Ping An Reports Steady Growth of 9.2% in Operating Profit Attributable to Shareholders of Parent Company in 9M 2021
Total Assets exceeded RMB10 Trillion
HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Oct. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) of Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEx:2318; SSE:601318) today announced its results for the nine months ended 30 September 2021.
The Chinese economy continued to recover steadily in the third quarter of 2021. China's dual-circulation development pattern furthered the reformation and upgrading of the industry structure. Nevertheless, enterprises are facing relatively great pressure against the backdrop of a complicated international environment, recurrent COVID-19 outbreaks in China, and the impact of natural disasters, including floods. Facing the challenges, Ping An upheld the compliance philosophy, continued to optimize the operations and management, and strengthened risk management while adopting various forward-looking measures. Ping An pressed firmly ahead with Ping An Life's quality-oriented reform and transformation, improved the main financial businesses focusing on the needs of transformation and upgrading, and enhanced the healthcare ecosystem. Moreover, Ping An laid a solid foundation for long-term sustainable, healthy growth by delivering "heartwarming financial services" and providing customers with "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" experiences. By "heartwarming financial services", Ping An is moving away from the traditional 'cold' transactional insurance business model to a more professional, life-style service. With the support of Ping An's technology-driven health care ecosystem, Ping An can not only meet customers' insurance and financial requirements but also their long-term regular medical care, health, senior care, and daily lifestyle needs.
Operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rose 9.2% year on year to RMB118,737 million, which is equivalent to a 20.3% annualized operating ROE in the first nine months of 2021. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company decreased 20.8% year on year to RMB81,638 million. The Group's assets exceeded RMB 10 trillion，approaching RMB10.08 trillion. Customer development continued to yield greater results. Retail customers increased 3.1% year to date to over 225 million as of September 30, 2021. Of the total retail customers, 39.0% or 87.74 million held multiple contracts with different subsidiaries. The Group acquired 25.25 million new retail customers in the first nine months of 2021, 34.6% of whom were sourced from internet users from the Group's member companies. The new financing scale achieved through corporate business cross-selling increased 29.5% year on year in the first nine months of 2021.
Ping An Life continued to strengthen its reform and transformation. Ping An Property & Casualty ("Ping An P&C"), Ping An Bank, and the asset management business maintained stable growth.
Ping An Life rose to the challenge by pioneering high-quality transformation, in favour of higher-quality products and services and agents. Life & Health's operating profit decreased 2.3% year on year to RMB73,684 million. NBV of Life & Health fell 17.8% year on year to RMB35,237 million in the first nine months of 2021. In the third quarter, the per capita first year premium (FYP) achieved through the agent channel increased 6% quarter on quarter. In the face of a complex and changeable market environment, Ping An Life unswervingly made efforts to further the transformation of the channels and products to ensure sustainable and healthy development. Regarding channels, the Company refined the tiered management of its agent force and optimized the team structure through digital empowerment. The elite Diamond Agents remained stable in the third quarter of 2021. The Company coordinated the development of various channels, including bancassurance, telemarketing, and internet channels. The digital transformation boosted the performance of the Company's pilot outlets. The NBV achieved by the pilot outlets increased 5% quarter on quarter, and the per capita NBV achieved by the pilot outlets increased 12% quarter on quarter. Regarding products, Ping An Life progressed deeper into the critical illness insurance market to meet diverse customer demands. The Company began rolling out upgraded "insurance + health management" and "insurance + high-end eldercare" services under its "heartwarming insurance products and services" strategy. Ping An upgraded "Ping An Zhen Xiang RUN Health Services Plan" in September 2021 to offer management schemes covering four scenarios, namely health management, sub-health management, chronic disease management, and disease management. As a result, customers can enjoy the Company's "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" health services experience based on professional family doctors and health services.
Ping An P&C maintained good business quality as its combined ratio improved by 1.8 pps year on year to 97.3%, and operating profit grew 20.2% year on year to RMB13,283 million in the first nine months of 2021. In response to super rainstorms in Henan Province, Ping An P&C immediately launched fast tracks for claims on online platforms including Ping An Auto Owner. Ping An P&C made every effort to fight the impact of the super rainstorms by settling claims as rapidly as possible, with flood claim payments expected to exceed RMB3.4 billion. Meanwhile, Ping An provided front-line rescue workers with complimentary exclusive insurance. "Ping An Auto Owner", the largest automotive service app in China, had over 144 million registered users as of September 30, 2021, with over 92 million vehicles linked with the app.
The Group continued to improve the asset allocation of its investment portfolio of insurance funds and the management of asset-liability matching. The Company's investment portfolio of insurance funds grew about 3% year to date to nearly RMB3.9 trillion as of September 30, 2021. The investment portfolio of insurance funds achieved an annualized net investment yield of 4.2% and an annualized total investment yield of 3.7% in the first nine months of 2021.
