How insurance and financial services reach customers in China

A foreign insurer, bank or fund house can’t sell to mainland Chinese customers through Tmall Global or any other cross-border store. Insurance and investment products need a mainland license, and since September 30, 2026, so does marketing them online. What works runs through a licensed entity or partner in China, and the customer ends up on WeChat.

That rules out the playbook most China market content assumes, the one built on a Tmall store and a bonded warehouse. The cross-border retail import list covers goods. A policy or a fund is a regulated service, and the law names who may sell it.

Only insurers set up under the Insurance Law, and other insurance bodies the law allows, may run insurance business. Companies and organizations in China must insure domestic risks with insurers in China, and a foreign insurer’s representative office may not do insurance business. Source: Insurance Law of the People’s Republic of China (保险法), articles 6, 7 and 80, 2015 amendment, via the State Administration for Market Regulation (国家市场监督管理总局). https://www.samr.gov.cn/zw/zfxxgk/fdzdgknr/bgt/art/2023/art_4c715a53f3d4402c89f62ae77809f638.html

The front door is open to firms that get licensed, and more foreign insurers are walking through it.

China lifted the foreign ownership cap on joint-venture life insurers on January 1, 2020. Source: Securities Times (证券时报), January 2025. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/1480828.html

Foreign insurers’ share of China’s insurance premiums rose from 4% in 2013 to 9%, the head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration (国家金融监督管理总局), Li Yunze, said in June 2025. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), June 2025. https://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bank/bank_hydt/2025-06-18/doc-infanfym5817481.shtml

The channels that reach Chinese customers, and what each costs

Every figure was checked against its source in October 2026, and the sources follow. The Yuanbao line is our arithmetic from its filing.

The agent force is less than a quarter of its 2019 size. The regulator has also stretched out how agents get paid.

China had about 2.126 million individual insurance agents at the end of March 2026, down from a peak of 9.12 million in 2019. Source: Jiemian (界面新闻), via Sina Finance, May 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2026-05-19/doc-inhymuma3126921.shtml

Commission on life policies with payment terms of 10 years or more must be paid out over at least five years, under an April 2025 regulatory notice. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), April 2025. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2025-04-19/doc-inetsatz7328657.shtml

In the first quarter of 2026, banks sold more life insurance than agents did.

Banks brought in 462.3 billion RMB, or 47.77%, of the 967.8 billion RMB in premiums written by 63 life insurers in the first quarter of 2026. Individual agents brought in 38.76%. Source: Securities Daily (证券日报), via the Wuhan Local Financial Administration, May 2026. https://jrj.wuhan.gov.cn/ztzl_57/xyrd/bxy/202605/t20260525_2768470.shtml

From July 1, 2026, insurers may pay banks only compliant commission, with no other sales-related fees. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), July 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/wm/2026-07-03/doc-inifpqkw3648346.shtml

The online platforms are the shelf. They carry the insurer’s product, and they keep the user.

Ant Insurance works with more than 90 insurers. Source: China News Service (中国新闻网), February 2026. https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2026/02-03/10564653.shtml

WeSure, Tencent’s insurance platform, has served more than 100 million users since it launched in 2017. Its partners include Samsung Fire & Marine, a foreign-invested insurer. Source: China Securities Journal (中国证券报), May 2026. https://www.cs.com.cn/yh/bx/2026/05/26/detail_2026052610014236.html

Yuanbao, a listed online insurance intermediary, spent 2,217.2 million RMB on selling and marketing in 2025 and sold about 30.7 million new policies. Source: Yuanbao Inc., fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 results, March 2026. https://www.manilatimes.net/2026/03/18/tmt-newswire/globenewswire/yuanbao-inc-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2025-unaudited-financial-results/2302540

Short video is where many buyers first hear about a product. (It’s also where the platforms are cleaning house hardest, so expect the rules below to bite there first.)

