In the first half of this month, Wu Jianwei, former vice president of Zheshang Bank, joined Ping An Life and proposed to be the deputy general manager, and at the same time in charge of the bancassurance division, and the relevant qualifications are still to be approved by the regulatory authorities.
Judging from Wu Jianwei's past resume, he has no internal work experience in Ping An, nor does he have any work experience related to insurance companies, so Wu Jianwei's joining Ping An this time is a "newcomer" parachuting, and Ping An values his long-term work experience in the bank.
According to public information, Wu Jianwei was born in 1971 and has worked in the Agricultural Bank of China for a long time. In March 2015, Wu Jianwei joined Zheshang Bank and successively served as Assistant to the President and Vice President, and since December 2018, he has also served as Secretary of the Party Committee and President of the Shanghai Branch of Zheshang Bank. On February 18, 2022, Zheshang Bank officially announced that Wu Jianwei resigned as vice president and no longer held any position in the company.
Since Qian resigned as vice president of Zheshang Bank more than two years ago, Wu Jianwei's whereabouts have not been settled. From the perspective of the overall environment, the current life insurance industry is facing an overall contraction in the number of agents, coupled with the abolition of the "one-to-three" restriction on the bancassurance channel, in this context, the bancassurance business may shoulder the heavier performance targets of life insurance companies. In this context, Wu Jianwei, who has many years of experience in the banking industry, joined Ping An Life and took charge of the bancassurance division, which may be conducive to the opening of bancassurance business cooperation channels and further meet the diversified insurance market demand.
In addition, both Ping An Life and Ping An Bank have repeatedly reaffirmed their emphasis on the bancassurance channel over the past period, including formulating relevant policies for Ping An's "new bancassurance team", raising the entry threshold for the team, and improving the team's treatment.
After Wu Jianwei arrives, how will Ping An's bancassurance channel develop? How much increment will it bring to Ping An Life in the future? These are all the answers that Wu Jianwei and Ping An Bancassurance need to give.
1
After a 77.7% surge in new business value in 2023, 2024 is off to a bad start
2023 is a year of rapid development for Ping An Bancassurance, and the data shows that the value of new business of Ping An Bancassurance's channel will increase by 77.7% in 2023, and the channel contribution will increase significantly.
On the one hand, Ping An Life and Ping An Bank continue to deepen the exclusive agency model to help banks improve their insurance sales capabilities and customer service levels. On the other hand, Ping An Life has expanded the number of external bank cooperation channels and outlets, strengthened the standardized operation of outlets, and improved the professional capabilities of the team, so that the per capita production capacity of the bancassurance team has increased.
Among them, the construction of the new bancassurance team initiated by Ping An Life and Ping An Bank is the focus of market attention.
Ping An's new bancassurance strategy can be traced back to June 2020, when Ping An officially launched the bancassurance strategy reform, and Ping An Life merged the bancassurance channel management into Ping An Bank. At the beginning of 2021, Xie Yonglin, General Manager, Co-CEO of Ping An Group and Chairman of Ping An Bank, said frankly at Ping An Bank's 2020 results conference that Ping An Bank would build a new private banking team focusing on bancassurance sales and services. In October 2021, Ping An Bank took the lead in implementing the "new bancassurance" model, building a wealth management team focusing on the sales of life insurance products and taking into account the sales of complex financial products in addition to the original wealth account managers and private bank account managers.
In the first quarter of 2023, Ping An Bank reported in detail on the situation of the new bancassurance team, and at the end of March 2023, the number of employees in the new team exceeded 1,700; In the first quarter, the Bank's insurance agency income was RMB1.318 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 83.8%; At the same time, the insurance allocation capacity of the front-line team has been effectively improved, and the embedded value of new business has been more than three times that of the same period.
At the same time, moving forward, the 2022 annual report shows that Ping An Bank's channels have contributed more than 70% of the new business value of the bancassurance business, among which the per capita production capacity of the new bancassurance team has surpassed that of the original wealth management manager team and the diamond agent team. During the same period, the revenue of the new bancassurance team accounted for more than 18% of the overall team, an increase of 10% year-on-year, and the sales of large orders with premiums of more than 5 million accounted for more than 3% of the whole bank.
However, due to changes in the market and policies, there have been some twists and turns in the development of bancassurance channels.
First of all, in the first half of 2023, the predetermined interest rate of 3.5% increased whole life products ushered in the key node of the suspension of sales, before the suspension of sales, the bancassurance channel premiums showed a rapid growth trend, of which Ping An Life and health insurance bancassurance channels achieved a scale premium income of 26.843 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 61.71%.
