Decoding the "Security Code" for Low-Altitude Economy

Ask AI · How can low-altitude economy insurance address the challenges of dynamic risk pricing?

China Economic News reporter Chen Jingjing, reporting from Beijing

The low-altitude economy industry chain is long, application scenarios are broad, R&D investment is high, business models are new, and risk types are complex—driving the demand for diversified and customized insurance.

According to a reporter’s statistics from the China Business News, more than 40 property insurers have filed low-altitude aviation insurance products, with over 100 coverage plans. The main coverage responsibilities include unmanned aircraft hull loss insurance, third-party liability insurance, and so on.

However, challenges such as lack of standardization, insufficient data, and outdated pricing models continue to constrain the industry’s deeper development. How to adapt to the above new needs and build an insurance protection network tailored to the low-altitude economy has become a highly discussed topic in the insurance industry, and it is also the direction that many insurers are actively exploring.

Insurers exploring low-altitude aviation insurance business

As the first listed company in China whose main business is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the relevant person in charge at Zongheng Co., Ltd. (688070.SH) told reporters that during the R&D and testing stage, low-altitude flight vehicles may face safety risks from test flights; during the delivery and operational stage, they may face public safety risks; and during maintenance and upkeep, the main issues include high equipment integration and inconvenience in sending products back to the factory for repairs. At present, the risks that most need insurance coverage are the loss of low-altitude flight vehicles and the risk of third-party losses caused by low-altitude flight vehicles.

Yan Peng, deputy general manager of An Insurance’s Digital Life business unit, told reporters: “During the R&D, production, and operation lifecycle of low-altitude flight vehicles, the core risks include third-party public liability risk, product liability risk, hull loss risk, and accidental risks for operators and passengers, among others. Among these, the most core and must-prioritize risk to cover is third-party public liability risk. The reason is that low-altitude flight heights are low and are very close to people and buildings. Once a loss of control or a crash occurs, it is highly likely to cause losses of life and property. The operating entity may face large-scale compensation, and this risk factor accompanies low-altitude flight vehicles throughout their entire lifecycle—from R&D to production and operations.”

In February 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, and the Civil Aviation Administration of China jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Low-Altitude Aviation Insurance,” setting a clear timeline for the development of low-altitude insurance: by 2027, the compulsory liability insurance system for unmanned aircraft will be initially established; low-altitude insurance products will be continuously enriched to better meet the protection needs of various application scenarios. By 2030, the policy framework for low-altitude insurance will basically take shape, and its保障 role in ensuring the safe and healthy development of the low-altitude economy will continue to strengthen.

Reporters learned through interviews that some insurers have already been actively exploring and have launched third-party liability insurance, loss insurance, quality guarantee insurance, and other products, thereby increasing market supply for low-altitude economy insurance.

From Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance’s information, on March 13, as the lead underwriter of a low-altitude economy co-insurance pool, PICC Property and Casualty Insurance Company, Ltd. jointly issued, together with 18 insurance institutions, the first policy for the compulsory insurance pilot program for unmanned aircraft liability insurance implemented in Chongqing. The policy provides RMB 42.60 million in risk coverage for 194 unmanned aerial vehicles of Aerospace Times Low-Altitude Technology Co., Ltd., under the China Aerospace Technology Corporation.

On March 6, PICC Property and Casualty Insurance Co., Ltd. issued the first national low-altitude aircraft product quality guarantee insurance policy to Shanghai Fengfei Aviation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Fengfei Aviation”). The coverage includes bundled risk protection for Fengfei Aviation’s V2000CG Carrier Gull cargo eVTOL (an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft), providing a comprehensive package covering product quality guarantee, accidental hull losses of the aircraft, and third-party liability.

PICC Property and Casualty Insurance Company told reporters that since 2024 it has made a systematic deployment of related services, establishing a working group for the low-altitude economy’s industry chain. It is committed to establishing and improving an insurance system covering the entire unmanned aerial vehicle industry chain. Its coverage scope spans all links, including R&D and manufacturing, test flights and trial flights, and commercialized operations. It has successively innovated and developed 15 specialized insurance products, initially forming a product matrix for low-altitude economy insurance across multiple fields, including trial flight inspection, operational services, logistics and delivery, and product quality.

Regarding its approach, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance told reporters that, for different scenarios and different links in the low-altitude economy, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance provides customized insurance products and services. It covers end-to-end protection solutions from large regional air transport fleets to unmanned aerial vehicles, effectively supporting the development of new productive forces in the low-altitude economy. As of now, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance has累计 underwritten more than 150,000 unmanned aircraft and provides risk coverage exceeding RMB 90 billion.

Yan Peng told reporters that An Insurance has put into use and offered insurance policy terms for low-altitude economy service—totaling dozens of items—covering categories such as low-altitude aircraft hull loss insurance, third-party liability insurance, pilot accidental insurance, extended warranty, and unmanned aerial vehicle transportation liability insurance. “Our company’s third-party liability insurance limits are set in a tiered manner from RMB 100,000 to RMB 5 million. Within a certain range, the hull insurance premium rates can be flexibly configured, so we can fully adapt to the differentiated coverage needs of different types of low-altitude operating entities.”

