The Traffic Backlash in Internet Insurance: How Didi Insurance, Du Xiaoman Insurance, and Meituan Insurance Are Breaking Through and Rebuilding

Recently, a report sent shockwaves through the insurance industry.

The Insurance Research Team at Fudan University released the '2026 Consumer Protection Report on the Insurance Industry,' which conducted a comprehensive evaluation of 25 major market participants and 89 mainstream products, exposing long-standing industry practices without hesitation.

After this 'health check,' the entire industry fell silent. Between the lines, everyone was talking about the same issue: internet insurance is being devoured by its own traffic.

Platforms like Didi Insurance, Du Xiaoman Financial, and Meituan Insurance are part of our daily lives—they are not only participants in this transformation but also key focal points scrutinized in this 'health check.'

Didi Insurance: It Has a Moat, But Also Compliance Pains

Didi entered the insurance business with a high starting point.

Didi Insurance was among the earliest internet platforms to venture into contextual insurance, effectively pioneering the mobility insurance segment. Since initiating its insurance operations in 2016, it has leveraged its high-frequency mobility scenarios—while holding an insurance agency license—to rapidly build a unique competitive barrier, tightly capturing two key customer groups:taxi drivers and general travelers.

Didi's investment in Hyundai Insurance has established a dual-engine model combining intermediary distribution with equity stakes in insurers—unlike typical pure-channel players, this is a true asset-heavy model. Built on this framework, Didi has closed the loop across the entire insurance value chain, from risk identification and product design to underwriting and claims settlement, making it one of the very few internet platforms capable of truly internalizing risk.

Leveraging real-world trip scenario data, Didi Insurance has developed multiple customized products such as income protection insurance and ride-order coverage, specifically addressing the protection needs of gig-economy drivers—an advantage traditional insurers simply cannot match.

Yet beneath the shine lies a host of problems, as detailed extensively in a Fudan University report.

Driven by the industry’s focus on premium volume and sales performance, Didi Insurance has fallen into a trap of product homogenization. In an effort to boost conversion rates, some marketing materials deliberately downplay exclusion clauses, leaving core information unclear and causing consumers to purchase policies without fully understanding them.

Customers have also criticized the 'easy to buy, hard to claim' issue: fragmented travel-related insurance products often come with complex terms, and claims typically require submitting numerous cumbersome documents—such as eligibility proofs and income verification—easily leading to disputes.

High-frequency mobility scenarios naturally generate traffic advantages, yet avoiding forced bundling and ensuring compliant customer guidance remain persistent regulatory challenges for Didi Insurance.

On one hand, Didi Insurance possesses irreplaceable deep-scenario capabilities; on the other, it faces compliance issues stemming from a traffic-driven mindset. Its transformation pains reflect a shared dilemma among all context-based insurance platforms.

Du Xiaoman Insurance: The Struggle for Professional Depth Among Traffic Giants

Du Xiaoman Insurance Brokerage (formerly Jinfeng Insurance), spun off from Baidu’s ecosystem, commands access to a vast base of credit customers and wealth management product buyers, securing its position as a representative financial-sector insurance platform in the digital insurance landscape.

Holding a nationally licensed insurance brokerage license, Du Xiaoman aggregates products from multiple insurers, offering clients a wide selection. It also leverages big data and artificial intelligence to profile customer needs and match products to users, significantly reducing online application time and building a natural competitive moat through brand strength, capital, and technology.

But success comes from traffic, and failure stems from it as well.

As revealed in Fudan University's report, practices such as packaging financial products to resemble wealth management instruments and making false promises about returns are especially common on financial aggregation platforms.

In an effort to rapidly convert a large volume of financial customers into insurance policyholders and boost conversion rates, Du Xiaoman Insurance’s promotion of certain products has shown clear signs of misleading consumers. On the platform’s webpages, eye-catching slogans like 'low premiums, high returns' are deliberately amplified, while critical information—such as health disclosure requirements, waiting periods, and exclusions—is minimized and downplayed. This leaves customers inadequately informed before purchasing, often leading to disputes later.

Moreover, as an online, comprehensive financial marketplace, Du Xiaoman Insurance exhibits evident service shortcomings. Its strength lies in product marketing, not in delivering personalized protection solutions. When confronted with complex needs—such as family-wide coverage or customized insurance plans—it lacks the professionalism of dedicated offline insurance agents. Consequently, some customers experience significant gaps between their expectations and actual outcomes during claims processing or policy cancellations, diminishing their overall user experience.

Traffic can be quantified, but human trust cannot be manipulated. For Du Xiaoman Insurance, shedding its 'traffic harvesting' mindset and transforming its technological edge into superior service quality is paramount.

If it enhances disclosure transparency, simplifies explanations of policy terms, and addresses its deficiencies in professional service, its natural ecosystem and technological advantages could earn lasting user trust.

Meituan Insurance: The Lightest Approach, the Heaviest Responsibility

Among the three platforms, Meituan Insurance is the lightest—and the most distinctive.