42% of China’s online insurance buyers learn about insurance through WeChat, Weibo or Moments, and 39% through short-video apps, a 2025 study by Yuanbao and a research center at Tsinghua University’s PBC School of Finance found. Source: China National Radio (央广网), May 2026. https://www.cnr.cn/jrpd/mxhq/20260512/t20260512_527617869.shtml

Douyin removed more than 45,000 non-compliant financial posts in the third quarter of 2026, acted on more than 1,000 accounts, and cancelled all 6,888 of its “wealth adviser” certifications. Source: 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), September 2026. https://m.21jingji.com/article/20260921/herald/c474648451a908b7a1315d191a42a10c.html

Xiaohongshu’s first financial community convention requires a license first and platform certification second, and bans borrowed or rented licenses. The platform removed more than 1.01 million financial notes and 157,000 accounts over six months. Source: Tencent News (腾讯新闻), September 2026. https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260915A0C20Q00

WeChat is the primary channel for this category, and the reason is ownership. A lead from anywhere else ends up as a WeCom contact in a licensed salesperson’s phone, and the renewal conversation happens there years later.

More than 14 million companies and organizations use WeCom, and businesses serve more than 750 million WeChat users a day through it. Source: Yicai (第一财经), August 2025. https://www.yicai.com/news/102783091.html

Weixin and WeChat had 1,439 million combined monthly active users at June 30, 2026. Source: Tencent Holdings, second quarter 2026 results, August 2026. https://www.tencent.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Tencent-Announces-2026-Second-Quarter-Results.pdf

An overseas entity pays a one-off review fee of US$99 for each WeChat verification application. Source: WeChat Open Community (微信开放社区), June 2025. https://developers.weixin.qq.com/community/develop/article/doc/000e64388c0f107faf739efcd66813

A common path is short. A buyer sees a licensed salesperson’s Channels video or meets them at a bank counter, adds them on WeCom, and gets the policy link from the insurer’s mini program. The service account then carries the policy documents and the renewal reminders. Every step stays inside one app.

WeChat polices the category too. Channels, its video feed, requires insurance accounts to verify, and Tencent swept its ads before the new rules began.

WeChat Channels accounts that offer insurance services, such as product recommendations, must hold insurance-practitioner or institution verification, under a convention Tencent published in March 2026. Source: Securities Times (证券时报), March 2026. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3699887.html

Tencent checked financial ads across its platforms ahead of the new rules, took down non-compliant ads, and banned accounts with no financial credentials. Source: Shanghai Securities News (上海证券报), via Xinhua (新华网), September 2026. https://www.news.cn/money/20260918/12e005358d6141b294d519190237c823/c.html

Intermediaries are the closest thing this category has to distributors. They hold the license to sell many insurers’ products.

China had 2,506 professional insurance intermediaries at the end of 2025. Source: China Banking and Insurance News (中国银行保险报), via Sina Finance, August 2026. https://finance.sina.cn/bank/yhgd/2026-08-14/detail-ininhxpm9280955.d.html

Intermediaries took 72.2% of China’s 184.55 billion RMB in internet property insurance premiums in 2025. Source: National Business Daily (每日经济新闻), via Sina Finance, citing the Insurance Association of China, August 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2026-08-19/doc-ininwiep9311904.shtml

Hong Kong is the offline channel, and it’s a big one. The customer comes to the seller.

Mainland visitors bought HK$62.8 billion of new Hong Kong policies in 2024, up more than 6%, on the Insurance Authority’s figures. Source: Cailian Press (财联社), April 2025. https://www.cls.cn/detail/2016452

The Insurance Authority stopped publishing the mainland-visitor figure from the first quarter of 2025. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), April 2026. https://finance.sina.cn/insurance/hydt/2026-04-27/detail-inhvxxww8989618.d.html

Wealth managers have a narrower bridge, open to residents of the Greater Bay Area through banks and brokers on both sides.