Solving the development challenges of low-altitude aviation insurance

Reporters learned that the risks involved in the low-altitude economy are affected by multiple factors, such as the aircraft’s operating entity, specific application scenarios, and the behavior of actual pilots/operators. This means that the risk situation in the low-altitude economy is more complex and variable. At present, when insurance companies conduct low-altitude insurance underwriting business, they also face multiple difficulties, such as shortcomings in risk data and actuarial pricing.

“The biggest pain point in low-altitude insurance supply is the lack of scenario-based dynamic pricing products. Traditional uniform pricing models cannot accurately measure the actual risk level of flight activities, which leads to a mismatch between risk and premium, resulting in pricing unfairness,” Yan Peng said.

Wang Peng, deputy research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters that low-altitude economy insurance is currently in a painful transitional period from “niche fragments” to “systematized standardization.”

“Insufficient flight hours for automated unmanned aircraft, and lack of long-cycle actuarial data support. Insurance companies find it difficult to quantify the probability of claims under different climates, payloads, and complex urban environments. At the same time, many low-altitude flight vehicles use composite materials and complex power battery systems, making repair costs high and there being no official maintenance pricing system. If a collision or a crash happens, loss assessments are highly controversial. In addition, risks not only cover aircraft property and third-party liability, but also multi-dimensional secondary risks such as cyber security interference with third parties on the ground, privacy leakage, and satellite positioning failures. Responsibility identification is extremely difficult,” Wang Peng frankly told reporters.

Yan Peng further pointed out that the low-altitude economy is currently at a turning point from initial cultivation to pilot rollout and promotion. Low-altitude insurance faces significant difficulties in determining accident liability. The key source lies in two major shortcomings: first, the legal system is not完善. There are no unified and clear legal provisions and adjudication standards regarding liability for infringement caused by low-altitude flight, subject identification, attribution principles, and so on, making it difficult to legally define the boundary between accident causes and responsibility. Second, industry data is lacking. Insurance companies lack flight data, accident data, and scenario risk data, making it impossible to accurately verify accident causes and confirm risk responsibilities. This leads to a long liability-assignment cycle, many disputes, and low claim settlement efficiency.

To address the development challenges of low-altitude insurance and promote coordinated development between the insurance industry and the low-altitude industry, Yan Peng further said that three areas of policy support are needed. First, improve laws and regulations governing low-altitude activities, clarify the responsible entities for flight accidents, the principles of attribution, and the classification standards, so as to provide clear legal basis for insurers to assign liability and handle claims. Second, break down data barriers between the low-altitude industry and the insurance industry, establish a unified industry low-altitude data platform, integrate core data such as flight and accident information, and support accurate pricing and risk control. Third, accelerate the implementation of a compulsory insurance system for low-altitude flight vehicles. Combine vehicle types and intended uses to set insured amounts and underwriting standards in a tiered classification approach to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. This will balance coverage needs and pricing fairness, and promote the standardized development of low-altitude insurance.

Yan Peng gave an example: most agricultural drones operate in remote rural areas or mountainous regions, far from traditional insurance service outlets. And because damage to agricultural machinery affects agricultural production, users have very high requirements for claim settlement timeliness. To address the above issues, in product pricing, differentiated deductibles can be set for different aircraft models to reduce expenses for small-amount claim cases. In pricing, factors such as aircraft usage time and claim incidence can be introduced to achieve tailor-made pricing for different individuals, reducing the premium burden on ordinary users. In terms of claim services, for agricultural user groups, a dedicated hotline number for reporting cases can be set up, along with an exclusive service team.

A relevant person in charge at Zongheng Co., Ltd. said that for insurance products that cover situations where “technology iteration causes the product to become outdated,” since Zongheng has conducted full-unit sales, it has already arranged related coverage. If there are more flexible, high-value-for-money insurance方案 priced per hour or per number of takeoff/landing operations, Zongheng is willing to try.

In response to specific needs of the market and enterprises, while many insurers are actively carrying out related business, they have also put forward numerous ideas for promoting the development of low-altitude aviation insurance business.

Regarding its plans, PICC Property and Casualty Insurance told reporters it will continue to iterate and deepen new-scenario products such as urban air transportation, low-altitude logistics, and emergency rescue. It will deepen the four categories of product matrices—“R&D, manufacturing, operations, and infrastructure”—accelerate upgrades of特色 products, and fill coverage gaps for new business formats and new equipment. It will also drive insurance services to extend from “post-accident payouts” to an end-to-end process covering “pre-warning, in-process risk control, and post-repair.” It will make the “insurance + technology + services” model deeper and better by providing value-added services such as digital risk control, specialized training, and emergency response support, achieving risk reduction and helping reduce costs and improve efficiency for the industry. It will strengthen cross-department data sharing and risk research, and work with departments such as meteorology, air traffic management, and emergency services to build a national low-altitude risk database, improve industry risk control standards, and enhance the overall safety level of the industry.

“Looking ahead, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance will actively participate in building the low-altitude economy protection ecosystem. Together with industry associations, university research institutions, and upstream and downstream enterprises, we will explore solutions for low-altitude economy risk protection and promote the rollout of more insurance innovation pilot projects,” Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance told reporters.

“An Insurance will focus on reshaping the value chain of low-altitude insurance through new technologies. By using data sharing, AI and large-model applications, product innovation, and risk diversification as breakthroughs, we will provide广大 users with personalized, customized, and intelligent low-altitude insurance services,” Yan Peng said.