Yuanbao's inclusive logic and six years of evolution: Bringing the era and technology benefits to every important ordinary person

As the year comes to a close, when most ordinary people look back on the past year, the efforts of those who work early mornings and late nights for their families, and those who stay up late fighting for their livelihoods, form the most humble yet profound backdrop of life. In China, these seemingly ordinary daily routines are constantly threatened by uncertain risks such as illness and accidents.

Taking children to school, caring for elders, repaying loans, working hard in the workplace… “These seemingly ordinary things are also the most worthwhile because they not only concern oneself but also the important people in everyone’s heart.” Recently, Yuanbao, China’s leading internet insurance technology group (collectively referred to as “Yuanbao” along with its subsidiaries), captured this widespread end-of-year empathy in its sixth anniversary brand video, “Dedicated to Every Important Ordinary Person.”

In the video, the vision—“Using technology to promote inclusive insurance, making the progress of the times and technology a hope that falls on everyone”—reveals the company’s core business logic and practical approach after six years of establishment. This aligns with the recent development trajectory of China’s insurance industry. Under the continuous guidance of regulators to “return insurance to its core purpose,” and to serve the real economy and people’s livelihoods, the connotation of “insurance being for protection” is constantly deepening into “insurance for ordinary people.” Building an inclusive risk protection network to help ordinary families resist the risks of falling into poverty or returning to poverty due to illness or disasters has become an important industry value orientation.

01 Focus on “Universal” and “Beneficial”: Deeply Explore the Needs of Ordinary People and Iteratively Develop Products

In 2019, China’s insurance industry entered a critical period of profound paradigm shift. On one hand, the traditional life insurance business model faced challenges under multiple factors; on the other hand, technology changed the way insurance services are supplied by reducing costs, expanding coverage, improving efficiency, and innovating risk control, thus accelerating the industry onto a path of inclusive development. Meanwhile, new variables began to emerge: internet insurance ignited a wildfire, and innovations like million-dollar health insurance gained momentum…

Amid the wave of transformation, more and more market players are stepping up, and Yuanbao is a notable representative. Its particular strength lies in deeply cultivating inclusive health insurance through internet methods.

Looking across the industry, few institutions focus on inclusive insurance. The reason is that inclusive insurance requires balancing social value and commercial value—achieving both in a coordinated manner. This demands that institutions, on a sustainable basis, provide affordable, comprehensive, and equitable protection to previously underserved populations.

Postdoctoral researcher and professor Zhu Junsheng from Peking University’s School of Applied Economics said: “Currently, inclusive insurance has moved from the ‘policy advocacy stage’ to a ‘stage of scale growth and capacity testing.’ The main development challenges include four aspects: first, dispersed protection needs, with significant differences in risk and payment ability among different groups, but products and risk control still tend to be standardized, lacking precise matching; second, under low premiums and weak health disclosures, actuarial pricing and long-term profit management are more difficult, with increased payout volatility and pressure on product sustainability; third, the balance mechanism between inclusiveness and commercial sustainability is not yet完善 (perfected), and business resilience needs enhancement; fourth, claims efficiency and service experience still have shortcomings.”

In this process, platforms like Yuanbao, as professional insurance intermediaries, serve as vital bridges connecting insurance companies with inclusive groups: leveraging technological capabilities to reach broader populations at lower costs and higher efficiency to realize “universal,” and providing tailored, affordable保障 (protection) through professional services to achieve “beneficial,” thus truly establishing a closed-loop ecosystem for inclusive insurance.

“Universal” means reaching a wider audience, which requires breaking down barriers related to geography, occupation, health status, and other factors, precisely meeting diverse needs, and truly enabling “everyone to buy and everyone to be protected.”

Relying on AI technology and thousands of model networks, Yuanbao delivers personalized advertising and product recommendations, connecting users with保障 (protection) needs more efficiently and affordably, significantly improving insurance accessibility. Meanwhile, Yuanbao continuously innovates around different groups’保障 (protection) needs: launching “Yuanbao Care for Women’s Specific Diseases” for women with special health needs; customizing “Yuanbao Care for Middle-aged and Elderly Cancer Prevention Insurance,” extending the coverage age to 80; creating “Yuanbao Guardians for Migrant Workers,” greatly relaxing occupational restrictions; and supporting more ordinary people with pre-existing conditions by launching “Crowd-shared Medical Insurance (No Health Declaration),” covering millions of medical expenses… ensuring保障 (protection) reaches more groups that were previously difficult to serve effectively.

