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Sports insurance: Still a long way to go

By Li Huayu (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-08-12 11:56

At the Beijing Olympic Economy Forum, economists and Olympic researchers pointed out that sport insurance in China has made no substantial progress compared to a decade ago.

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"Sports insurance plays an important role in foreign sports industries, but Chinese insurance companies haven't developed sports insurance yet," said Wu Dingfu, chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC).

Sports insurance came into the Chinese spotlight after gymnast Sang Lan broke her spine at the Goodwill Games in New York in 1998. The medical insurance indemnity -- worth as much as $10 million -- provided by the Goodwill Games enabled her to get the best treatments and also let the Chinese know the importance of sports insurance.

However, China's sports insurance has made slow progress. Currently, the Chinese sports insurance is still limited to athletes' accident and death insurance, and there is almost a vacuum in the areas of other liability insurance and property insurance.

"The high difficulty, high intensity, high counteraction and high standard of sports lead to its high risk, high mortality and high disability rate. Thus, related insurance indemnities are high," a Haier New York Life executive said. "To ensure profit, insurers tend to exclude high-risk sports."

Now in China, only China Sports Insurance Broker Co Ltd specializes in sports insurance. In the wake of Sang Lan's misfortune, the General Administration of Sport of China was determined to implement personal insurance plans for athletes, and began commercializing sports insurance.

The All-China Sports Federation, subordinate to the General Administration of Sport, has purchased athletes' disability insurance from two Chinese insurers for 1,400 national team players. The federation pays 1 million yuan ($146,300) a year and each player only pays 40 to 100 yuan.

In the program, the payout for an insured athlete's death and disability may be as high as 300,000 yuan and the insurance term lasts from the athlete's enrollment into a national team to his/her retirement from the team.

"Due to commercial insurance's defects in design and complicated procedures of claim settlement, this program is not going on smoothly," said a staff member of the federation's sports insurance department.

To change the situation, the General Administration of Sport gave up the practice and piloted mutual insurance in 12 provinces and cities in 2001. Meanwhile, it continued revising and improving the criteria for disability levels and classified premiums for disability risks.

In 2002, the mutual insurance of disability for athletes was extended throughout China. Some experts said the mutual insurance is not a commercial insurance, as the indemnity paid is actually a kind of special grant.

Insiders have been calling for sports insurance to become a commercial insurance. The key to developing sports insurance may lie with the change of conception and the cultivation of related talent, said Niu Siqiang, branding director of Du-Bang Insurance.

Niu said that athletes in developed countries generally have strong insurance awareness and many famous players are willing to purchase expensive insurance for one of their hands, feet or even fingers, but China has a different sports system, which, to some extent, restricts the development of sports insurance.

"In China, most athletes are not professional players yet and they are not conscious of the high risks of sports," Niu said. "Besides, most sports events are government-held, and insurers cannot get involved in research of risk prevention plans from the event preparation to its launch."

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The full text is available in the July Issue of China Insurance.