Sunshine Insurance: A Billion-Dollar Strategic Layout Across the Entire Medical and Health Industry Chain

Internet healthcare has experienced its ups and downs, with its business models undergoing repeated transformations. For instance, it evolved from the initial B2C and B2B models to B2B2C, then shifted to a “To VC” approach when capital poured in heavily during the first half of last year, and has since returned to exploring viable business models through a “To Insurance” strategy in the second half.

Will insurance companies become the true payers for internet healthcare? What position does internet healthcare hold in their broader strategic layout?

This article focuses on Sunshine Insurance to illustrate how an insurance company is strategically positioning itself in the broader healthcare sector. This choice is driven not only by Sunshine Insurance’s leading position among domestic insurers but also by its series of market moves, which have clearly demonstrated its ambitions in the healthcare industry:

• May 8, 2016: Sunshine Fusion Hospital, the first hospital in China invested by an insurance company, opened in Weifang, Shandong Province, enabling direct insurance claims settlement. Meanwhile, it announced plans to invest RMB 100 billion over the next decade to strategically position itself in eight key areas of the healthcare infrastructure industry.

• Q1 2016: Ronghui Capital, a subsidiary of Sunshine Insurance Group, led the RMB 100 million Series A financing round for the mobile health platform Miao Jiankang.

• February 2015: The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) approved Sunshine Insurance Group’s initiative to establish an industrial fund—the Sunshine Ronghui Medical and Healthcare Industry Growth Fund, with a total size of RMB 5 billion.

The critical role of insurance in internet healthcare and the broader healthcare system has become an industry consensus. It is reasonable to believe that other major insurance companies are either closely monitoring the sector or have already made strategic moves behind the scenes. The next wave of growth in internet healthcare may well be truly driven by insurance.

Industry professionals are welcome to add the author on WeChat at yeyurenlei to jointly discuss development trends in the healthcare industry.