G20, China and mutually-financed health insurance

The weekend before last saw the culmination of eight months of hard work in the form of a meeting held in Hangzhou during the B20 summit (the “Business 20”, an event within the G20 summit bringing together policymakers, prominent business leaders and experts from the twenty participating states) in which we submitted our recommendations on global economic growth to the G20, chaired by China’s president Xi Jinping.

As a member of the B20 “Financing Growth” taskforce and representative of both MGEN and ICMIF, I am delighted that these recommendations duly take into account the priorities we have been advocating throughout this period: acknowledging and encouraging the role played by mutual health-insurance providers in promoting financial and insurance-based protection; urging regulators to consider the suitability of prudential measures and make allowance for alternative economic models; stepping up educational initiatives geared towards widespread, “enlightened” and secure use of digital innovations in the world of finance and insurance; prioritising a growth model that is also more community-oriented and participative.

The main guidelines covered by Xi Jinping during his 50-minute keynote speech at the start of our Hangzhou meeting, in which he laid particular emphasis on the need for an economy whose profits would be more evenly shared among the entire population and on the growth potential inherent to digital innovation, are designed to provide a political framework that is favourable to MGEN’s ambitions in China. 

The guidelines both confirm and support the initial progress we have already made in this area, i.e. the inclusion of the development of supplementary health insurance in the 13th Chinese five-year plan and our cooperation with the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) in testing mutually-financed health insurance models and establishing a regulatory framework that defines the model and safeguards its future development.

The guidelines summarised by the Chinese president, further defined and illustrated by the ambitious presentations given by the heads of China’s leading digital companies (including Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, and Robin Li, chairman of Baidu), leave no doubt as to China’s determination to base growth and economic models on digital technologies and practices, including artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things.

China could therefore turn out to be not only a source of potential growth for mutual health insurance models tailored to local culture and financial conditions, but also a testing ground and incubator for new forms of health mutuals and cover directly inspired by the possibilities offered by digital technology.