Under the revised Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect rules, in force from February 26, 2024, an individual’s quota rose to 3 million RMB from 1 million RMB. Source: China Banking and Insurance News (中国银行保险报), via Sina Finance, February 2024. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2024-02-29/doc-inaksefw5633240.shtml

More than 180,000 individuals had joined Wealth Management Connect by the end of June 2026, with 140.3 billion RMB in cross-border remittances. Source: China News Service (中新社), July 2026. https://www.locpg.hk/20260728/e4509bca49aa4df4868295e8e7616552/c.html

The license comes first, and now it covers marketing

The Insurance Law sets who may sell, and it prices the breach.

Running commercial insurance business illegally gets the operation shut down, the illegal income confiscated, and a fine of one to five times that income, or 200,000 to 1 million RMB where the income is under 200,000 RMB. Source: Insurance Law of the People’s Republic of China (保险法), article 158, 2015 amendment, via the State Administration for Market Regulation. https://www.samr.gov.cn/zw/zfxxgk/fdzdgknr/bgt/art/2023/art_4c715a53f3d4402c89f62ae77809f638.html

The internet insurance rules, in force since February 2021, spell out what an unlicensed firm can’t do online.

Internet insurance business may only be run by licensed insurance institutions. Others may not give product advice, compare products, calculate or quote premiums, design cover, handle applications or collect premiums. Source: China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, Measures for the Supervision of Internet Insurance Business, Order 2020 No. 13, articles 3 and 23, December 2020. https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-12/14/content_5569402.htm

The newest rule reaches the marketing itself.

From September 30, 2026, a foreign institution that offers financial products to mainland residents without a license counts as illegal financial activity, and online marketing of it is banned. Marketing through Official Accounts, livestreams and short video must run on the institution’s own platform or on accounts it legally opened, and the marketers must be its staff. Insurance is named as a financial product. Source: People’s Bank of China and seven other regulators, Measures for the Administration of Online Marketing of Financial Products, Announcement 2026 No. 9, via the Cyberspace Administration of China (国家网信办), April 2026. https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-04/24/c_1778769008779432.htm

Hong Kong has its own line, and both sides enforce it.

Mainland residents must go to Hong Kong in person to buy and sign a Hong Kong policy. A Hong Kong policy bought in the mainland is an illegal “underground policy” and is not protected by mainland law. Source: Xinhua (新华网), reporting the China Insurance Regulatory Commission’s risk warning, April 2016. http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-04/26/c_128930562.htm

Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority says licensed Hong Kong intermediaries may not solicit insurance business in the mainland, tells mainland visitors to buy in Hong Kong in person, and calls its stance on unlicensed selling zero tolerance. The same report found a WeChat official account run by a Guangdong agency branch steering readers to a planner’s WeChat for Hong Kong policies, outside that agency’s licensed scope. Source: Beijing News (新京报), via Sina Finance, October 2024. https://finance.sina.com.cn/money/insurance/bxdt/2024-10-15/doc-incsrqpv0818946.shtml

The Shenzhen and Guangdong bureaus of the national regulator launched a campaign against illegal sales of overseas insurance across all banks and insurers in October 2024. Source: 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), October 2024. https://www.21jingji.com/article/20241014/herald/ff62795fba9d7c2bb4c14d8321b0de57.html

What a customer costs, and how long the sale takes

We found no dated, published figure for what a qualified insurance lead costs in China. Here’s what can be sourced.

Start with a listed seller that discloses both numbers. Yuanbao’s filing works out to about 72 RMB of selling and marketing per new policy in 2025 (our arithmetic: 2,217.2 million RMB over 30.7 million policies). The same spend also serves existing customers, so treat it as a rough floor for online sales only.

Consumer lending, where the trade press does track the figure, runs far higher.

Consumer lenders paid an average of 1,300 to 2,000 RMB to acquire a customer, and the cost of short-video feed traffic rose from about 1,300 RMB in 2020 to 2,100 RMB by mid-2024. Source: Sina Finance (新浪财经), March 2025. https://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bank/bank_hydt/2025-03-31/doc-inerqfeh6932568.shtml

We found no dated survey of how long a Chinese buyer takes to choose a policy. What the rules do fix is the end of the sale. A long-term policy can still be cancelled in the cooling-off window, and the agent’s commission now arrives over five years.