The core of “beneficial” is affordability and high cost-performance, making protection accessible and sufficient for ordinary people. On one hand, Yuanbao坚持 (insists on) “adding coverage without increasing prices,” continuously iterating product保障 (protection) responsibilities, including CAR-T therapies and proton heavy-ion treatments, and expanding out-of-hospital special drug lists; on the other hand, launching core保障 (protection) features like hospitalization deposit advances, medical陪诊 (accompaniment), and critical illness hospitalization allowances, greatly enhancing保障 (protection) experience. For example, the critical illness hospitalization allowance in some Yuanbao products increased from 100 yuan/day with a total payout of 18,000 yuan in 2021 to 800 yuan/day with a maximum payout of 144,000 yuan by 2025, doubling保障 (protection)力度 (strength), alleviating the economic pressure on families caused by income interruption.

Additionally, Yuanbao continues to expand its product保障 (protection) scope, allowing users to more intuitively feel the practical value of insurance. Previously, mainstream million-dollar medical insurance products often had a 10,000 yuan deductible, and many users could not claim benefits if their expenses did not reach the deductible, weakening the actual benefit experience. In response, Yuanbao upgraded the “Super Medical Insurance” series, emphasizing “zero deductible,” increasing the payout ratio within 10,000 yuan to 60%, and adding optional responsibilities for purchased drugs, all at a more cost-effective price. After the release of the first “Commercial Insurance Innovative Drug Directory” by the health insurance bureau last year, Yuanbao promptly optimized the “Super Medical” series to fully cover this directory, once again precisely responding to the public’s urgent demand for cutting-edge therapies and quality medicines under the new policy cycle.

Looking back at Yuanbao’s six years of development, it is clear that the company has always focused on the two core principles of “universal” and “beneficial,” continuously innovating products based on the real protection needs of ordinary people, making these two aspects mutually reinforcing and driving each other, solving the core problem of “being able to buy and afford” for ordinary people. To date, Yuanbao has collaborated with dozens of well-known insurance companies to co-develop over a thousand insurance保障 (protection) plans, forming a full-chain product matrix covering basic medical保障 (protection), critical illness防护 (protection), and特色场景保障 (special scene protection).

02 Claims “Experience Battle”: Technology Empowerment to Improve Service Efficiency and Warmth

In an era of increasing product homogenization and where user experience is a key competitive factor, claims are no longer just a post-fulfillment process but a critical scene to measure service value and verify the sincerity of inclusive promises.

As a result, more and more insurance intermediary platforms are accelerating their transformation from “sales intermediaries” to “professional service providers,” with claims services being their core “trump card” to break through competition and create differentiation. Today, the value of claims in intermediary platforms has long surpassed simple “document couriers,” instead using intelligent digital tools to improve processing efficiency, enhance process transparency, and act as professional facilitators providing supportive, warm, and predictable full-process services.

Taking Yuanbao as an example, leveraging its strong technological DNA, it has carried out in-depth practices in科技赋能 (technology-enabled) claims. Its “One-Click Upload” feature allows users to upload various medical receipts in a mixed manner, with the system automatically recognizing, classifying, and extracting key information, transforming the previously cumbersome manual document processing into efficient, intelligent computation, greatly lowering the claim operation threshold for users. The “Yuanbao 2025 Claims Annual Report” shows that, under technological empowerment, the fastest claim settlement time for Yuanbao’s medical insurance has been reduced to 3.4 minutes.

Beyond efficiency, claims still involve many complex situations requiring “human” intervention. To address this, Yuanbao launched the “Ruyi Compensation” butler-style claims service, centered on “helping,催促 (expediting), and coordinating,” building a professional intermediary service layer that acts as supporter and mediator between users and insurance companies. For users unfamiliar with the process, claims consultants provide one-on-one full-process assistance; when disputes arise, a professional team intervenes to coordinate.

