Recently, Zhongmiao Holdings, the first Hong Kong stock insurance intermediary, officially signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Zhongan Insurance, a leading domestic internet insurance technology company. Relying on their respective core strengths in the physical industry scenario and Internet insurance technology, the two sides will open up the offline physical industry ecosystem and the online Internet insurance ecosystem, and carry out in-depth collaboration around the three dimensions of Internet insurance customization, physical industry scenario operation, and financial capital linkage to create a new digital paradigm of industrial insurance serving the real economy.
The two leaders complement each other's advantages and build a foundation for differentiated collaboration
Both partners in this strategic cooperation have scarce core barriers in the industry, highly complementary resource capabilities, and broad scope for collaborative growth.
Zhongan Insurance is the first Internet insurance company in China. It is definitely at the top of the Internet insurance circuit. It was jointly initiated by Ant, Tencent, and Ping An. It landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2017, making it the first Internet insurance company. Starting from scratch, the company quickly ranked 8th in the national financial insurance industry in just ten years, and remained at the top 10 in the industry. It maintained the top share of the Internet financial insurance market all year round, leading the health insurance, pet insurance, and new energy vehicle insurance segments. The company has a full online insurance operation system, developed its own basic insurance technology engine and vertical insurance model, and has the ability to digitize the entire link of AI intelligent underwriting, automatic anti-fraud, and online intelligent loss determination. Relying on massive online C-terminal traffic and the online merchant ecosystem, it can quickly develop fragmented, lightweight, and highly adaptable online scenario insurance products, deposit online insurance risk control data for more than ten years, achieve underwriting profits for many years, and has a mature ability to export digital insurance technology to the outside world.
As an incubator within the Haier Group and the first Hong Kong stock insurance intermediary, Zhongmiao Holdings has always implemented the core development path of “scenario+technology+ecology”, deeply implementing the Haier system's symbiotic and win-win industrial concept on the industrial insurance circuit, and extending the insurance distribution business to risk management technology services. The company and Zhongan Insurance have a highly compatible technology development core. The resource endowments and core capabilities of both parties form strong misalignment and complementarity: Zhongmiao Holdings has accumulated massive offline physical industry scenarios, full-chain industrial risk data and offline implementation service capabilities; as the Internet insurance leader, Zhongan Insurance has established a mature online standardized insurance product matrix, full-link AI digital operation, and insurance technology self-development system.
This cooperation realizes deep cooperation between the physical industry ecosystem and the Internet insurance ecosystem, empowers both ways, and jointly creates a new growth curve different from the industry's traditional distribution model in the industry stock competition cycle. In the downward cycle of the industry, the end institutions were cleared and market resources were concentrated at the top. Among them, the differentiated advantages of Zhongmiao Holdings were fully highlighted. With insurance distribution and fintech two-wheel drive, the company maintained steady growth for a long time after listing. By 2025, the five-year compound growth rate of revenue and net profit reached 20%; the company issued an announcement for the first half of the year on July 29. Revenue increased by more than 50% year on year, and net profit increased by more than 80% year on year. The impressive increase in performance is due to the fact that Zhongmiao Holdings continues to increase innovation in insurance technology, including focusing on the two core technology directions of AI risk reduction management and intelligent claims processing, using technological capabilities to reduce costs and increase efficiency, enhance customer service experience, build long-term industry barriers with technological strength, and open up a second growth curve for fintech.
Multi-dimensional collaboration explores new growth points to buck the trend and break industry development bottlenecks
Currently, the insurance intermediary industry's extensive distribution model is gradually being clarified, and industry institutions continue to withdraw. Traditional intermediaries face multiple pressures from higher customer acquisition costs, narrowing profit margins, and weak growth; while Internet insurance companies have shortcomings such as lack of offline industry scenarios, insufficient risk data in the real industry, and wireless on-site service teams. This cooperation accurately directly targets the pain points of both industries and creates a new multi-dimensional and sustainable growth curve.
The “marriage” between the two parties is essentially a deep integration of the physical industry and the two major ecosystems of internet insurance to resolve the pain points of the long-standing split between online and offline industries. Currently, online internet insurance traffic is peaking and competition is intensifying. Insurers lack physical industry scenarios and first-hand risk data, making it difficult for digital technology to land in the industry; offline industrial insurance supply and demand mismatch, scattered scenarios drive up customer acquisition costs, standardized products cannot match the risk of industry differentiation, and the industrial side lacks digital risk control tools. Combined with the implementation of “integration of reporting and banking”, the industry has entered a period of compliance, refinement, and technological transformation. Opening up the physical industry and insurance technology is the key to breaking the game, and it is also the underlying logic of cooperation between the two sides. By opening up the four closed loops of data, scenarios, technology, and capital, the two sides develop industry-specific insurance types by optimizing actuarial models for the industry; the Internet of Things+AI risk control pre-intervenes in the production process, and compensation after insurance is engaged in full-cycle risk management; and online and offline B/C customer groups communicate in both directions, forming a traffic cycle.
Anchoring the AI era and capital market, and opening up space for long-term ecological imagination
This cross-border ecological marriage between the two major Hong Kong stock listing platforms continues to unleash momentum for performance growth, and long-term market capitalization space is expected to further open up.
As a leading Internet insurance company, Zhongan Insurance has strong technological genes. Zhongmiao Holdings, incubated by Haier, also has a low-level scientific research mentality. Combining the advantages of both parties in the artificial intelligence era, how to use AI+ insurance as a new growth point should be a new topic for both parties to explore. Also, as the first company listed in Hong Kong on their respective tracks, the two sides also have more possibilities for cooperation in the capital market, as mentioned in the strategic cooperation agreement between the two sides.
The ecological “marriage” between Zhongmiao Holdings and Zhongan Insurance is a benchmark model for “technology empowers entities and data-driven growth” in the insurance industry. It marks that industrial insurance has officially left the era of extensive distribution and entered a new stage of high-quality development with AI risk control, risk reduction, and ecological symbiosis. The long-term value is worth continuing to focus on the capital market. Zhongmiao Holdings' clear strategic layout and continued performance growth have once again sent a clear signal to the market. China's insurance intermediary industry is at a critical stage of inventory consolidation, transformation and upgrading. Institutions that traditionally rely on poor information and a single commission model are gradually being cleared, and leading companies with technological capabilities, ecological resources, and scale advantages will continue to seize market share. Referring to the development path of international insurance intermediary giants such as MMC and AON, after the industry leader transformed from a single sales channel to a comprehensive risk management group, both revenue and market value achieved long-term growth. The domestic insurance intermediary market is huge, and it is expected that 100 billion local leaders will be born in the future.