Ping An Reports Steady YoY Growth of 4.3% in Operating Profit Attributable to Shareholders of the Parent Company in 1H2022

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Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.

Aug 23, 2022, 08:47 ET

Attaching great importance to shareholder returns, annual cash dividend per share grows by 4.5% year on year

HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Aug. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An", the "Company" or the "Group", HKEX: 2318; SSE: 601318) today announced its 2022 interim results for the six month period ended 30 June 2022.

2022 is a critical year for Ping An's cultural reshaping, strategic upgrade, and reform and transformation. Ping An pressed firmly ahead with Ping An Life's quality-oriented reform and transformation, continuously strengthened the advantages of integrated finance, and built the "managed care model". Ping An laid a solid foundation for long-term sustainable, healthy growth by providing customers with "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" experience under the philosophy of "Expertise creates value". Capitalizing on the "integrated finance + healthcare" strategy and digital transformation, Ping An maintained steady development despite the complex, challenging international environment and continued impact of COVID-19 in China in the first half of 2022. Ping An achieved an annualized operating ROE of 20.4% in the first half of 2022, with operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rising 4.3% year on year to RMB85,340 million. Net Profit reached RMB71,676 million. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company increased 3.9% year on year to RMB60,273 million. Ping An attaches importance to shareholder returns and will pay an interim dividend of RMB0.92 per share in cash, up 4.5% year on year.

Top business highlights in 1H2022:

Profit grew steadily, and cash dividends continued to rise. Ping An achieved an annualized operating ROE of 20.4% in the first half of 2022, with operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rising 4.3% year on year to RMB85,340 million. Ping An attaches importance to shareholder returns and will pay an interim dividend of RMB0.92 per share in cash, up 4.5% year on year.
The integrated financial services model continued to progress steadily. Ping An's retail customers exceeded 225 million and contracts per retail customer grew steadily by 1.4% year to date to 2.95 as of June 30, 2022. Written premium of the corporate channel achieved through cross-selling rose 7.0% year on year in the first half of 2022.
Reform and transformation of life insurance business is showing results continuously. Despite the impact of multiple factors including COVID-19, NBV per agent increased 26.9% year on year, and the 13-month persistency ratio of insurance policies improved by 4.1 pps year on year in the first half of 2022, driven by the quality-oriented transformation of the agent force. Operating profit of the life and health insurance business rose 17.4% year on year to RMB58,993 million in the first half of 2022.
Ping An Property & Casualty maintained stable business growth and healthy business quality. Premium income increased 10.1% year on year to RMB146,792 million and combined ratio was 97.3% in the first half of 2022.
Ping An Bank maintained stable, healthy business growth and asset quality. Revenue grew 8.7% year on year to RMB92,022 million and net profit rose 25.6% year on year to RMB22,088 million in the first half of 2022. Non-performing loan ratio remained unchanged year to date at 1.02%, and provision coverage ratio was 290.06% as of June 30, 2022, indicating adequate risk provisions.
Ping An continued to implement its healthcare ecosystem strategy by exploiting synergies with financial businesses. As of June 30, 2022, Ping An's healthcare ecosystem had partnered with all top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals as well as 208,000 pharmacies in China; Ping An Smart Healthcare cumulatively served 187 cities and over 55,000 medical institutions, and empowered over 1.42 million doctors. More than 64% of Ping An's over 225 million retail customers used services from the healthcare ecosystem.
Ping An continued to strengthen its core technological capabilities and achieved results in empowering financial businesses with technologies. Ping An's technology patent applications increased by 4,674 year to date to 43,094 as of June 30, 2022, more than most other international financial institutions'. In the first half of 2022, sales realized by AI service representatives increased 39% year on year; customer services provided by AI service representatives accounted for 83% of Ping An's total customer service volume.
Ping An further advanced its green finance initiative to support the sustainable development of society. Ping An's green investment and financing, and green banking business totaled RMB249,355 million and RMB161,735 million respectively as of June 30, 2022. Premium income of environmentally sustainable insurance products totaled RMB76,971 million in the first half of 2022. Moreover, Ping An continued to advance the "Ping An Rural Communities Support" and implemented the innovative project of "bringing insurance, finance, and healthcare to rural areas." Ping An cumulatively provided RMB49,720 million for poverty alleviation and industrial revitalization as of June 30, 2022.
Brand value continued to increase. In 2022, Ping An ranked 25th in the Fortune Global 500 list (4th among global financial services companies), 4th in the Fortune China 500 list, and 17th in the Forbes Global 2000 list.