Data shows that by 2025, the “Ruyi Compensation” service has successfully mediated 141 health insurance claim disputes, helping users receive an average compensation of 35,000 yuan per case. A typical example is Mr. Gui, a Yuanbao user who applied for a kidney disease claim. The insurance company initially offered a payout far below expectations, but after Yuanbao’s claims mediation team intervened, the final payout was increased to 100,000 yuan.

In fact, after years of industry deep cultivation and refinement, a more efficient, transparent, and warm insurance claims service system is accelerating under technological empowerment. The “2024 China Internet Insurance Consumer Insights Report” shows that 36% of consumers have experienced the convenience brought by智能理赔 (intelligent claims) tools, significantly boosting overall claims satisfaction, which for the first time exceeded 95% in 2024.

03 Making the Progress of the Times and Technology a Hope for Everyone

In recent years, the national government has attached great importance to inclusive insurance, issuing policies such as the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Inclusive Insurance” and the “Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of Inclusive Finance in Banking and Insurance,” continuously promoting the high-quality development of inclusive insurance toward greater accessibility, affordability, and sustainability. At the same time, a multi-layered medical保障 (protection) system has been improved, and the integration of医保 (medical insurance) and commercial insurance data has accelerated, laying a制度 (system) and environment foundation for improving health insurance claims efficiency and service experience.

The rapid development and service upgrades of inclusive insurance are also inseparable from the underlying support of digital intelligence technology: mobile internet enables online services to reach more people; big data and AI technologies deeply permeate the entire process of pricing, underwriting, customer service, and claims, becoming the core engines for industry quality improvement, efficiency enhancement, and accelerated普惠 (inclusive) implementation.

Amid the wave of policy-driven深化 (deepening) of inclusive insurance and the reshaping of the industry by digital intelligence, Yuanbao’s growth trajectory is a prime example of industry leadership. Since its founding in 2019, Yuanbao has proactively布局 (laid out) and always stayed at the forefront of technological evolution. Reports indicate that from early applications like GPT-2 and BERT to recent in-depth use of large models such as RAG, Agent, and multimodal models, Yuanbao’s team has accumulated a vast amount of real data from insurance and healthcare fields, currently building an intelligent insurance service system covering intelligent recommendation, claims, and customer service.

Over the past few years, AI technology has advanced rapidly, sparking industry discussions on model capabilities, parameter scales, and application boundaries. For Yuanbao, the value of technology lies not only in提升 (improving) efficiency and reducing marginal costs but also in truly understanding human needs and responding to real risk scenarios.

In Yuanbao’s sixth anniversary brand video, the power of technology and services is visualized as flowing particles silently守护 (guarding) thousands of households. In reality, this “invisible” technological力量 (power) stems from engineers’ lines of code and continuous technical iterations. Currently, over 70% of Yuanbao employees are technical personnel, with more than 10% specializing in AI, forming a solid technical team that is an important force for科技向善 (technology for good) and民生守护 (protecting people’s livelihoods).

From laying the foundation of inclusive health insurance with million-dollar medical insurance, to implementing惠民保 (惠民保,惠民 insurance) in many regions nationwide; from focusing on health protection to covering a broader population, the health insurance industry is entering a new stage of深度普惠 (deep inclusive development) and service升级 (upgrade). Represented by Yuanbao, the practice of科技普惠 (technology-enabled inclusive) is accelerating the realization of the beautiful vision of “everyone having health insurance.”

Professor Zhu Junsheng pointed out that in the future, inclusive insurance will evolve toward更精准 (more precise),更长期 (more long-term), and更系统化 (more systematic), with technology playing a key role. As mentioned in the brand video “Dedicated to Every Important Ordinary Person”: “Let the progress of the times and technology become a hope that falls on everyone, and let AI and love’s守护 (protection) become the力量 (power) for every family to move forward with安心 (peace of mind).” This may be the best interpretation of the value of insurance technology—when insurance科技 (technology) finally sheds its cold exterior, it will become a hope that falls on everyone, protecting each small yet resilient individual, and growing towards a better future.