ZhongAn; connector, stabilizer and now also an accelerator

China’s first online-only insurer ZhongAn announced the launch of ZhongAn Information and Technology Services . Think: a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZhongAn and a technology company on a mission to explore the “ABCD” of technology, aka Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Data. Xing Jiang, the CTO of ZhongAn and the Chairman of ZhongAn Technology, is quoted saying that the new venture is “a new fintech ecosystem, integrating technological research with financial innovation”, with the aim to be an accelerator for both the financial and the healthcare sectors.

ZhongAn, the brainchild of Ant Financial, Tencent and Ping An, is barely 3-years old yet has already accumulated 460 million users and issued over 5.8 billion insurance policies. If you excel at math, that comes out to be ~12 policies per person and this is where you may scratch your head or turn to @doingchinabiz, which explains that ZhongAn’s policies are not your typical insurance policies but rather are innovative products tailored to the online shopper (think: return shipping).