Is insurance self-media going to be gone?

The author of this article analyzes what the "Notice" on insurance self-media says, what impact the release of the "Notice" will have, and what insurance self-media should do. Suitable for readers related to insurance self-media.

In the past few days, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission has issued documents one after another. First, it required the interest rates of increasing term life insurance products to be adjusted. Now it has issued a notice entitled "Notice on Carrying out Self-Inspection and Rectification of the Compliance of Internet Marketing and Promotion by Insurance Institutions' Sales Personnel . "

After the release of the "Notice", many people thought that insurance self-media seemed to be on the verge of collapse!

Is this true? As an insurance self-media person, how should we deal with this policy?

Today, I will analyze it for you.

1. What exactly does the “Notice” say?

In summary, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission requires insurance institutions to conduct a three-month self-inspection and rectification of the Internet marketing behaviors of the institutions and their sales personnel starting from April 3.

This self-inspection and rectification has almost full coverage, which means that whether it is insurance companies, insurance companies' outsourced sales personnel, or insurance agencies and insurance agents, they all need to undergo self-inspection and rectification.

In addition to all self-media platforms ( such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Video Accounts, and Official Accounts), platforms for self-inspection and rectification, including social scenarios such as Moments, WeChat groups, and QQ groups , will also be listed in the monitoring scope.

The "Notice" highlights 10 violations, among which the following words are frequently mentioned: "one-sided propaganda or exaggeration", "misleading interpretation", "misleading sales", and "unauthorized".

At the same time, the "Notice" also lists the management responsibilities that the institutions should assume, with the more important keywords being " authorization", "filing", "training", "supervision", etc.

In other words, this self-inspection and rectification is still aimed at some exaggerated, misleading and other behaviors, and it also clearly points out that single-dimensional comparison of insurance products is not allowed.

In other words, it’s not that you shouldn’t do it, it’s that you have to do it as required!

What kind of publicity would be considered misleading or exaggerated?

There are no clear regulations in the "Notice", but based on a series of cases of illegal advertising after the release of the "New Insurance Law" in 2020, we can conclude that descriptions that do not appear in the insurance regulations are not allowed to appear in promotional copy .

The overall trend is that financial insurance is relatively more prone to violations .

2. What impact will the "Notice" have after its release?

Let me first talk about my opinion on this policy. I think it is good for the entire insurance industry .

Over the past year or so, I have followed hundreds of thousands of insurance self-media. These self-media people can basically be divided into three categories: one is the sales staff of insurance companies, the second is non-insurance practitioner self-media, and the third is practitioners of third-party insurance agencies.

These three types of people adopt different strategies when creating content. Non-insurance industry self-media usually seeks to gain traffic by vilifying insurance, while third-party insurance agencies focus on cost-effectiveness and online insurance. Only insurance sales from insurance companies will introduce insurance products in a comprehensive manner.

Among these three types of content, the first two often receive higher views, and accordingly, large-scale insurance self-media such as "Shenlanbao" have been born.

Although the "Notice" was sent by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission to various insurance institutions, major self-media platforms will most likely actively cooperate. Under such circumstances, non-insurance practitioners will most likely be completely restricted from publishing insurance content (uncertified accounts are not allowed to publish insurance content) , and insurance institutions must also adjust the direction and ideas of the content (comparison of insurance products in a single dimension is not allowed) . This is actually a good thing for sales personnel of insurance companies.

When online promotion becomes more standardized, it will definitely bring more benefits than disadvantages to the long-term development of the insurance industry.

3. What should insurance self-media do?

1. Complete certification as soon as possible

If you are already an insurance practitioner, use your professional qualification certificate to authenticate your own self-media account as soon as possible.

Of course, you may fail the authentication process, and professionals will be needed to help resolve the issue. (The accompanying group will resolve authentication, traffic, and other account operation issues.)

2. Wait for company policy and actively ask for authorization

The core issue of this incident is the issue of authorization.

For insurance sales staff of insurance companies, obtaining authorization should not be too difficult. After all, the company is happy to see team members actively expand sales channels, so insurance sales staff need to pay close attention to the company's policies and ask for authorization as soon as the company gives the corresponding regulations.

3. Self-examination of past content

Although self-media platforms rarely punish accounts for content they have posted in the past, it is a rectification required by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission after all, so insurance practitioners are advised to check their previous content.

In the next week, I will sort out the cases in which insurance sales were punished for illegal online advertising in the past two years . You can check it yourself based on the cases. (The content will be updated in the running group)

4. Adjust content direction

If nothing unexpected happens, the review standards for insurance content will be stricter in the next three months. For the long-term stable development of the account, it is impossible for the account not to update the content for three months.

Therefore, the most ideal situation is to adjust the content direction within these three months. The specific ideas are as follows:

• Reduce the frequency of publishing content related to insurance products, change the content into customer service stories, or shoot some insurance industry-wide workplace content centered around the team's work status.
• Add content related to your personal image, which can be videos related to daily life and offline activities.
• From the content released by the company, select some high-value content and publish it in a second cut.
• Strengthen self-examination of copywriting, constantly update illegal words according to the rules of new media platforms and violation cases, and actively avoid these illegal words in copywriting. (At present, my running group already has documents on illegal words in the insurance industry, and users of the running group can view them for free)

5. Seek cooperation from a professional running team

In order to cooperate with the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, new media platforms will definitely strengthen supervision of insurance self-media, and traffic restrictions and violations will become the norm for insurance self-media in the future.

Insurance practitioners can summarize the violations themselves and then explore solutions, but such an exploration process is often painful and time-consuming. Instead, it is better to seek help from a professional running team. (My running team will answer students' questions about their accounts an unlimited number of times a day).

The above 5 problems can all be well solved in my running group.

Author: Cai Zhao

Source: WeChat public account "I am Cai Zhao (ID: woshicaizhao)"