Zhibao Technology (ZBAO)

Zhibao Technology is a digital insurance brokerage company based in Shanghai that operates at the intersection of fintech and insurance distribution. The company’s core insight is that insurance is often sold most effectively not through traditional brokers or agent networks, but by embedding it into the platforms people already use — ride-sharing apps, utilities, supply-chain marketplaces, travel sites, and logistics platforms. Zhibao has built proprietary software that lets these “platform partners” offer customized insurance products to their own users without any additional insurance expertise, using what the company calls the 2B2C model (“to-business-to-customer”): Zhibao sells solutions to businesses, who then sell insurance to consumers.

The company was founded in 2015 and went public on the Nasdaq Capital Market in April 2024 under the symbol ZBAO. It operates through subsidiaries in China, where regulatory constraints on foreign ownership of insurance businesses mean the actual license holders are Chinese entities, but Zhibao’s Hong Kong-listed parent structure gives it a way to access public capital markets and offer shares to foreign investors.

The embedded insurance platform at the core

Zhibao’s business rests on a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) architecture. The company has developed proprietary technology that handles the heaviest parts of insurance distribution: connecting to multiple insurance company underwriters, managing complex policy terms and customizations, handling fraud detection and compliance, processing customer data at scale, and automating claims workflows. A partner platform — say, a natural gas utility or an e-commerce marketplace — can plug into Zhibao’s system and begin offering insurance to its users in days rather than months, without building any of the infrastructure itself.

The 2B2C model works because it solves a real problem for both sides. For the platform partner, adding insurance is a way to deepen customer relationships and unlock revenue without diverting engineers and compliance resources. For consumers, insurance appears in the context where they need it — a ride-hailing app offers accidental injury coverage for passengers, a logistics platform offers cargo insurance — rather than requiring them to shop for it separately. The friction is lower, uptake is higher, and pricing can be more granular because Zhibao’s data tools identify who is actually at risk.

Zhibao has developed over 40 customized digital insurance solutions, each tailored to a specific industry or use case. These cover travel (flight delay, trip cancellation), sports (personal accident), logistics and supply chain (cargo, vehicle, shipper), utilities (natural gas, electricity), small and medium business (liability, property), human resources (group supplemental insurance), social insurance (supplementary pension and health), and e-commerce (buyer protection, seller liability).

Where the revenue comes from

Zhibao makes money by taking a share of the premiums it distributes, much like a traditional insurance broker, but with higher margins because its technology platform handles so much of the work. The company’s 2024 results showed total revenue of approximately 276.9 million RMB (about 38.7 million USD), up 51 percent year-over-year, driven by growth in its core digital insurance brokerage services.

The most visible recent momentum is in natural gas insurance. Zhibao partnered with natural gas utilities to distribute low-cost homeowner insurance policies bundled with utility service. By the end of 2025, the company had driven natural gas insurance premium volume to nearly 100 million RMB (about 14.5 million USD), with Zhibao’s portion reaching approximately 56 million RMB (about 8.1 million USD) in brokerage revenue — a tenfold jump year-over-year. That single vertical illustrates how the embedded model can scale quickly once it works: the utility has millions of customers, and insurance is a natural complementary product that reduces customer churn.

The second major revenue stream is commissions from property and casualty insurance sold through digital channels to individual consumers and businesses. The company’s scale here is driven by the breadth of its partner network: as of early 2025, Zhibao reported 2,000 active B-channel partners and 20 million individual end users on its platform.

Competitive position and the embedded insurance opportunity

Zhibao claims to be the pioneer and market leader in the 2B2C embedded insurance model in China — a claim that is plausible given the company’s founding in 2015 and the fact that its first platform went live in 2020. The company competes against traditional insurance brokers (which move slower and rely on agent networks), direct-to-consumer insurtech platforms (which still require consumer initiative to shop), and potentially large technology platforms that might build insurance distribution in-house.

But Zhibao’s real advantage is not technology per se — the technical barriers to connecting systems are low — but rather the trust it has built with platform partners and insurance companies. An e-commerce site or utility wants a broker that understands both its business and the insurance world, can customize products for its specific risk profile, and will handle compliance. An insurance company wants a distribution channel that brings in quality customers without cannibalizing its direct business. Zhibao occupies that middle ground, and scale in this kind of business (more partners, more users, more data) tends to beget more scale.

The opportunity in China is real. Insurance penetration in China remains well below developed markets, and traditional retail distribution is expensive and geographically uneven. The Chinese government has also encouraged InsurTech development as part of its financial inclusion agenda. But success also depends on Zhibao retaining its platform partners and keeping insurance companies willing to feed it premium products.

The regulatory and concentration risks

Zhibao operates in a heavily regulated market. Insurance in China is overseen by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and fintech ventures face periodic regulatory tightening. Changes to data privacy rules, restrictions on insurance product design, or new capital or profitability requirements could affect Zhibao’s ability to operate or the economics of its model.

There is also execution risk in rapid geographic and vertical expansion. The company has been acquisitive — it acquired Zhonglian Jinan, a traditional insurance broker with approximately 26 million RMB (about 3.8 million USD) in annual revenue, to accelerate national coverage — and growth through acquisition requires successful integration and retention of partners and staff.

Finally, Zhibao’s platform depends on the stability and growth of its partner ecosystem. If a major partner — say, a large e-commerce or utilities player — opts to build distribution in-house or shifts to a competitor, the impact on revenues could be material. The company has worked to diversify across industries (travel, logistics, utilities, e-commerce, SME), but concentration risk remains.

How to research Zhibao

The company’s annual report on Form 20-F (filed each January with the SEC, most recently for fiscal year 2025, CIK 0001966750) is the authoritative source for financial performance, segment revenue, and management’s assessment of risks and competitive dynamics. The investor relations website (ir.zhibao-tech.com) publishes earnings releases and strategic announcements. Key metrics to follow include year-over-year growth in total brokerage revenue, the number of active platform partners and end users, the contribution of natural gas and other high-growth verticals to total revenue, and gross margin trends (which reveal whether unit economics are improving as the company scales). Any material change to Chinese insurance regulation, data privacy law, or the competitive response from larger Chinese fintech platforms could move the stock materially. As with any single security, nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell — only a guide to the business and its critical dynamics.