Meituan entered the insurance sector by acquiring an insurance brokerage license. Throughout this process, it focused exclusively on front-end sales and back-end system integration, without involvement in underwriting, positioning itself strictly as a lightweight, asset-light distribution channel. Leveraging its extensive local lifestyle service scenarios, Meituan has embedded insurance offerings into nearly 100 consumption touchpoints—including food delivery, in-store dining, hotel bookings, and intra-city logistics—reaching hundreds of millions of everyday consumers, small and medium-sized merchants, and delivery riders.

Capitalizing on its broad scenario-based advantage, Meituan Insurance has developed integrated products such as Meituan Business Protection, offering merchants comprehensive coverage including property insurance and business interruption compensation. By harnessing the platform’s big data, it has built AI-powered risk control models that reduce the likelihood of incident occurrences within these scenarios.

The 'insurance + services + risk control' approach transforms insurance from a mere financial product into foundational infrastructure for the local living environment, significantly strengthening ties between users and merchants.

However, Meituan’s extreme 'asset-light' model has also brought unavoidable structural weaknesses, which represent the biggest constraint on its growth.

First, marketing practices are severely chaotic. In widely used scenarios, promotional materials for certain products fail to meet compliance standards, product names are highly ambiguous, and delay-compensation products like 'On-Time Guarantee' are even mistakenly marketed as formal insurance offerings. Moreover, constant use of phrases such as 'limited-time benefits' and 'exclusive discounts' pushes users into impulsive insurance purchases—a clear manifestation of the contextual marketing disorder highlighted in the report.

An even bigger issue is the separation of responsibility and authority.Meituan Insurance only handles sales; the final claims review and loss assessment authority remains entirely with partner insurers.

In the event of claims disputes, the boundaries of responsibility between the platform and insurers are unclear—the platform deflects blame to the insurer, while the insurer counters that the platform failed to provide adequate disclosure—leaving customers caught in the middle with nowhere to turn, resulting in a widespread problem where 'buying insurance is easy, but filing claims is hard.'

Meituan Insurance, which prioritizes long-term ecosystem value over short-term commissions, demonstrates strong resilience to change. However, overcoming the limitations of its asset-light operational model and addressing service gaps remain critical challenges it must resolve.

It’s time for internet insurance to move beyond its traffic-driven frenzy.

This report from Fudan University is not merely a critique targeting three specific platforms; rather, it serves as a wake-up call.

Over the past decade, internet insurance—built on traffic, embedded scenarios, and speed—has grown recklessly, breaking through traditional geographic and distribution channel barriers to bring insurance into millions of households. Yet alongside this rapid expansion, tensions between traffic-centric thinking and the fundamental nature of insurance have intensified, leading to frequent problems.

The entire industry stands at a crossroads, and four issues cannot be ignored:

1. The logic of converting traffic into profit cannot prevail over the long-termism inherent in insurance.

The digital world has grown accustomed to rapidly acquiring followers, quickly converting them, and making fast profits. However, insurance is fundamentally a long-cycle, protection-intensive, and service-driven industry. Focusing solely on premium income and conversion rates leads to misleading sales practices, false advertising, and inducements to purchase policies.

The industry must accelerate its transformation and upgrade—shifting from 'traffic-driven operations' to 'user-value-driven operations.' Performance metrics should evolve from evaluating scale-based data to assessing ongoing service quality indicators such as claims satisfaction and policy renewal rates.

2. Information transparency is the only way to restore the industry’s credibility.

The root cause of disputes in online insurance lies in information asymmetry. Many platforms, in pursuit of sleek, minimalist interfaces and higher traffic, omit essential policy terms. As a result, critical information—such as exclusions, health disclosures, and claims limitations—is technically accessible but effectively invisible. Going forward, the level of detail in information disclosure will determine the trustworthiness of the entire industry. Platforms must stop playing tricks and clearly present key information so customers can buy insurance with full understanding.

3. Contextualization is an advantage—not a breeding ground for manipulative marketing.

Integrating insurance into real-life scenarios—such as travel, shopping, and local services—is the greatest innovation of internet insurance, achieving perfect alignment between risk exposure and coverage. However, contextualization must not justify pre-checked boxes, forced purchases, or impulsive sales tactics. True contextual insurance should precisely meet customer needs when they arise, rather than exploiting blind spots in user experience to harvest personal data.

4. Technology should serve people—not deception.

Emerging technologies like big data, AI, and large language models should not merely aim to better understand user psychology to boost sales conversions. Their fundamental purpose is to enhance service experiences: automatically reviewing claims documentation, clearly explaining policy terms, proactively predicting risks, and designing tailored protection plans. Only when technology returns to its core mission of serving customers can internet insurance finally shed its negative reputation of being 'easy to buy, hard to claim.'

In short, the first half of online insurance was a feast driven by traffic. Players like Didi Insurance, Du Xiaoman, and Meituan Insurance leveraged scenarios, technology, and ecosystems to bring insurance to an unprecedented scale. But the game has changed in the second half: it’s no longer about who has the most traffic, but rather who can ensure customers 'buy with clarity, claim with ease, and stay with peace of mind'—only they will survive.

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