Through the first interim report of listed insurance companies, we can see the implementation of Ping An's "three provinces" project

Author: Wan Yun

On August 22, Ping An released its first interim insurance performance report for 2024, once again demonstrating its solid financial performance and forward-looking business strategy in a complex and volatile economic environment. Through the full implementation of the "Three Provinces" project, Ping An has not only achieved stable profitability, but also provided stable cash dividends to shareholders. This strategy has enabled the company to continue to create value in a rapidly changing market.

According to the 2024 interim annual report released by Ping An, the four major performance highlights are accompanied by the practice of the "three provinces" concept.

The "three provinces" experience greatly improved customer satisfaction, with 13.92 million new customers in the first half of the year

Ma Mingzhe emphasized that Ping An's top priority is to ensure that customers are "worry-free, time-saving, and cost-saving" driven by customer needs. This is not only the key to the company's realization of the "comprehensive finance + medical pension" strategy, but also the inevitable choice to practice the original mission.

In 2024, Ping An will continue to take "comprehensive finance + medical care and pension" as its strategic guidance and business fulcrum, and comprehensively upgrade and further promote the "three provinces" project of "saving worry, time and money". Ping An calls on every employee to become the most professional financial advisor, family doctor and pension housekeeper around customers, and through professionalism and integrity, customers can enjoy the "three provinces" experience in comprehensive financial and medical care services.

With a rich comprehensive financial product system, diversified customer contact channels, and the continuous promotion of the "three provinces" project, Ping An added 13.92 million new customers in the first half of 2024. As of the end of June 2024, the number of individual customers of the Group reached 236 million, an increase of 1.9% from the beginning of the year. Among them, 24.9% of customers hold 4 or more contracts within the group, and the retention rate is 97.8%. Middle-class and above customers accounted for about 77.7%, and the average number of contracts for high-net-worth customers was about 20.13. This achievement is due to the implementation of the "three provinces" concept, Ping An has always focused on the core needs of customers, so as to maintain an advantage in the competition.

The "three provinces" project has fed back the growth of core business and improved operational efficiency

Through the full implementation of the "Three Provinces" project, Ping An demonstrated excellent operating capabilities and strong market competitiveness in the first half of 2024. The three core businesses of life and health insurance, property insurance and banking all maintained growth, with a total operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company reaching 79.565 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.7%. The value of new business in life insurance increased by 11% year-on-year, and the average new business per life insurance agent increased by 36% year-on-year, both maintaining double-digit growth. In addition, customers with the right to serve in the medical and pension ecosystem accounted for more than 68% of the new business value of life insurance.

The deepening of Ping An's strategic layout and the promotion of the "three provinces" project have promoted the improvement of business quality and efficiency. By reducing operating costs, especially the digital transformation of internal processes, Ping An has significantly reduced labor costs and operating expenses. In the first half of 2024, Ping An achieved an operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of RMB78.482 billion, with an annualized operating ROE of 16.4%, which demonstrates the company's ability to create value for shareholders through its core business, and at the same time shows that the company has created value through its core business and improved operational efficiency without increasing resource investment.

Reshape the medical ecology and lead a new era of service in the "three provinces".

Ping An adheres to the core concept of "customer first, service excellence", and is making every effort to promote the in-depth transformation of China's version of the "managed care model", aiming to provide customers with a comprehensive service experience of "worry-free, time-saving and cost-saving". This innovative model not only demonstrates Ping An's deep understanding and pursuit of customer value, but also opens up a new path for the company's own value creation. Through the in-depth promotion of the "integrated finance + medical and elderly care" strategy, Ping An has continuously promoted the Chinese version of the "managed care model", bringing customers the maximum experience of "three provinces" in financial and medical elderly care services, so that the exclusive service of "worry-free, time-saving and cost-saving" can feed the company's performance growth and create a new value growth engine for Ping An.

Ping An actively builds a seamless online and offline medical and elderly care ecosystem, closely integrates financial business with the role of payers, and forms a "line-to-line, store-to-home" service capability, covering a wide range of medical health and elderly care service resources, and at the same time creating high-quality self-operated resources to ensure service quality, so as to form a "managed care model" with Ping An's characteristics.

By the end of June 2024, Ping An had about 5 internal and external doctor teams in China, 34 hospitals, health management centers and children's rehabilitation centers, and established cooperative relationships with more than 36,000 partner hospitals, 104,000 cooperative health management institutions and 233,000 cooperative pharmacies. Overseas, Ping An's cooperation network has covered 35 countries around the world, covering more than 1,300 overseas medical institutions, including 8 of the world's top 10 medical institutions.

In this ecosystem, Ping An Group has made remarkable progress in the operation of individual customers and the construction of medical service network through the "product + service" model. In the first half of 2024, 28.6% of the Group's new customers came from the medical and elderly care ecosystem, and the customers who enjoyed the service rights and interests of the Group's medical and elderly care ecosystem covered more than 68% of the new business value of life insurance. As of the end of June, more than 63% of Ping An's 236 million individual customers also used the services provided by the medical and elderly care ecosystem, of which nearly 16 million customers of Ping An Life used the services provided by the medical and elderly care ecosystem in the first half of 2024, of which nearly 70% of the new contract customers used health services.

Digital empowerment, AI helps the "three provinces" project to establish a foundation

According to the interim report, Ping An has formed a differentiated competitive advantage in AI capabilities and promoted the quality and efficiency of its main financial business. Thanks to its long-term focus on core technology research and independent intellectual property control, Ping An ranked second in the world with 1,564 generative AI patent applications according to the latest ranking of the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2024. As of June 30, the Group has filed a total of 52,185 patent applications, ranking among the top international financial institutions. It has a first-class scientific and technological talent team of more than 20,000 scientific and technological developers and more than 3,000 scientists.

Ma Mingzhe emphasized that the core of the concept of "three provinces" is customer first; Digitalization and technological innovation are important ways to realize the "three provinces"; The "three provinces" should not only be achieved in the field of insurance, but also in all businesses such as finance and medical health, and provide one-stop, all-round services to make customers feel more assured and at ease.

In the first half of the year, Ping An's AI agent service volume was about 870 million, covering 80% of Ping An's total customer service, and the average time for life insurance flash claims was 7.4 minutes to close, and the level of risk control was continuously improved, and the anti-fraud intelligent claims interception and loss reduction was 6.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.3%.

Ping An has not only integrated artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain technology into its traditional insurance business, but also introduced forward-looking technologies in product development and customer service. This technology-driven transformation has enabled Ping An to quickly respond to complex market demands and maintain sustained growth. In the first half of the year, Ping An achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 74.619 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%, fully demonstrating the effectiveness of the digital strategy in enhancing the core competitiveness of the company.

Future outlook

Through the implementation of the "Three Provinces" project, Ping An not only showed its past achievements in the 2024 interim report, but also outlined a clear plan for the future. The company has successfully achieved stable profitability through refined management and innovation drive, which has been translated into real returns for shareholders. Ping An announced that it will pay shareholders an interim dividend of RMB0.93 per share in cash for 2024, demonstrating Ping An's stability and sustainability in delivering on its commitment to long-term value returns to shareholders.