Ping An Insurance Group, China’s largest insurer by market value, reported its largest half-year profit in over a decade, citing strong customer growth.
From January to June 2018, Ping An brought in a net profit of RMB58.10 billion (US$8.45 billion), a 34% year-on-year increase, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing. Gross written premiums grew by 20% to RMB408.19 billion (US$59.67 billion).
This has been its best half-year performance since 2007, Reuters reported. The insurer credited the good results to a rise in customer numbers, as well as the number of policies per client. Retail customers increased 25.2% year-on-year to 179 million, while the average number of policies per client rose 4.8% to 2.39 contracts.
Ping An is one of nine insurers designated by global regulators as systematically important, and is the only one headquartered in Asia. It derives its income from diverse sources, including asset management and banking.
The group’s Good Doctor online healthcare platform held an IPO in April, raising US$1.12 billion in what was Hong Kong’s largest listing for the year at the time.
“We believe Ping An will soon go through a period of rapid financial customer expansion, as both internet customers and financial customers have grown to enormous sizes,” according to a report by brokerage Morningstar.
The brokerage also predicted that agent growth at Ping An would slow down to 15% over the next five years, compared to around 25% in the past five, due to heightened competition for high-quality agents.