Ping An Bank maintained stable business growth and continued to improve its asset quality. Revenue grew 9.1% year on year to RMB127,190 million and net profit rose 30.1% year on year to RMB29,135 million in the first nine months of 2021. Non-performing loan ratio improved by 0.13 pps year to date to 1.05% and provision coverage ratio rose 66.95 pps year to date to 268.35% as of September 30, 2021. Ping An Bank further advanced its retail business transformation and continued to enhance corporate banking. Ping An Bank's retail assets under management ("AUM") rose 16.3% year to date to RMB3,052,432 million as of September 30, 2021. Retail customers increased 8.5% year to date to approximately 116,204,500, among which qualified private banking customers grew 18.2% year to date to approximately 67,700. The balance of corporate loans grew 7.6% year to date to RMB1,142,500 million as of September 30, 2021.
Ping An empowered main businesses with technology and enhanced healthcare ecosystem rapidly.
Ping An continued to strengthen its technological capabilities to empower its main businesses. The total revenue of the technology business increased 12.6% year on year to RMB73,227 million in the first nine months of 2021. Ping An's technology patent applications increased by 5,423 year to date to 36,835 as of September 30, 2021. Ping An leverages cutting-edge technologies to comprehensively upgrade the end-to-end services of its core financial businesses. The sales driven by AI reached RMB186.3 billion in the first nine months of 2021, accounting for 27% of the total sales. AI assistance representatives provided services about 1.54 billion times in the first nine months of 2021, accounting for 56% of the total volume of services provided.
Ping An enhanced healthcare ecosystem rapidly. As of September 30, 2021, Ping An's healthcare businesses had served more than 43,000 medical institutions in 187 cities. Approximately 1.12 million doctors and 3.22 million chronic patients used the medical services. Ping An Good Doctor effectively managed customer needs through leading health management tools and provided 400 million registered users with "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" service experience. Ping An HealthKonnect continued to empower Healthcare Security Administrations and provided integrated medical management solutions covering hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, and insured members. The smart healthcare business provided end-to-end solutions to break the "medical information silo" and enable business collaboration based on data platform and AI algorithm.
Ping An empowered financial ecosystem with technology. Lufax Holding is committed to becoming a leading technology-powered personal financial services platform by addressing the huge unmet demand for loans among small and micro-business owners and salaried workers in China, and providing tailor-made wealth management solutions for China's fast-growing middle class and affluent population. Lufax Holding cleaned up all its peer-to-peer AUM held by retail customers by August 2021, achieving the target of winding up of the online lending business ahead of schedule. OneConnect continuously promoted fintech innovation. OneConnect served more than 600 banks and 100 main insurance institutions in China. It also provided services to institutions in more than 20 countries or territories, mainly in Southeast Asia. The Company has been on the IDC FinTech Rankings Top 100 list for four consecutive years. OneConnect announced an upgraded strategy of "One Body and Two Wings" in September, 2021. "One Body" refers to the main business of helping financial institutions pursue digital transformation to improve efficiency, enhance service quality, reduce costs, and manage risks. "Two Wings" refers to developing ecosystems for governments, regulators and enterprises and expanding overseas markets.
Autohome, China's leading online auto services platform, announced its "ecosystem-based" strategic upgrade on September 15, 2021. Under the new business strategy, Autohome will develop the dual ecosystem of "Autohome + Ping An" to provide comprehensive services for consumers, automakers, and various players in the auto ecosystem.
Ping An fulfilled corporate social responsibility and comprehensively deepened its green finance initiative to support the sustainable development of society. Ping An's green investment and green credit totaled RMB208,886 million and RMB53,278 million, respectively, as of September 30, 2021. Ping An's premium from green insurance totaled RMB25,109 million in the first nine months of 2021. Moreover, Ping An continued to advance the Ping An Rural Communities Support program, moving from poverty alleviation to rural revitalization. Ping An cumulatively provided RMB37,583 million for poverty alleviation and industrial revitalization as of September 30, 2021.
2021 is the first year of China's 14th Five-Year Plan. Ping An earnestly implements the 14th Five-Year Plan by upholding compliance, strengthening risk management, and improving operations. The Group pursues steady progress and promotes high-quality development while serving the real economy. Meanwhile, Ping An continues to focus on "Pan Financial Assets" and "Pan Healthcare" under its "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" strategies. The Group will actively fulfill corporate social responsibilities, and create steadily growing value for customers, shareholders, and society under the philosophy of "Expertise makes life simple, technology makes financial services heartwarming, and healthcare makes life better." In addition, Ping An will make unremitting efforts to contribute to China's dual-circulation development strategy and to realize people's aspirations for a better life and the common prosperity of society.
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About Ping An Group
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An") is a world-leading technology-powered retail financial services group. With over 225 million retail customers and nearly 634 million internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Ping An focuses on two over-arching domains of activity, "pan financial assets" and "pan health care", covering the provision of financial and health care services through our integrated financial services platform and our ecosystems in financial services, health care, auto services and smart city services. Our "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" transformation strategies aim to provide customers and internet users with innovative and simple products and services using technology. As China's first joint stock insurance company, Ping An is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate reporting and corporate governance. The Group is listed on the stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Ping An ranked 6th in the Forbes Global 2000 list in 2021 and ranked 16th in the Fortune Global 500 list in 2020. Ping An also ranked 49th in the 2021 WPP Kantar Millward Brown BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.
For more information, please visit www.group.pingan.com and follow us on LinkedIn - PING AN.
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