China's EVs Are Going Global, how about insurance?

China's auto exports hit 7.098 million units in 2025, up 21.1% year-on-year — with new energy vehicles (NEVs) alone accounting for 2.615 million units, or roughly 37% of the total. As Chinese automakers race into global markets, the game has changed: it is no longer about shipping cars, it is about building an ecosystem — manufacturing, distribution, after-sales, and critically, insurance.

Auto insurance is no longer a peripheral add-on but a structural prerequisite for sustainable overseas expansion. The underwriting of vehicles sold abroad must be tightly coupled with automakers' go-to-market strategies: where repair networks are thin, spare parts rely on imports, and claims costs run high, the absence of fit-for-purpose insurance erodes both consumer confidence and brand equity. Local regulatory licensing requirements further compel insurers and automakers to cooperate — through localized front-end underwriting paired with cross-border reinsurance and technical enablement — so that risk can be priced, transferred, and serviced within each jurisdiction.

Set out below are several dimensions of this insurer–automaker convergence and their legal and commercial implications for cross-border automotive operations.

1. Three Ways Automakers and Insurers Are Teaming Up 
The siloed approach is dead. Three models now dominate:

• Bundled sales. Insurance sold with the car. Geely partnered with Ping An P&C for its 2025 Australia launch; BYD built Thailand after-sales infrastructure around claims handling.
• Local issuance + Chinese reinsurance. A local insurer issues the policy; a Chinese insurer takes the risk via reinsurance. CPIC teamed with Mitsui Sumitomo and Aon to reinsure 50,000+ Chinese NEVs in Thailand this way.
• Full-chain coverage. Factory construction, freight, extended warranties, corporate liability — all bundled into one cross-border programme.

Because core NEV data — including battery management systems and smart networking parameters — resides with automakers, insurers depend on that data for actuarial accuracy. Regulatory authorities in China have explicitly encouraged the establishment of overseas insurance service networks through co-insurance and reinsurance, making strategic data-sharing partnerships between automakers and insurers a structural necessity rather than a commercial option.

2. The Licensing Trap 
Most host jurisdictions require that compulsory third-party liability insurance be issued by a locally licensed insurer. The only route in is indirect: reinsurance, co-insurance, technical enablement. 

Under the “local issuance + Chinese reinsurance” model, the legal relationship between the reinsurance contract and the underlying local policy raises a fundamental privity-of-contract question: local policyholders cannot directly claim against Chinese reinsurers. To mitigate this gap, contractual frameworks should specify front-end claims settlement procedures and back-end reinsurance clearing mechanisms, ensuring that liability flows are transparent and enforceable across jurisdictions.

3. One Car, Different Cover, Different Countries 
Battery degradation cover, charging-pile liability, usage-based pricing — mature in China, but often unrecognised abroad. The EU and much of Southeast Asia demand strict pre-approval of insurance clauses.

Discrepancies in approved coverage for the same vehicle model sold in different markets create legal exposure: if claims standards diverge materially, automakers and insurers face the risk of class-action litigation abroad. Companies should therefore embed localized clause customization and compliance review into their product development cycle, and clearly allocate product liability, insurance liability, and owner-assumed risk among the parties involved.

4. Data Rules Can Void Your Policy 
Accurate NEV pricing runs on driving and charging data. GDPR (fines up to 4% of global turnover), Thailand’s PDPA, Brazil’s LGPD and China’s PIPL all police how that data is collected, consented to, and moved across borders. 

Any failure in data compliance can render an insurance policy void or unenforceable. Companies operating across borders should integrate independent, upfront consent-authorization checkpoints into the combined vehicle-purchase and insurance-application workflow. Partnership agreements between automakers and insurers should also include data-compliance liability clauses to allocate responsibility if a data-collection violation invalidates underlying policies.

We help you to navigate this terrain — structuring cross-border insurance programs and agreements, assisting you with regulatory mapping and requirements and resolving potential disputes when claims or data issues go wrong.