An urgent payment slip from the ICU in the early hours, a family losing its income immediately upon a cancer diagnosis, a construction site worker unable to afford the initial treatment for a sudden serious illness... Frontline workers in the residential services sector, comprising real estate agents, home renovation workers, and store managers, are constantly on the move. Their irregular schedules and income deeply tied to attendance mean that a serious illness or accident can instantly plunge an entire family into a severe financial crisis.
In 2026, KE Holdings Inc. co-founders Peng Yongdong and Shan Yigang donated 10 million shares to establish a 400 million yuan "Healthy Home Shell Guardian Fund." After a focused 100-day effort to launch, this fund fills a critical gap in emergency support within existing welfare systems. With its ultra-fast disbursement of life-saving funds, it provides a first line of financial buffer for five hundred thousand frontline industry practitioners.
A Gap in Protection for New Forms of Employment
For a long time, the social security system for workers in new forms of employment has been noticeably tiered. While industries like ride-hailing and instant delivery have gradually implemented pilot programs for occupational injury protection, practitioners in residential services—such as real estate agents, home renovation workers, and domestic service providers—have not yet been included in similar coverage. This group faces prominent daily work risks: real estate agents constantly ride through city streets for property viewings, with irregular meals and late-night client negotiations being the norm; renovation crews endure long hours of high-intensity work outdoors or indoors, with significant physical strain. All frontline workers share a common vulnerability: the moment they fall ill and cannot work, their family's cash flow immediately breaks.
KE Holdings' "Green Plan," operated for 17 years, has long been a benchmark relief system in the industry. Established in 2008 and funded by cumulative donations of millions of shares from 323 senior employees including Zuo Hui and Peng Yongdong, its maximum aid has been raised to 2 million yuan. By the end of 2025, it had distributed over 755 million yuan in relief funds, alleviating long-term treatment pressures for tens of thousands of ill service providers and their families. However, after reviewing numerous real aid cases, the project team identified an unavoidable gap: the Green Plan operates on a reimbursement model, requiring families to pay all medical expenses upfront before going through the application process. Data shows over 90% of claims are used for the family members of service providers. When a worker themselves is diagnosed with a serious illness, they get stuck in a vacuum period of "no income, needing to pay fees, with reimbursement lagging behind." Illness doesn't wait for reimbursement processes to complete. The initial hospitalization deposit, tests, and pre-operative assessment costs at diagnosis are the first major hurdle that can overwhelm an ordinary family.
Creating a New Tool for Immediate Needs
The project team reached a consensus: existing welfare systems could not solve the problem of needing money "right now." The market lacked an emergency relief tool that could provide rapid funds upon diagnosis. This is how the Healthy Home Shell Guardian Fund was born. The entire protection scheme abandons the traditional思路 of condolence-style subsidies, building a three-tiered, stepped assistance system directly targeting different family crises. At its core is the Life Emergency Fund, providing a one-time payment of 20,000 yuan upon diagnosis of a critical illness. If a worker completely loses the ability to work or passes away, a 100,000 yuan Family Support Fund is disbursed. For families with minor children in school, an additional 20,000 to 100,000 yuan in education subsidies is provided.
The Core Breakthrough: Speed Above All
The most critical breakthrough of the entire scheme is breaking the ingrained model of "treat first, get money later," enabling immediate disbursement upon diagnosis. The central goal of all mechanism design is a single word: speed. From internal project initiation and official external announcement in late February to system launch and application opening in late April, the entire implementation cycle took just 100 days. The internal team called this intensive effort a "100-day battle," racing against life itself.
The first step in accelerating was precisely defining the target population and completing identity verification for all eligible personnel in advance. The team spent nearly a month defining application standards, ultimately determining that frontline service providers active on the platform for at least six months could participate. By integrating data across the entire platform for cross-referencing, a list of approximately 500,000 eligible individuals was pre-identified. With identity filing completed upfront, workers submitting applications do not need to repeatedly prove their employment status, significantly compressing preliminary review time.
Clear, unambiguous application rules are the second layer of speed assurance. The project team analyzed thousands of scenarios, detailing criteria for critical illness recognition, required documentation lists, and rejection standards to reduce delays from subjective human judgment in the review process. Simultaneously, they engaged a professional insurance institution to handle the approval and disbursement chain, leveraging its mature claims processing system to build the workflow. The institution was contractually obligated to compress the entire process timeline, with a firm commitment of "funds arriving within 48 hours of application."
Rapid Implementation and Real-World Impact
System development adopted an iterative model throughout. The initial application channel launched in April, with functional optimizations iterated in May. The backend management modules weren't fully migrated online until July. In the initial launch phase, a significant amount of verification, tracking, and statistical work relied on manual record-keeping by staff. Even though the process wasn't fully digitized, the bottom line for disbursement speed was never compromised. The team even conducted a full-process rehearsal with the partner institution before the system officially opened, reviewing all application materials, verification logic, and fund transfer chains. This ensured that real disbursements could be made on the very first day of launch, allowing frontline workers to see tangible protection.
A young Lianjia employee in Chengdu suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and fell into a coma. Family members, assisted by the store's HR, submitted an application, and the relief funds arrived in just one day. This became the first successful disbursement case after the Guardian Fund's launch, turning a paper promise into a perceptible reality. In just three months, this rapid protection has reached 64 families facing crises, distributing a total of 2.48 million yuan in support funds, with the highest single aid amount reaching 260,000 yuan.
Broad Coverage Across the Ecosystem
The assisted individuals cover the entire residential services ecosystem, including 58 real estate agents, as well as diverse roles such as store owners, transaction specialists, renovation crew masters, and platform operations staff. The service brands covered are not limited to KE Holdings' own Lianjia system; practitioners from加盟 brands like Deyou, Century 21 Real Estate, and Shengdu Whole Decoration are also included in the support scope, breaking the limitation of most corporate welfare programs covering only direct employees.
Among the illness救助 cases, malignant tumors account for the highest proportion, totaling 44 cases. There were 10 cases related to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, 9 families received the death support fund, and 5 households obtained the children's education subsidy.
A renovation crew master in Suzhou with eight years of experience suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage while working. Even after医保 reimbursement, a large medical expense gap remained. His son, also an industry practitioner, submitted an application on his behalf, and the 20,000 yuan emergency fund arrived the next day. There was no need to borrow money from various sources, and the treatment process did not stall due to lack of funds.
A Deyou agent in Xuzhou passed away from illness, leaving two elementary school-aged children. Combining the death support fund and children's education subsidy, the family received a total of 260,000 yuan in support, helping the single mother stabilize the family's basic livelihood.
There was also a frontline worker in a Chengdu ICU facing extreme hardship who did not meet the standard criteria. The project team activated a special response channel, providing humane assistance within the framework of the rules, balancing risk control底线 with human warmth.
Ensuring Long-Term Sustainability
Data shows that since the project's launch, nearly 200 applications have been received, with 64审核通过 and disbursed. Over seventy applications were returned due to failure to meet hard criteria like insufficient length of service or ineligible applicant. The project team insists that the rigidity of the rules is the foundation for long-term operation and will not arbitrarily relax standards to deplete the fund pool. At the same time, they continuously and dynamically calculate fund usage scale. Based on the two founders' requirement for long-term sustainable operation, they forecast future application increases in advance to ensure stable fund supply.
Currently, over one hundred thousand frontline workers have received the Guardian Card. As the project becomes more widely known, application demand is bound to continue rising. For the Healthy Home Shell Guardian Fund, the short-term launch is just the beginning; the long-term test is the stable fulfillment of its承诺 over time. The project will need to continuously验证: when application volumes multiply, can the two-day disbursement efficiency be stably maintained, and can the hundreds of millions yuan fund pool sustainably bear the emergency needs of frontline families.
The Unique Value of a 48-Hour Lifeline
Different from医疗报销 with its lengthy cycles, the unique value of the Healthy Home Shell Guardian Fund lies in seizing the golden 48 hours after illness strikes. It does not replace long-term medical救助 but fills the空白地带 in the protection system. At the vulnerable moment when income is interrupted and treatment costs are imminent, it delivers a sum of life-saving money to residential service practitioners without the need for等待.
Hundreds of thousands of residential service workers support the daily operation of urban housing transactions and renovation services. They奔波于大街小巷, silently bearing the full economic weight of their families. This guardian mechanism, built with shareholder donations and centered on极速拨付, steps outside the conventional framework of corporate welfare, transforming goodwill into a standardized, efficient, long-term保障. When意外骤然降临, it ensures frontline service providers no longer face economic压力 alone. This is the most朴素, yet most precious, significance of the KE Holdings Healthy Home Shell Guardian Fund.
Comments