On December 28, mutual treasure announced that in order to protect all members’ rights and interests in the longer term, after careful thinking and discussion, it will stop operation at 24:00 on January 28, 2022. From the date of announcement, the existing mutual treasure members will no longer participate in mutual assistance and sharing, and users can independently choose a new guarantee scheme according to their needs.
At present, the number of mutual treasure members is about 75 million. In order to properly accommodate users of such a large scale, what shutdown scheme has mutual treasure given?
all subsequent assessments shall be borne by the platform
For mutual treasure participants, they are most concerned about relevant issues. From the date of announcement to the closure on January 28, 2021, mutual treasure will face three assessments. Who will pay the assessment during the transition period?
According to the announcement, from the date of the announcement, the members of mutual treasure will no longer participate in mutual aid sharing, and all subsequent mutual aid funds will be borne by mutual treasure. This means that the apportionment originally scheduled to be deducted on December 28 and the two apportionment meetings in January 2022 are all borne by the mutual treasure platform, and users do not need to apportion.
The announcement also shows that the unfortunate sick members before the shutdown can still continue to apply for mutual assistance from the mutual treasure platform within 180 days (including 180 days) from the date of initial diagnosis. Mutual treasure platform will be reviewed according to the existing mutual aid rules, and all mutual aid funds approved will be borne by mutual treasure platform without member sharing.
countdown to the curtain call of the network mutual aid industry
The form of mutual assistance has the nature of social experiment and exploration in China. In 2011, the first online mutual aid platform “anti cancer commune” was born in China. In October 2018, mutual treasure appeared, and China’s online mutual aid industry really developed. Mutual treasure innovatively put forward models such as “real name system”, “guarantee before allocation” and “no capital precipitation”. In one year after its launch, more than 100 million users participated. Among them, nearly 60% of the members come from third tier and below cities.
The “success” of the mutual treasure model has also attracted Internet giants such as meituan, 360, Baidu and Sina to enter this field one after another. In the past few years, according to incomplete statistics, the cumulative number of seriously ill people assisted by China’s mutual aid program has been more than 200000. The network mutual assistance represented by mutual treasure has played a positive role in improving the security level of Lbx Pharmacy Chain Joint Stock Company(603883) and popularizing the awareness of health security.
Although it has high cost performance, network mutual assistance always has its limitations. This also makes network mutual assistance never become the mainstream security model. More importantly, the mutual aid plan is not insurance, and there has been no clear regulatory authorities and industry regulations since its birth.
In August 2020, Baidu’s lighting mutual aid was shut down, opening the prelude to the exit of the internet mutual aid platform. Since 2021, at least 10 mutual aid platforms, including meituan mutual aid, easy mutual aid and waterdrop mutual aid invested by Tencent, 360 mutual aid, Xiaomi mutual aid and mutual treasure, have announced the shutdown.
members can switch to insurance products with low threshold
Public information shows that there are 75 million members of mutual treasure. According to the survey of 42000 mutual treasure members conducted by Nankai University at the end of 2019, 76% of the respondents joined mutual treasure because they “worry about getting sick and have more protection”. It can be seen that the main demand of mutual treasure members is serious illness protection. After the shutdown, what kind of protection can these 75 million members choose in the future?
In this regard, mutual treasure suggested in the announcement that members should independently select appropriate support products as a new support scheme according to their own support needs. The author saw on the mutual treasure page that if members choose to participate in the relevant one-year serious illness insurance, there is no need to recalculate the waiting period, no need to re inform their health, and there is a free period of 3 months.
Professor Guo Jinlong, director of the insurance and economic development research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that for mutual assistance plans with a user scale such as mutual treasure, while doing a good job in follow-up work, it is the most responsible, secure and feasible way to fully consider the continuation of user health security and suggest users to choose a new security scheme independently.
Although the closure of such a large mutual aid program is regrettable, for the members of mutual treasure, three years later, they also have more choices in the market. In the past two years, in addition to basic medical security, the state has taken more special measures to increase health security for Lbx Pharmacy Chain Joint Stock Company(603883) . For example, the “Huimin insurance” products launched by various places have been endorsed by the government, with low threshold and low price. Therefore, the network mutual aid has also completed the phased task.
(brokerage China)
