HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Oct. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An", or the "Group", HKEX: 2318 / 82318; SSE: 601318) today announced its results for the nine months ended September 30, 2024.
In the first nine months of 2024, China's economy remained generally stable as it pursued high-quality development amidst short-term challenges including economic restructuring, lackluster growth momentum, and increasing external uncertainties. Ping An achieved steady growth with strong resilience in overall business performance by adhering to its core financial businesses, strengthening its "integrated finance + health and senior care" strategy under a customer-centric approach, and delivering "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" service experience.
The Group delivered a 15.9% annualized operating return on equity (ROE), with operating profit and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rising 5.5% and 36.1% year on year to RMB113,818 million and RMB119,182 million respectively in the first nine months of 2024. Revenue increased 8.7% year on year to RMB861,817 million*. Three core businesses, namely life and health insurance (Life & Health), property and casualty insurance (Ping An P&C), and banking, maintained positive growth and delivered RMB119,651 million in operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company, up 5.7% year on year. Life & Health achieved high-quality development and new business value (NBV) amounted to RMB35,160 million in the first nine months of 2024, up 34.1% year on year. Customers entitled to health and senior care services contributed over 69.6% of Ping An Life's NBV in the first nine months of 2024.
Deepened "4 channels + 3 products" strategy; Life & Health NBV surged 34.1% year on year
Life & Health improved operational quality and efficiency, leading to significant result in high-quality development. Ping An Life continued to enhance its channels and improve business quality under the "4 channels + 3 products" strategy in the first nine months of 2024. By upgrading "insurance + service" solutions, the company continuously strengthened its presence in health and senior care sectors. Life & Health NBV grew 34.1% year on year to RMB35,160 million in the first nine months of 2024. NBV margin based on annualized new premium (ANP) rose by 5.7 pps year on year to 31.0%.
Ping An Life enhanced its channel capabilities under the value orientation of high-quality development. The company continued to deepen the transformation and build multichannel professional sales capabilities, significantly improving the development quality. Agent channel NBV grew 31.6% year on year in the first nine months of 2024. Ping An Life also effectively improved agent productivity, boosting NBV per agent by 54.7% year on year. The company focused on recruiting high-quality new agents through high-quality existing ones. The number of individual life insurance sales agents was about 362,000 as of September 30, 2024. The proportion of "Talent +" agents increased by 4 pps year on year in new recruits. In respect of cooperation with banks, Ping An Life increased NBV of the bancassurance channel by 68.5% year on year by enhancing outlet operations. The company continuously developed the community finance channel. The 13-month persistency ratio of orphan polices within this channel improved by 6.6 pps year on year in the first nine months of 2024, with NBV up by over 300% year on year. Innovative channels including bancassurance and community finance accounted for 18.8% of Ping An Life's NBV in the first nine months of 2024, up by 2.4 pps year on year.
Ping An Life diversified and upgraded its product portfolio under a customer-centric philosophy. Playing a role of a shock absorber and stabilizer in the insurance sector, the company focused on core customer demands for health protection, pension reserves, and wealth management. It consistently diversified and upgraded its insurance product portfolio under a customer-centric approach. By leveraging the Group's health and senior care ecosystem, Ping An Life continuously improved "insurance + service" products. In respect of health care, Ping An Life provided health management services to over 19.50 million customers in the first nine months of 2024. In respect of home-based senior care, Ping An innovated its "medical, nursing, housing and entertainment" alliances, continuously working with its partners to establish service standards and ecosystems. Ping An's home-based senior care services covered 75 cities across China as of September 30, 2024 with over 150,000 customers eligible for such services, who gave positive general feedback. Ping An unveiled premium senior care communities in five cities as of September 30, 2024, which are currently under construction and will be open for business from 2025 onward.
Ping An P&C and banking businesses maintained stable growth; technology enabled financial businesses to boost quality and efficiency
Ping An P&C maintained stable revenue growth and good business quality. In the first nine months of 2024, the company's insurance revenue and operating profit increased 4.5% and 39.7% year on year to RMB246,022 million and RMB13,987 million respectively. Ping An P&C improved its overall combined ratio (COR) by 1.5 pps year on year to 97.8% through enhanced business management and risk screening, leading the market.
Ping An Bank maintained resilient business performance as well as adequate capital and risk provisions. The bank's net profit grew 0.2% year on year to RMB39,729 million in the first nine months of 2024. Retail assets under management (AUM) rose by 2.9% from the beginning of the year to RMB4,148,566 million as of September 30, 2024. Corporate loan balance grew 11.6% from the beginning of the year to RMB1,595,924 million as of September 30, 2024. Core tier 1 capital adequacy ratio rose to 9.33% and the provision coverage ratio stood at 251.19%; non-performing loan ratio remained flat from the beginning of the year at 1.06% as of September 30, 2024.
Ping An delivered excellent results in insurance funds investment. The Group's insurance funds investment portfolio grew 12.7% from the beginning of the year to over RMB5.32 trillion as of September 30, 2024. Under a philosophy of value investing through cycles, the insurance funds investment portfolio achieved an annualized comprehensive investment yield of 5.0%, up by 1.3 pps year on year.
