Insurer Ping An braces itself for coronavirus challenges

Ping An, China’s largest insurer by market size, will leverage its strengths to overcome the various challenges brought by the Covid-19 outbreak, its chairman and CEO Ma Mingzhe has said.

The group said it had helped the nationwide fight against the outbreak by protecting people's livelihoods and fulfilling its corporate social responsibilities through various channels including donations, insurance protection, financial services and medical aid.

The news follows a year of healthy growth for the group. Ping An’s 2019 operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company grew 18.1 percent year on year to Rmb133 billion ($19 billion) equating to an operating return on equity of 21.7 percent. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rose 39.1 percent year on year to Rmb149.4 billion.

Corporate premiums achieved through cross-selling reached Rmb12.6 billion, in which the written premium of the corporate channel rose by 115.5 percent year on year. The life & health insurance business recorded an operating profit of Rmb88.9 billion, up 24.7 percent year on year.

Ping An property & casualty once again achieved a "better-than-industry" combined ratio of 96.4 percent, with operating profit up by 70.7 percent to Rmb20.9 billion.

Revenues and net profit of Ping An Bank's retail business rose by 29.2 percent and 13.8 percent year on year respectively.

Total revenue of the technology business grew by 27.1 percent year on year to Rmb82 billion. Ping An has built a technology team of nearly 110,000 technology business employees, 35,000 research and development employees and 2,600 scientists.

The company applied an internally developed artificial intelligence (AI) interview robot to 100 percent of sales agent recruitment interviews in 2019. AskBob, the agents' exclusive smart personal assistant, has served agents 340 million times since going live. The AI-powered image-based loss assessment and precise customer profiling technologies provided nearly 90 percent of auto insurance claimants with online services, and almost 25 percent of the claims can be handled through smart loss assessment. The speech robots provided services 850 million times in 2019 in 83 percent of financial sales scenarios and 81 percent of customer services scenarios across the group, cutting the annual cost of call centre agents by 11 percent.

Ma Mingzhe said: "The year 2020 will witness the completion of China's 13th Five-Year Plan, a critical year for building China into a moderately prosperous society and alleviating poverty across China. In the coming year, we will remain committed to developing cutting-edge technologies and planning for the future. We will promote technological innovations and smart data-driven operations. To help the country win the fight against poverty, we will spare no effort to carry out targeted poverty alleviation measures, especially in poverty-stricken areas in Tibet, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Qinghai.

“We will remain true to our original aspirations of serving customers, rewarding shareholders, supporting society, and contributing to the country. We will leverage our strengths to overcome the various challenges brought by the Covid-19 outbreak, serve the real economy, fulfil our corporate social responsibilities, and contribute to the Chinese nation's great rejuvenation."