Free health insurance initiated, to lift villagers out of their poverty

Hexie Health Insurance Co Ltd has donated 49.74 million yuan ($7.22 million) of personal accident insurance to villagers in East China's Shandong province as part of an effort to lift rural citizens out of poverty.

Each resident of Xujiagang village in Rushan, Shandong province, who is under the age of 80, was granted an average insurance of more than 100,000 yuan. The insurance period is one year.

Listed as a provincial poor village in 2014, Xujiagang now has 208 families, 115 of which were certified by the local government as living in poverty.

The company has also donated office equipment worth up to 10,000 yuan to the village.

A subsidiary of China's Anbang Insurance Group, Hexie Health Insurance was founded in 2006.

Anbang Insurance Group covers property, life, health and endowment insurance. Its assets total more than 1.9 trillion yuan with 35 million customers worldwide, according to the group's website.

The Heilongjiang branch of the Anbang Property and Casualty Insurance Co Ltd has also provided insurance for the planting of sunflower seeds and potatoes in Gannan county in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. Some 172 families received insurance worth roughly 5.14 million yuan covering more than 16.93 square kilometers of farmland.

Since 2016, 653 poor families in Binxian county, Zhaoyuan county and Mishan city in Heilongjiang province who could not pay the premiums for planting insurance have been given the coverage as a matter of priority. The procedure for settlement of claims was also simplified.

In June 2016, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission released a plan to encourage insurance enterprises to help in the fight against poverty.

Xiang Junbo, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission said at the Two Sessions held in 2016 that the insurance industry could play a major role in poverty alleviation by developing serious disease insurance, agricultural insurance, targeted vulnerable group insurance and industrial insurance.

He said: "Forty-two percent of the nation's poor suffer from illness, more than 10 million of whom were diagnosed with serious or chronic diseases. Buying insurance is an effective way to avoid being stuck in poverty because of illness. Most of the poor population live in the countryside, carrying out farm work. Insurance can also reduce the risk of losing income due to natural disaster."

He said special insurance services should target vulnerable groups, including left-behind children, the disabled and elderly residents who may have lost their only child.

By the end of 2016, serious disease insurance covered 970 million people in China, more than 5 million of whom received insurance policy payouts, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

The number of families covered by agricultural insurance reached 204 million, providing a risk guarantee worth up to 2.16 trillion yuan every year.

Hexie Health Insurance began to develop serious disease insurance policies in 2013. More than 4.2 million people have purchased the insurance to date. Claims to date have totaled 115 million yuan.

In the future, the Shandong branch of Hexie Health Insurance will provide free accident insurance for local left-behind children, together with the Shandong Working Committee for the Care of the Next Generation. It will also develop new insurance products to target the elderly in Shandong who live alone, may have lost an only child or are disabled, according to an executive manager.

chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn