Leyebao, an online insurance platform for online store owners and their employees across Alibaba’s e-commerce properties, is launched today together by Taobao Insurance, the online insurance arm of Alibaba’s Alifinance, and Taikang.com, the online platform of Taikang Life Insurance. Launched in 2000, Taikang.com was one of the first online insurance services in China.
Taobao Insurance are responsible for building the platform and Taikang would provide all the offerings tailored to those online retailers. As for risk management, the platform will take sales performance and other metrics of every store into consideration.
There are, according to Alibaba, more than 7 million stores on Alibaba platform and over ten million working at those stores. Most of them are in their twenties or early thirties. Alibaba found that 55% of store owners and 45% of their employees are not covered by Social Security. Only 27% of owners and employees are covered by business insurance.
Through Leyebao store owners can buy policies for both themselves and employees. If a employee left one store for another, the policy would still work.
Two policies have already been on the platform. One is on death and cancer that requires a customer to pay 10 yuan (less than 2 dollars) per month; the other is for hospital stays that requires 5 yuan (less than one dollar) per month.
Leyebao will be added to Alipay Wallet, the mobile payment and service app of Alibaba, in this year that customers can manage their policies from mobile.