Bank-sold insurance policies longer than one year must carry a 15-day cooling-off period. Source: China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, notice 2019 No. 179, August 2019. https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2019-12/03/content_5457853.htm

So count a customer once the policy survives the cooling-off period, and judge a channel by its renewals.

The verdict: get licensed or partner, then build on WeChat

For a foreign insurer or asset manager, the choice comes down to whose license the customer sits under.

Your own mainland entity is the long route. A foreign insurer can own one outright now, and it keeps the customer. The faster route is a licensed partner, a Chinese insurer or a bank or a platform like WeSure, whose line-up already includes a foreign-invested insurer. Then the partner owns the relationship. Write data access and service standards into the contract before launch, because you won’t get them later. Two clauses matter most. Who keeps the WeCom contacts if the deal ends? And how fast does the partner answer a lead your brand paid for?

Fund houses and private banks have fewer doors still. Wealth Management Connect lets Greater Bay Area residents buy across the border inside a 3 million RMB quota, and licensed banks and brokers on each side do the selling. A fund that wants that shelf needs one of them to carry it.

The Hong Kong route works if you’re licensed there. Market and sell in Hong Kong. Keep every message aimed at mainland residents off mainland platforms.

Whichever route you take, WeChat is the build. That means a verified service account in the licensed entity’s name and WeCom on every licensed salesperson’s phone. Any Channels, Douyin or RedNote account that markets a product belongs to the institution, as the new rules require. The service account and mini program build sits with ChinaWebFoundry, the group’s China web and hosting practice. For how the platforms tie into a sale, our China social hub covers the commerce side.

What our insurance work shows, and what it doesn’t

Our insurance case is from Hong Kong. For Blue Insurance, Hong Kong’s first digital life insurer, we designed a bilingual Chinese and English site and ran the launch campaign with social media and digital advertising. Blue gained 10,000 social media followers in its first month and more than 3,000 newsletter sign-ups in its first week (published case figures).

Those are Hong Kong customers. Under the rules above, a Hong Kong insurer can’t point that funnel at the mainland. What carries over is the build. Every creative in Blue’s launch pointed to one clear next step, so the audience it paid to reach became one it owned.

Where to start

Start with the license question, then the channel. A market entry plan for a financial firm settles which entity holds the customer before a yuan goes into media. That’s what our market entry consulting work does. It’s project-based and quoted after the first call.

FAQ

Can a foreign insurer sell policies to Chinese customers online?

Not from abroad. Internet insurance in China can only be run by licensed insurance institutions, and since September 30, 2026 a foreign institution offering financial products to mainland residents without a license counts as illegal financial activity. A foreign insurer sells through its own licensed mainland entity or through a licensed partner.

Can mainland Chinese customers buy a Hong Kong policy?

Yes, in Hong Kong. They have to travel there and sign in person. A Hong Kong policy sold inside the mainland is an illegal “underground policy,” and Hong Kong’s Insurance Authority bars licensed intermediaries from soliciting in the mainland. Mainland visitors bought HK$62.8 billion of new policies in 2024.

Why is WeChat the main channel for financial services in China?

Because the customer stays there. A lead from Douyin, a bank branch or a platform ends up as a WeCom contact of a licensed salesperson, who keeps the customer through renewal. Businesses serve more than 750 million WeChat users a day through WeCom. Any account that markets a product has to belong to the licensed institution.

How much does a qualified insurance lead cost in China?

We found no dated, published figure. The closest sourced numbers: Yuanbao, a listed online intermediary, spent about 72 RMB of selling and marketing per new policy in 2025 on our arithmetic from its filing, and consumer lenders paid 1,300 to 2,000 RMB per customer. Expect a long-term life or wealth client to cost well above the first number.

Talk to us about a licensed route into China for your financial products