The insurance agent system has been in place for over three decades. As aging accelerates, customer needs diversify, and technology redraws the boundaries of service, competition among agents is no longer a contest between individuals but between platforms and ecosystems.
On October 12, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. (ASX: 601336) unveiled a series of support measures at its 2026 annual summit covering customer service ecosystems, technology, and operations, rebuilding the underlying support for agents' business activities so that the service ecosystem becomes a deliverable solution, technology becomes a reachable capability, and operations become a perceptible efficiency.
Building the foundation with ecosystems to broaden agents' service reach
Elderly care is the largest arena where insurance meets people's livelihoods. On the ecosystem services side, NCI (ASX: 01336) has adopted a "three-three" strategic layout for its elderly care ecosystem, covering the full customer life cycle through three formats—institutional care, home care, and travel-based care—and building a comprehensive national service network through a three-tier approach of broad coverage with light assets, selective layout with medium assets, and heavy assets as the cornerstone, while achieving deep coordination across the entire insurance sales chain through three-dimensional empowerment of products, customers, and teams.
Under the strategic vision of a global health and wellness service network, a full-cycle health and wellness service system, a full-chain health and wellness investment and operations platform, and full closed-loop deep value coordination, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. has established 65 health and wellness communities in 46 cities with more than 30,000 beds, and owns 92 premium travel-living projects covering 66 domestic cities and 3 cities in 2 overseas countries; medical marketing tools such as video consultations with top-tier hospitals and New China Family Doctor effectively help the sales force improve its professional service capabilities and customer management standards.
At the same time, NCI continues to upgrade its seven major ecosystem services spanning medical care, health, wellness, business, education, entertainment, and culture. It has relaunched the New China An 2.0 version, expanding from 2 types of services to 5 categories covering community recreation, daily care, medical health, rehabilitation nursing, and safety protection, equipped with a four-in-one butler covering entertainment, daily life, safety, and health, truly bringing full-scenario professional elderly care services into the home.
In the areas of business, education, entertainment, and culture, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. continues to refine existing scenarios such as New Oriental and customer service festivals, and has created a new scenario with youth clubs; it focuses on systematically organizing high-quality events for key customer groups in emerging fields; and it upgrades entitlement tools such as educational consulting services and business travel services to accompany customers in a quality lifestyle.
Technology empowerment: AI makes business development more efficient
In recent years, NCI has made "AI+" its core development strategy, aiming for a "digital New China, intelligent New China, innovative New China." Centered on business journeys involving users, policies, products and services, agents, and assets, it is building a cluster of AI agents to drive the continuous evolution of digital employees.
On the artificial intelligence infrastructure side, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. has deployed thousand-card computing power, built a domestic model supply and a three-tier capability architecture, and taken the lead in five major business scenarios, launching digital employees such as a digital business development advisor, a portable AI training coach, a group insurance bidding expert, an immersive AI interviewer, and a bancassurance business partner.
Among them, the business development advisor can provide instant answers on product liabilities, deliver ready-to-use proposal recommendations, and generate materials with one click, achieving a 94.6% accuracy rate on internal standard assessment sets; the training coach distills the experience of 2,000 lecturers into 5,000 AI coaches covering 37 practice scenarios, turning a mentor's experience into a capability that can be practiced at any time; the bidding expert assists in generating tender documents and intelligently verifying materials, making it a reality that no one has to stay up alone fighting over a bid document anymore; the AI interviewer enables intelligent resume pre-screening and immersive interviews, compressing the interview cycle from 29.8 days to 8 days; and the bancassurance business partner greatly improves the efficiency of connecting banks and products, with the entire process traceable and auditable.
Operational efficiency: digitalization makes management more effortless
A good ecosystem needs efficient operations to carry it. NCI has upgraded both its team-side and customer-side platforms. On the team side, the "New Era" upgrade focuses primarily on the urgent difficulties and concerns of the teams, making sales easier through "cultural empowerment, ecosystem empowerment, and processing efficiency." On the customer side, it treats "Palm New China," the official WeChat account, and the official website as core carriers, using "ecosystem aggregation, scenario expansion, and smart processing" as three major levers to make online services broader in scope, shorter in process, and more convenient to operate.
Taking the team-side platform "New Era" as an example, after the upgrade, the new service ecosystem zone brings together ten major services—medical care, health, elderly care, culture, finance, taxation, law, business, education, and entertainment—in one place. Agents can compare New China Family Office, New China Zunrui, and New China An, as well as membership benefits such as black diamond, blue diamond, new diamond, and 5-star, on a single screen, and reach commonly used functions with one click, resolving traditional obstacles to business development such as being unable to find services or finding comparisons too troublesome. The zone's functions can also be freely reordered and tags dragged according to preference, providing a one-page full analysis of diversified protection needs across the customer's full life cycle. Renewal and premium collection can be handled in one place, repayment reminders are displayed at the customer dimension, and additional rider rules are front-loaded, continuously reducing the burden on frontline staff and improving efficiency.
On the customer side, taking the "Palm New China" app as an example, after the upgrade it enables direct connection to the virtual counter, adds 26 business processing entry points, and supports full online coverage of high-frequency policy administration services; it also creates dedicated service channels for high-end customers and elderly customers, enabling one-on-one video processing and precisely matching differentiated service needs.
While extending service coverage, the experience of handling high-frequency business has also improved further. Customers can submit additional premiums through a fully online process, with additional limits displayed intuitively, and can submit successfully in one attempt. It has also launched one-stop policy administration services and intelligent claims application services, creating a smooth and convenient service experience for customers.
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