改变中国医疗服务的新势力

    此外，信诺还非常重视电视与互联网营销。招商信诺在中国的代言人是曾在1994年凭借处女作获得威尼斯电影节（Venice Film Festival）最佳男主角奖的演员夏雨。夏雨为招商信诺代言的是一款癌症保险产品，之所以选中夏雨是因为他的家庭故事在中国家喻户晓：一位亲人罹患癌症，于是夏雨工作之余抽出时间悉心照料，在中国引起了很多人的共鸣。

    信诺比其他竞争对手更早地预见到了中国市场的发展。它在中国的业务与美国国内的业务存在巨大差异。与所有竞争对手一样，公司在美国市场几乎只销售集体保险，而且鉴于奥巴马医改计划所带来的不确定性，目前公司的利润也面临缩水。如果保险公司永远都无法拒绝客户，不管他们是多么地不情愿，那么公司的会计人员还能如何确定风险敞口？由于国内盈利能力下降，信诺集团在很早以前便将重心转移到国外市场，在20年前打开的韩国市场，以及印尼和澳大利亚等地区，个人保险销售均取得了令人瞩目的业绩。目前，韩国市场占它国际销售额的三分之一。

    由于中国法律规定，保险公司必须在开展业务的每一个省都获得独立的许可。而信诺刚刚获得了其第11个省级许可，因此在中国可以获得沃伦•巴菲特所称的“宽护城河”的保护。所谓“宽护城河”是指牢固的竞争壁垒，因为新竞争对手要想进入市场，必须遵循同样冗长乏味、耗时耗力的过程，获得许可。

    当然，其他美国保险公司，如美国国际集团（AIG）和安泰保险金融集团（Aetna）等，也在中国销售健康保险，但它们在中国市场的渗透程度远远不及信诺。

    韦德布什证券（Wedbush Securities）分析师萨拉•詹姆斯表示，由于冗长的注册过程，其他大型保险公司紧跟信诺进入中国市场的可能性不大。她说：“这对于他们而言是个很好的机会。我没有看到有其他公司进入这个市场。”

    信诺集团CEO柯伟健表示，招商信诺的成功很大一部分要归因于中国招商银行这个合作伙伴。柯伟健解释称，公司选择合作伙伴不看它是否具有保险行业的经验，而是选择优秀的市场营销者。

    中国招商银行是中国最大的股份制银行，负责人是一位激情澎湃的商人马蔚华。哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）两次将他的经验作为案例。招商银行是中国首家真正以零售市场、而非企业市场作为重心的中国银行，推出的各种创新业务包括“一卡通”借记卡和网上银行，用户通过一个账号便可以控制其所有银行活动——这对于一个不久之前还必须到窗口填各种表格才能办理银行业务的国家来说，实属一项巨大的创新。马蔚华告诉《财富》杂志（Fortune）：“我的策略是我们必须早一点、快一点、好一点。这样我们就能比其他国有竞争对手提前三年或五年想到和做到一些事情。”今年六月，马蔚华将从银行行长的职位上卸任，但退休之后，他仍将担任招商信诺人寿保险有限公司（Cigna & CMB Life Insurance Co. Ltd.）董事长。

    Cigna also is selling hard on television and the Internet. As its TV pitchman Cigna uses a popular Chinese movie star named Xia Yu, who won the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his debut film in 1994. Xia, who sells a cancer policy in the commercial, was selected in part because he is well known among Chinese for his family story: A relative had cancer, and Xia took time out from his career to be a caregiver, a problem that resonates with many Chinese in a country where an estimated 80% of the people still smoke cigarettes.

    Cigna had the foresight to see this market developing long before most of its competitors. It's a big contrast to the company's domestic business, which is focused almost exclusively on selling group plans and, like all of its competitors, now faces thin margins because of the uncertainties raised by Obamacare. How, for example, will the number crunchers determine risk exposure when they can never turn away a customer, no matter how sick? As a result of declining domestic profitability, Cigna long ago turned to the overseas market, building an impressive record selling policies to individuals in South Korea, a market it opened 20 years ago and which now accounts for a third of its international sales, and such other countries as Indonesia and Australia.

    Because of Chinese regulations, insurance companies need to obtain a separate license for each province they operate in. Cigna, which just obtained its 11th provincial license, thus enjoys in China what Warren Buffett has termed "a wide moat," a tough barrier to competition because any new rival would have to follow the same tedious and time-consuming process of obtaining licenses in order to enter the market.

    To be sure, other American insurers, such as AIG (AIG) and Aetna (AET), are selling health products in China, but they haven't yet achieved Cigna's depth of market penetration.

    Wedbush Securities analyst Sarah James says that because of the lengthy registration process, it's unlikely that other big insurers will follow Cigna into the market. "It's a great opportunity for them," she says. "I don't see anyone else entering the market there."

    Cigna CEO Cordani ascribes much of the success of the joint venture to the choice of China Merchants Bank as its partner. Cordani explains that the company seeks partners that are primarily great marketers, regardless of their insurance experience.

    The largest shareholder-owned bank in China, CMB is run by an ebullient businessman named Ma Weihua, the focus of not one but two case studies at the Harvard Business School. CMB was the first Chinese bank to really focus on the retail market rather than the corporate world, introducing such innovations as the first "all-in-one" debit card and Internet banking, so that customers could control all their banking activities with one account number -- a huge innovation in a country where banking was until very recently confined to multiple slips of colored paper. "My strategy was we had to be a little earlier, a little faster, and a little better," Ma tells Fortune. "So we always have to think and do things three to five years ahead of our state-owned competitors." Ma is retiring as president of the bank in June, but he will remain chairman of the joint venture with Cigna, known as Cigna & CMB Life Insurance Co. Ltd.