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July 15, 2015

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‘Insurance’ for students who fail

TAKING cue from the city’s efforts in promoting innovation and business startups, a group of students have hit upon the idea of an “insurance product” for students failing in the exams.

The students — Guan Lingzi, Xu Yecheng and Shao Tianyu — finance majors at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics said they came up with the insurance idea just for fun last month.

It all started after Xu fared badly in the exams last month.

“He joked that if there was any insurance for failing in the exams, he would have bought it and got some comfort,” Guan told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

“His words set our minds working and we came up with the idea. We just realized that other students might be feeling the same way as Xu,” she said.

The trio worked out the details of the scheme after checking out the “failing rates of students in the school in recent years.” They then created a WeChat account to operate the “business.”

As per the scheme, students have to pay five yuan (81 US cents) for each course through WeChat, which also sends out a confirmation message. They will receive 30 yuan if they fail the final exam.

To make the scheme “attractive,” they decided that insurance buyers who scored over 90 points out of 100 in the exams, will be rewarded with 20 yuan.

“By developing this insurance package with such a small sum of money, we are not encouraging students to blow their exams, but to help them to relax before the exams,” Guan claimed.

Since they started the “business” on June 24, about 150 students had entered the scheme. One of them was Xu Zhifeng, a sophomore from the university’s law school. “When I got to know about the insurance project, I thought it was a really interesting one and did not hesitate to buy it,” he said. “Thirty-yuan compensation is not a big sum of money,” Xu said. “But buying the insurance did give me some kind of psychological comfort.”

Guan said if they had developed the product at the beginning of June before the final exams began, they would have had more buyers. This year’s results are not out yet so it is not known yet if the trio will be making or losing money.

“It is a meaningful lesson for us — doesn’t matter if we make or lose money. We will continue to run it next semester and see if it can be developed into a real thing,” she said.

Liu Jinquan, a local lawyer, however warned of the consequences. “If it is just for fun in the school, it can be simple and easy,” Liu said. “But if they plan to develop it into a company, it will have to be supervised by the authorities. Only then can they compete in a more complicated environment,” he said.

“We all know that the capital threshold for finance industry is very high and risky. And the students’ exam performance can be easily manipulated. So they will have to be really cautious.”




 

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