PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Creates A 'Ningbo Model' For Housing Security, Safeguarding The Dream Of Homeownership For Millions Of Families

"So even the exterior walls of our houses can be insured?" At the Ningbo "Good Housing" construction achievements exhibition, Mr. Wang, a resident of Yinzhou District, stood in front of the PICC Property & Casualty Insurance booth, looking at the heat map of potential safety hazards on the exterior walls generated by drones and the real-time demonstration of a wall-climbing robot detecting potential safety hazards in the houses. He couldn't help but exclaim. He had just experienced exterior wall repairs in his community. "I used to think that aging buildings were 'unavoidable,' but now I know that with high-tech monitoring, professional teams, and insurance coverage—I feel much more at ease living here!"

This scene is a microcosm of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Ningbo Branch's decade-long dedication to housing safety governance. Since pioneering the comprehensive urban housing insurance (referred to as "urban housing insurance") nationwide in 2015, the branch has built a housing safety guarantee system covering urban and rural areas and spanning the entire life cycle, with "government guidance, market operation, technology empowerment, and risk reduction" as its core principles, blazing a new trail for deep insurance participation in urban safety governance.

From "post-disaster remediation" to "prevention": Technology is reshaping the housing safety defense line.

As urban development enters a stock-based era, a large number of residences built in the 1980s and 1990s face challenges such as structural aging and functional degradation. How can we make these "old houses" safer to live in? PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Ningbo Branch's answer is: use "technology + insurance" to create a comprehensive risk prevention and control network.

PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Company Ningbo Branch has established an integrated "investigation-early warning-response-safety" mechanism, improved the dynamic management system of "one house, one file" and "one household, one record," and independently developed a housing safety management platform. This platform integrates multi-dimensional data such as historical data, inspection records, and sensor information to achieve automatic hazard identification, intelligent task assignment, and closed-loop tracking of rectification. Since 2020, the branch has deployed 141 sets of high-precision sensors in more than 20 streets to conduct 24-hour dynamic monitoring of key indicators such as building tilt and cracks. At the same time, it has promoted intelligent inspection tools such as "House Scanner," with an average of 567,500 building inspections per year.

In the first three quarters of 2025, leveraging the aforementioned technological means, the branch's professional team successfully prevented the potential collapse of 234 masonry structure buildings due to illegal renovations and severe alterations. They also guided the implementation of emergency reinforcement or technical repairs, effectively avoiding loss of life and property. This technological solution has now been extended to multiple high-risk scenarios such as exterior walls and elevators, shifting housing safety governance from a reactive approach to proactive prevention.

Government-enterprise collaboration to build a new pattern of multi-party co-governance
Housing safety is not only a matter of people's livelihood, but also a challenge for urban governance. As a pilot city for the "three systems" (housing inspection, housing pension, and housing safety insurance) for urban housing safety management nationwide, Ningbo has deeply embedded the insurance mechanism into the government governance chain. PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Ningbo Branch has innovatively created a four-in-one governance system integrating "government-enterprise cooperation, monitoring services, platform scheduling, and think tank participation," linking housing and construction departments, communities, and property management companies to form a grid-based inspection network, achieving integrated and unified promotion of urban and rural housing insurance.

Leveraging a think tank comprised of 32 experts in architecture, structure, and construction, the branch company tailors solutions for complex hidden dangers. Through standardized supplier management and monitoring processes, it ensures controllable service quality and efficient response. As of September 2025, "Urban Housing Insurance" covered all 10 districts (counties) and cities in Ningbo, insuring 28,800 buildings with an area of ​​47.7777 million square meters, providing risk protection of approximately 119.1 billion yuan, benefiting 482,500 urban households. Rural housing insurance was simultaneously promoted, protecting 1.2173 million rural households, essentially establishing a housing safety net integrating urban and rural areas.

Ten years of dedicated effort have resulted in a replicable and scalable "Ningbo model."

Ten years of dedicated work have yielded fruitful results. The "Urban Housing Insurance" governance model was praised at the "Good Houses" exhibition as a "Ningbo model for housing safety governance that can be demonstrated and promoted." Its core value lies in: using insurance as a link to integrate technology, services, funds, and institutional resources to achieve early identification, early intervention, and early resolution of risks.

Looking to the future, PICC Property & Casualty Insurance Ningbo Branch will take the opportunity of the national promotion of full life-cycle housing safety management to continuously expand the scope of protection: on the one hand, it will deepen the application of cutting-edge technologies such as AI, InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar), and big data to improve the accuracy of risk perception; on the other hand, it will promote the deep integration of the three systems of "insurance + physical examination + pension" and work with the government, enterprises and residents to jointly build a diversified governance ecosystem, making housing safety protection more professional, inclusive and sustainable.