经济学人下载:中国的保险行业 确保安全还是留有遗憾?

Finance and economics: Insurance in China Safe or sorry?
财经：中国的保险行业，确保安全还是留有遗憾？

Regulators try to tame the unruly parts of an important industry.
监管部门努力驯服一个重要行业中不守规矩的角色。

EVEN for a country used to rapid growth, the expansion of China’s insurance industry has been something to behold.
即使中国已经习惯了快速发展，保险业的扩张仍值得关注。

Assets managed by insurers have doubled in less than four years to 13.9 trillion yuan ($2.1 trillion) .
在短短4年内保险公司管理的资产就增加了1倍，总额达13.9万亿人民币（相当于2.1万亿美元）。

Their revenues from selling policies have accelerated, climbing 42% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2016.
通过销售保险单，保险公司2016年第一季度所得收入增速加快，与去年同期相比增长了42%。

Most remarkable has been the increase in their workforce.
更值得注意是保险从业人口的增加。

Over the past six months alone, they have added 2m to their sales force.
仅在过去的半年里，保险销售从业人员就增加了200万。

They now employ some 7.2m people, up 120% since the start of last year.
如今，从事保险工作的人数超过720万，自去年年初至今已经增长120%。

Put another way, roughly one in every 50 workers in Chinese cities is selling insurance products.
换句话说，在中国的城市，每50个人大概有1个人就是销售保险产品的。

Fast growth is, in one respect, just what China’s insurance industry needs.
在某种程度上，中国保险行业需要的正是快速发展。

The population will get much older in the coming decades, but the public pension scheme is still in its infancy.
接下来的几十年，人口逐渐老龄化，而中国公共养老金计划尚处在起步阶段。

By supplementing public coverage with private policies, the government hopes that people may just manage to escape penury in their old age.
通过私人保险和公共计划叠加的方法，中国政府希望人们到年老后可以脱贫。

At the moment the government covers roughly a third of medical expenses and insurance companies less than a tenth, leaving individuals to pick up more than half the tab themselves, according to Enhance International, an insurance consultancy.
据一家保险咨询公司Enhance International提供的数据显示，目前在医疗开支上，政府需要支付其中大概1/3，保险公司负责其中不到1/10，而个人则要自行支付账单上剩下超过一半的费用。

That is an especially heavy burden, naturally, for the elderly.
当然，这对老年人来说是非常大的负担。

But excessively rapid growth, built on flimsy business models, risks doing more harm than good.
但是基于脆弱商业模式上的快速发展往往弊大于利。

There have been plenty of worrying signs.
令人担忧的迹象不胜枚举。

The most aggressive firms have scaled up by offering guaranteed returns of 6% or more on short-term investment products, an extremely risky strategy for what is supposed to be a sober and reliable industry.
一些激进的公司通过提供6%甚至更高保底收益率的短期投资产品，迅速扩大自身规模，这种策略对于原本应该是冷静可靠的保险行业来说风险极高。

To deliver these returns despite a lacklustre stockmarket, they have piled on debt and cut into their own margins.
在股市死气沉沉的情况下，要实现这一收益，这些公司已经是债台高筑，甚至削减自己的利润。

Moreover, these short-term products do not necessarily help investors through retirement: people are free to cash out when their policies mature, leaving them with no coverage against death, illness or accidents.
而且这类短期产品不一定能帮助投资者过好退休生活：投资者可以在保单到期时自由套现，这就使得他们在死亡、疾病和意外事故上毫无保障。

Regulators appear to have had enough.
监管部门显然已经不能忍受这种情况了。

In March they announced their strictest rules yet to curb speculative behaviour.
三月份他们宣布了一条至今以来实施过的最严厉规定来制止投机行为。

They barred insurers from selling products with maturities of less than one year and began to phase out those with maturities of less than three years.
他们禁止保险公司销售保期低于1年的产品，同时淘汰保期低于3年的保险产品。

These measures, though somewhat crude, should help prevent mismatches between long-term assets and short-term liabilities.
这些措施虽然有点残忍，但其可以避免固定资产与短期负债失配的问题。

This month regulators turned their attention to some of the insurers that have been among the boldest in expanding.
这个月，监管部门把矛头指向了一些一直以来大胆扩张的保险公司。

First they sent inspectors to Sino Life Insurance Co, which has run down its capital in recent quarters.
监管部门最早派遣人员到富德生命人寿保险股份有限公司检查。这家公司在近几个季度已经削减了公司资本。

Then they went to Anbang, which has increased its assets some 50-fold over the past two years.
随后，检查人员又视察了安邦，而这家公司的资本在过去两年内增加了50倍。

That inspection was a particularly important signal about the clout of regulators.
这一检查行动是一个非常重要的信号，显示出监管的势头之大。

Many observers had assumed that Anbang would receive preferential treatment, thanks to strong political connections (its chairman is married to the granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, a revered former leader) .
因为安邦强大的政治背景，许多观察员猜测其会受到特别优待，因为该公司的总裁是受人尊敬的前国家领导人邓小平的孙女婿）。

But regulators blocked its $14 billion bid earlier this year for Starwood, a big international hotel chain, and now seem to be clipping its wings at home.
但是监管部门在今年早期就叫停了安邦对国际连锁酒店喜达屋集团价值140亿美元的竞标。现在，监管部门似乎正在限制国内业务的发展。

More fundamentally, China has also overhauled solvency rules, which should force insurers to change the way they operate.
更重要的是，如今中国已经修改了偿付能力规则，这会促使保险公司改变自身运作方式。

Capital requirements had been based on simple gauges of size.
公司资产额度需以公司规模为衡量的标准。

Now they are much closer to the norm in developed markets, varying in line with how quickly policies turn over and how premiums are invested.
如今的保险公司无论是在保单移交的速度还是保费投资上都基本向发达市场的标准看齐。

Firms that rely excessively on short policies or that invest heavily in the stockmarket must hold a much bigger cushion.
那些过度依赖短期险种或是将资金投入股市的公司必须想办法给自己更多的缓冲时间。

The heyday of rapid expansion by opportunistic firms is over, predicts Lee Yuan Siong of Ping An Insurance, one of China’s biggest providers.
中国最大的保险公司之一的平安保险集团总经理李源祥预计机会主义型公司快速扩张的盛世已经结束。

“The government saw the danger early enough before it got out of control.”
“中国政府早在一切失控前就已经意识到危险的存在。”

If the new rules work, insurers will need to focus on persuading people to buy their policies for protection rather than as an investment.
新出台的规定如果起效，保险公司需要关注如何说服人们出于保护而非投资的目的来购买自己的产品。

That is a safer bet, but a harder sell.
这对民众来说是安全之选，对保险公司却是难卖之策。