After the complete suspension of products in August, the market began to calm down, and the growth rate of premiums began to slow down. At the same time, in view of the fact that the cost management of life insurance companies is generally more extensive, resulting in the actual cost of the bancassurance channel exceeding the level of the product filing, and the situation of "inconsistent reporting and banking", the supervision has further implemented and strengthened the policy of "integration of reporting and banking".
This is also reflected in the latest quarterly report of Ping An Bank, data show that Ping An Bank's agency personal insurance income in the first quarter of this year was 248 million yuan, a sharp decline from the same period last year, Ping An Bank said that it was mainly affected by the reduction of bancassurance channels.
2
Thirty years of bank "veteran" joined,
The opportunities for the construction of Ping An's bancassurance channels outweigh the challenges
Judging from his resume, Wu Jianwei is a full bank "veteran". From joining the Zhejiang branch of the Agricultural Bank of China in 1993 to resigning from the vice president of the Bank of China in 2022, Wu Jianwei spent nearly 30 years step by step from an ordinary bank employee to the position of vice president of a national joint-stock commercial bank. On February 18, 2022, Zheshang Bank announced that Mr. Wu Jianwei resigned as vice president of the company for personal reasons, and in the following two years, there was not much news about Wu Jianwei in the market.
Recently, the market has begun to circulate that Wu Jianwei has joined Ping An Life as deputy general manager and is in charge of bancassurance business. First of all, he has strong management ability in large financial institutions, and secondly, his long-term banking experience makes Wu Jianwei have a deep understanding of the bancassurance channel, and he is expected to get started faster after joining Ping An.
What Wu Jianwei has to face is a relatively complex situation, which can be said to be challenging, but there are also huge opportunities.
First of all, in terms of policy, in May this year, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration issued the "Notice on Matters Concerning the Agency Insurance Business of Commercial Banks", which proposed to cancel the limit on the number of cooperation between bank outlets and insurance companies. Previously, channel cooperation was required to be carried out in accordance with the principle that "each branch of a commercial bank can only carry out insurance agency business cooperation with no more than three insurance companies in the same fiscal year".
On the one hand, this will be conducive to increasing the sales outlets of products, but on the other hand, under the relaxation of restrictions, the channel competition of insurance institutions will intensify.
Returning to Ping An itself, in fact, for the entire Ping An Group, the premiums of the bancassurance channel are not high in terms of absolute value or total premiums. According to the data, the premium of Ping An's bancassurance channel in 2023 will be 40.087 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.93%, although the growth rate is good, the absolute value is not large, and it is lower than the bancassurance channel premium of many listed insurance companies in the industry.
At the same time, Ping An's bancassurance channel does not account for a high proportion of total premiums. Unlike Sunshine Life, PICC Life Insurance, Xinhua Insurance and other companies, where the bancassurance channel premiums account for more than 20% of their total life insurance premiums, Ping An's bancassurance channel premiums account for a much lower proportion of the total life insurance premiums, less than 10%.
Therefore, today's bancassurance channel does not account for a large proportion of Ping An, and the impact on the overall premium is not large, but "small" often means an opportunity and an increment can be played.
For Ping An, the advantages of building a bancassurance channel are mainly as follows.
The first is the linkage and cooperation with Ping An Bank, there is no doubt that from any level, Ping An Bank is the main position for the development of Ping An bancassurance channels, especially at the moment of emphasizing wealth management services, insurance allocation is a very important part of customer wealth management, and the continuous construction of bancassurance channels is actually improving the service capacity of Ping An Bank, so although the first quarter of this year was affected by various factors, Ping An Bank's agency personal insurance income performance was average, However, we still have reason to believe that as the market gradually digests the negative factors, Ping An Bank's agency personal insurance income will increase.
Secondly, as a veteran life insurance company, Ping An has a good reputation among consumers, and its sales in the banking scene are often more advantageous than ordinary small and medium-sized insurance companies.
Finally, Ping An has more fault tolerance than other insurance companies in the construction of bancassurance channels. Because compared with some companies with a high proportion of bancassurance channels, Ping An can give more time and space to bancassurance channels, and at the same time, as the main person in charge of "airborne", Wu Jianwei is also likely to receive more support at the group level.
After all, as a front-row insurance company in China and a subsidiary such as Ping An Bank, there is no reason why Ping An does not have a strong bancassurance channel, and we will continue to pay attention to the changes that Wu Jianwei has brought to Ping An Bancassurance.