Integrated finance: Customer development improved continuously. Life insurance's reform achieved results. Property & Casualty maintained good business quality. The banking business grew steadily

Ping An's integrated finance strategy has focused on the development of both retail customers and corporate customers under a customer-centric philosophy. In retail business, Ping An leverages advantages in its ecosystems to build a brand of "heartwarming financial services" by providing one-stop integrated finance solutions. Ping An's retail operating profit increased 9.0% year on year to RMB75,437 million in the first half of 2022, accounting for 88.4% of its operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company. Ping An's retail customers exceeded 225 million as of June 30, 2022, up 1.5% year to date. Contracts per retail customer grew 1.4% year to date to 2.95. As the Group's retail cross-selling continued to deepen, nearly 40% of retail customers held multiple contracts with different subsidiaries. Ping An's corporate business strategy focuses on tiered customer development and yielded good results in the first half of 2022, with improving customer services and a constantly expanding business scale. Written premium of the corporate channel achieved through cross-selling rose 7.0% year on year in the first half of 2022.

The Life & Health insurance business advanced reform and transformation to pursue high-quality development. Operating profit after tax of the life and health insurance business rose 17.4% year on year to RMB58,993 million in the first half of 2022. Ping An Life firmly advanced the quality-oriented transformation of the agent force. Monthly income per agent rose 35.1% year on year to RMB7,957 and NBV per agent increased 26.9% year on year in the first half of 2022. Ping An Life continued to advance the "channel + product" reform strategy, adhering to the value-oriented philosophy. In respect of channels, Ping An furthered its reform of the agent channel and achieved initial results. Ping An Life refined the tiered management of its agent force to optimize the team structure, aiming to build a team of "high-competence, high-performing, and high-quality" agents. The proportion of agents with a college education background and above rose 4 pps year on year as of June 30, 2022. Ping An Life continued to improve Diamond Agents' capabilities. FYP per Diamond Agent was 4.7 times the average of all agents, and the number of top performers rose 7.7% year on year in the first half of 2022. Bancassurance and other innovative channels such as Community Grid and the lower-tier channel were being developed simultaneously. In respect of products, Ping An Life created differentiation advantages with three core services, namely "insurance + health management", "insurance + home-based elderlycare", and "insurance + high-end elderlycare" by leveraging the Group's healthcare ecosystem under the philosophy of "developing heartwarming insurance". Upselling rate of customers who used healthcare services is 3.5 times that of those who didn't. Customers using service benefits contributed 46% of the NBV. Due to the continuous impact of COVID-19, offline sales promotion activities were hindered in multiple regions in the first half of 2022. Consequently, NBV of the life and health insurance business dropped 28.5% year on year to RMB19,573 million.

Ping An P&C maintained steady business growth and healthy business quality. Premium income increased 10.1% year on year to RMB146,792 million and combined ratio was 97.3% in the first half of 2022. Ping An P&C proactively applies technologies to data-driven online customer development to offer superior user experience. "Ping An Auto Owner," the largest automotive service app in China, had over 159 million registered users, and over 99 million vehicles had been linked with the app as of June 30, 2022. Ping An P&C's pioneering video-based auto insurance claim investigations take only five minutes on average. 92.9% of auto insurance claim payments were made within one hour in the first half of 2022.

Ping An Bank maintained stable, healthy business growth. Revenue and net profit for the first half of 2022 grew 8.7% and 25.6% year on year, respectively. Asset quality remained stable. Non-performing loan ratio remained unchanged year to date at 1.02%, and provision coverage ratio was 290.06% as of June 30, 2022, indicating adequate risk provisions. Ping An Bank maintained steady growth in retail business. Retail AUM rose 9.1% year to date to RMB3,472,148 million, and registered users of the "Ping An Pocket Bank" app reached 143.7985 million, up 6.6% year to date as of June 30, 2022.

Ping An's investment portfolio of insurance funds grew 9.0% year to date to over RMB4.27 trillion as of June 30, 2022. Investment income on the Group's investment portfolio of insurance funds was under pressure in the first half of 2022 due to volatile capital markets. The annualized net investment yield was 3.9%, and the annualized total investment yield was 3.1%. Ping An continued to optimize the duration gap between assets and liabilities despite a market-wide shortage of long-duration assets. The Group further improved investment risk management by strengthening risk review, refining risk limits, and tightening concentration risk management and post-investment management.

Healthcare: Ping An launched an innovative Chinese version of the "managed care model" and exploited synergies with main financial businesses

Ping An launched a Chinese version of the "managed care model" with Ping An's characteristics to meet Chinese customer needs. Ping An serves as a payer, and integrated medical, healthcare management, and elderlycare service providers to provide customers with cost-effective "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" healthcare services, including membership-based family doctor and elderlycare concierge services.

The Group continued to implement its healthcare ecosystem strategy and achieved over RMB70 billion in health insurance premium income in the first half of 2022. As of June 30, 2022, Ping An's healthcare ecosystem had partnered with all top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals, over 100,000 healthcare management institutions, as well as 208,000 pharmacies in China; Ping An Smart Healthcare cumulatively served 187 cities and over 55,000 medical institutions, and empowered over 1.42 million doctors.

Ping An's healthcare ecosystem empowered its main financial businesses and began to generate synergies. More than 64% of Ping An's over 225 million retail customers used services from the healthcare ecosystem. These customers held approximately 3.39 contracts and approximately RMB52,900 in AUM per capita respectively, 1.6 times and 2.8 times those held by customers who did not use these services respectively.