From the perspective of transforming and upgrading Ping An's core financial businesses, technology benefits are reflected in higher sales, better business efficiency, and stronger risk management. The volume of services provided by Ping An's artificial intelligence (AI) service representatives reached about 1.34 billion times, accounting for 80% of total customer service volume in the first nine months of 2024. The AI service representatives responded to and handled customer inquiries and complaints swiftly. Via smart underwriting and smart claim settlement, 93% of Ping An Life's policies were underwritten within seconds, and it took an average of 7.4 minutes to close a claim with Smart Quick Claim. Moreover, claims savings via smart fraud risk identification amounted to RMB9.1 billion in the first nine months of 2024 as Ping An continuously strengthened risk management. The Group's patent applications led most international financial institutions, totaling 53,521 and including generative AI patent filings in terms of which Ping An ranked second in the world.
Enhancing the "integrated finance + health and senior care" strategy to provide "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" customer service experience
Ping An further advanced integrated finance business and upgraded it from cross-selling to comprehensive customer-centric operation. Ping An built a needs-oriented, customer-centric operation system characterized by digital operations. On the basis of data mining, Ping An leveraged customer insights, product benefits and a smart marketing service platform to improve customer acquisition, activation, migration and retention, providing "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" one-stop integrated finance solutions. The Group's retail customers increased 3.8% from the beginning of the year to 240 million as of September 30, 2024. The customer retention increased, with 25.1% of customers holding four or more contracts within the Group, resulting in a retention rate of 98.0%. Retail cross-selling continued to deepen as approximately 16.88 million times of cross-selling occurred within the Group in the first nine months of 2024. As of September 30, 2024, over 88.26 million retail customers held multiple contracts with different subsidiaries of the Group. Contracts per retail customer reached 2.92. Retail customers and contracts per retail customer have increased 21.3% and 9.4% respectively since December 31, 2019 to September 30, 2024.
Ping An continuously implemented its health and senior care strategy to build significant differential advantages. Nearly 63% of Ping An's 240 million retail customers used services from the health and senior care ecosystem as of September 30, 2024. They held approximately 3.35 contracts and RMB57,800 in AUM per capita, 1.6 times and 3.9 times those held by non-users of these services respectively. The health and senior care ecosystem is becoming an increasingly important enabler to Ping An Life's core businesses. Over 19.50 million customers of Ping An Life used services from the health and senior care ecosystem in the first nine months of 2024. Approximately 76% of Ping An Life's newly enrolled customers used health management services in the first nine months of 2024. Customers entitled to health and senior care services contributed over 69.6% of Ping An Life's NBV, including approximately 39.0% from those entitled to senior care services and approximately 30.6% from those entitled to health care services.
Ping An made significant progress in developing health management and medical service networks. The Group maintained exclusive health records for customers, and provided membership-based health and senior care services via family doctors and senior care concierges. Ping An guided members through an end-to-end "online, in-store, and in-home" service network covering consultation, diagnosis, treatment and services under AI-enabled 24/7 seconds-level management. Its health and senior care ecosystem had nearly 64,000 paying corporate customers, serving their over 26 million employees as of September 30, 2024. PKU Healthcare Group's revenue continued to grow and reached approximately RMB3.93billion in the first nine months of 2024. Meanwhile, Ping An integrated domestic and overseas premium resources including medical services, health services, commodities and medicines to build extensive partner networks in China and abroad. Ping An had about 50,000 in-house doctors and contracted external doctors in China as of September 30, 2024. Ping An has partnered with over 36,000 hospitals (including all top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals), over 104,000 health care management institutions and over 233,000 pharmacies in China. Overseas, Ping An has partnered with over 1,300 health care institutions in 35 countries.
Ping An actively fulfilled its social responsibilities and served green development and rural vitalization. Ping An's green insurance premium income amounted to RMB37,341 million and funds provided for rural industrial vitalization via "Ping An Rural Communities Support" totaled RMB31,406 million in the first nine months of 2024. The Group remained No.1 in the financial industry on China Central Television (CCTV)'s "China's Top 100 Listed Companies by ESG" list in 2024.
Looking ahead, the fundamentals of China's economic development remain unchanged, with great market potential and strong economic resilience continuing to provide favorable conditions. As the state effectively implements various decisions and a series of incremental policies, China's growth momentum will gradually strengthen. The economic trend of continued stability with steady progress will be further bolstered. The health care, senior care and financial markets are poised to embrace new growth opportunities. To achieve high-quality business development, Ping An will uphold a people-centric philosophy, maintain its strategic focus on core financial businesses, advance its technology-driven "integrated finance + health and senior care" strategy, improve operations and management to drive business recovery and growth, and continually enhance the quality and effectiveness of financial services for the real economy. Ping An is committed to creating long-term, stable and sustainable value for customers, employees, shareholders and society, as well as contributing to China's development into a financial powerhouse.
* Based on the International Financial Reporting Standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Board
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