helped a small insurer triple its performance, reaching over RMB 30 million.

Shangyong Technology’s achievements extend far beyond this. In the two years since its establishment, the company has partnered with more than 30 well-known insurance companies, launched over 30 health insurance products, issued 2.6 million policies, and generated total premiums exceeding RMB 1 billion. Moving forward, Shangyong Technology will focus on implementing its protein mass spectrometry testing projects in selected hospitals in Shanghai. These initiatives are expected to be widely applied across the insurance industry in the future, helping to increase non-medical-exam coverage limits, improve underwriting efficiency, expand business growth for primary insurers, and enable reinsurers to assume a greater volume of high-quality risks.