As an integral part of the Group's "managed care model", Ping An Health developed an online-merge-offline "medical + healthcare" services platform to provide users with high-quality and more convenient medical and healthcare services, capitalizing on its online-to-offline (O2O) service network. Revenue of Ping An Health reached RMB2,828 million in the first half of 2022. The number of cumulative paying users exceeded 40 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2022. Ping An Health's in-house doctors and contracted external doctors totaled nearly 49,000 as of June 30, 2022, including over 1,500 contracted renowned doctors. Moreover, Ping An Health has built seven specialty medical centers, providing users with diverse medical and healthcare services.

Technology Innovation: Ping An continued to strengthen its core technological capabilities to empower financial business.

Ping An continued to focus on developing core technologies to build leading technological capabilities, which have been widely utilized to empower its main financial businesses and healthcare ecosystem. Ping An's technology patent applications increased by 4,674 year to date to 43,094 as of June 30, 2022. The Group ranked first globally by the number of AI, fintech and digital healthcare patent applications.

Aiming to transform and upgrade the main businesses, Ping An utilized technology to enhance its financial business by promoting sales, increasing cost-effectiveness and controlling risks. Ping An empowered human service representatives with AI. The amount of services provided by AI service representatives reached approximately 1.25 billion times in the first half of 2022, representing 83% of Ping An's total customer service volume. Sales realized by AI service representatives reached approximately RMB176.9 billion in the first half of 2022, accounting for 43.1% of the total sales volume of all service representatives.

Lufax Holding was committed to serving small and micro-enterprises and maintained steady business growth. Lufax Holding continuously furthered its strategic transformation in the first half of 2022 in line with the trends of financial regulations and changes in the market environment. Revenue grew 8.4% year on year to RMB32,604 million and net profit fell 16.2% year on year to RMB8,188 million. Lufax helped nearly 160,000 small and micro-enterprises obtain RMB58.2 billion in funding in the first half of 2022.

OneConnect continued to improve its operating performance with a focus on products and clients. Revenue of OneConnect grew 20.4% year on year to RMB2,153 million, and premium plus customers increased by 21 to 134 in the first half of 2022. On July 4, 2022, OneConnect successfully listed its ordinary shares on HKEX by way of introduction, and became the first technology-as-a-service provider that debuted on HKEX in a dual-primary listing.

Autohome continuously upgraded its "ecosystem strategy" by providing comprehensive services for consumers, automakers, and various players in the auto ecosystem. Autohome's revenue and net profit reached RMB3,204 million and RMB910 million respectively in the first half of 2022. Revenue contributions from online marketplace and other businesses under innovative business models, such as data products, new energy vehicle transactions, and used car transactions, accounted for 29.5% of Autohome's revenue in the first half of 2022.

Ping An actively fulfilled its social responsibility and comprehensively upgraded the green finance initiative. The Group actively contributed to China's carbon peak and neutrality goals by expanding the scale of green insurance, green investment, and green credit. Meanwhile, the Group further advanced the "Ping An Rural Communities Support" program and cumulatively provided RMB49,720 million for poverty alleviation and industrial revitalization as of June 30, 2022.

Looking ahead, Ma Mingzhe, Chairman of Ping An, said, substantial uncertainties will remain regarding COVID-19 as well as in the domestic and overseas environment in the second half of 2022. Facing severe challenges, Ping An still has far to go in reform and innovation. Ping An is comprehensively reshaping and promoting the new value-oriented culture, taking "value maximization as the only criterion for performance appraisal". "Expertise makes life simple" will always be Ping An's cultural philosophy and brand commitment. The new value-oriented culture will support the Group's strategic upgrades and empower the business management, thus create steadily growing value for customers, employees, shareholders, and society. Ping An will adhere to the policy of "focusing on main businesses, optimizing portfolios, increasing cost-effectiveness, and ensuring compliance" in the second half of 2022 and continue to implement the technology-driven "integrated finance + healthcare" strategy. By upgrading its financial and insurance businesses, Ping An will seize huge opportunities from the development of the healthcare ecosystem, and build its presence in "finance + elderlycare" and "finance + healthcare" industry ecosystems to serve the real economy, and lay a solid foundation for high-quality development in the new era.

About Ping An Group
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An") strives to become a world-leading retail financial services group. With over 225 million retail customers and nearly 668 million internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Ping An advances intelligent digital transformation, and employs technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of its financial businesses and enhance risk management. The Company believes "Expertise Creates Value" and "Expertise makes life simple". Ping An develops the "integrated finance + healthcare" service system and builds the "finance + elderlycare" and "finance + healthcare" industry ecosystems to provide professional "financial advisory, family doctor, and elderlycare concierge" services. 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 17th in the Forbes Global 2000 list in 2022 and ranked 25th in the Fortune Global 500 list in 2022.