China healthcare platform Waterdrop raises 1 billion yuan in funds from investors including Boyu Capital
- Funding will go toward building a professional team in health care insurance and adopting AI in its products
Waterdrop, a Chinese online insurance platform backed by Tencent, has raised more than a billion yuan (US$145 million) in a funding round led by private equity firm Boyu Capital.
Other backers of the series C round include CICC Capital, while earlier investors including Tencent and Gaorong Capital also took part, the Beijing-based start-up said in a release on Wednesday.
Founded by former Meituan Dianping executive Shen Peng in 2016, Waterdrop started as a health care crowdfunding platform for patients and their families before branching into online insurance sales.
The company completed a 500 million yuan series B round led by Tencent in March. Both the internet giant and Boyu Capital are important institutional investors, according to Waterdrop.
Also known as Shuidi in Chinese, Waterdrop brokered insurance policies with annual premiums of over 500 million yuan in May, the company said. About 90 per cent of users bought their first online insurance product through the platform, it said.
Ping An Insurance, China Taiping, and People's Insurance Company of China are among insurers that sell products through Waterdrop. The company charges no commission fees for crowdfunding for medical treatments.
The new funding will bankroll building a professional team in health insurance and adopting artificial intelligence in product development and claims, according to Shen, the company founder and chief executive.
Waterdrop is in a position to combine insurance products with financial relief for those who are already sick, and such a model can help fill in a gap in welfare coverage among Chinese families, Huang Kai, executive director of Boyu Capital, said in a statement.
China is home to the world’s third-largest insurance market and is set to see insurance premiums quadruple to US$2.36 trillion by 2032, surpassing the US as the world’s leader, according to Zurich-based reinsurance company Swiss Re Institute.
Besides Waterdrop, Tencent’s insurance platform WeSure and Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, which owns the Post, have forayed into the online insurance market over the past years using technology-enabled services.
Xiang Hu Bao, a health care coverage product by Ant Financial, has attracted 65 million clients since its launch in October. The product enables users to pay a small monthly fee that goes into a pool to help members stricken by serious diseases.
WeSure said in December it had attracted 20 million monthly active users. First-time insurance buyers are getting younger, according to the company, with almost 40 per cent of internet users under the age of 24 having bought their first insurance policy.
