Wen ┃ Historian
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He only has a junior high school education, worked as a plumber and truck driver, but from the beginning of a small company of 13 people, to now have more than 1 million employees, becoming the largest private enterprise in Shenzhen, earning 3.3 billion yuan a day!
The total assets of the company he founded reached 6 trillion yuan as early as 2017, and now it is as high as 10.08 trillion yuan! It became the first mainland mixed-ownership enterprise in the Fortune Global 500 at that time.
He joined forces with Jack Ma and Huateng Ma to found China's first Internet insurance company. But he is extremely low-key, and has repeatedly called himself a "working boy" in public!
He is the founder of Ping An of China, Ma Mingzhe.
In the circle, Ma Mingzhe's image is secret and great, and some people describe him as "not a man, but a god", and said, "If you want to know what is going to happen in the future financial industry, go and see what Ma Mingzhe is doing."
Compared with Ma Yun and Ma Huateng, Ma Mingzhe's business ability is not inferior to theirs, but unfortunately, if Ping An is not mentioned, few people know the name Ma Mingzhe.
From a driver to today's status, the legendary story experienced by Ma Mingzhe is no less exciting than Ma Yun and Ma Huateng.
From train driver to selling insurance?
In the Chinese business world, there is a rather legendary combination - "three horses". The three people in the group, randomly picked out one are all business legends.
Among them, the "two horses" are the well-known Ma Yun and Ma Huateng, and their legendary experiences have been reported by the media again and again.
However, in addition, few people know about "Yima", he is Ma Mingzhe, and his experience is also rarely known, and the reason may be related to his identity.
Ma Mingzhe was born in 1955, his ancestral home is Jilin, but he followed his father south to Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, very early on, and Ma Mingzhe's experience from childhood is different from ordinary people.
His father was a "Four Wilds" cadre, his mother was a returned overseas Chinese from Malaysia, born after the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, but he experienced three years of natural disasters in his childhood, and his study caught up with the "Cultural Revolution".
Coupled with the fact that his father died of illness very early, Ma Mingzhe was almost brought up by his mother. Perhaps the biggest impact of a single-parent family on him was introversion and reticence, but it did help him later in his work.
After graduating from junior high school, Ma Mingzhe joined the ranks of going to the mountains and going to the countryside, although his life there was not good, but he learned to drive a tractor there, and it was this skill that provided opportunities for his future glory.
At that time, someone was needed to drive tow explosives in the countryside, but because this job was dangerous, many people were reluctant to do it, and only Ma Mingzhe signed up for the training.
He was not afraid of danger, and for him, driving was very interesting, and he said later about the experience:
"At that time, the world was closed, but I could drive to Guangzhou, Foshan, Panyu, Shaoguan and see the situation outside."
Later, when Ma Mingzhe, who could drive, was given priority to the Bajia Hydropower Station in Yangchun City, where he worked for a while before being transferred to the Labor and Personnel Office of Shekou Industrial Zone in 1983.
You know, at that time, cars were still a rare commodity in China, and most of them were travel tools for leaders and other people, so there were not many people who could drive.
It was precisely for this reason that Ma Mingzhe was selected to serve as a driver for Yuan Geng, the general manager of shekou Industrial Zone at the time, and also became the team captain of the Labor and Personnel Office.
Yuan Geng
At that time, Shekou was the forefront of China's reform and opening up, changing rapidly every day, and because of its proximity to Hong Kong, it quickly developed from a small fishing village to a reform test field.
However, the development has also brought many problems, especially during construction, the safety of workers has always been a headache for leaders, and work accidents often occur on the site, so the construction period is delayed.
Shekou Industrial Zone in the 1990s
So the Personnel Office held a special discussion meeting on this, and the clever Ma Mingzhe proposed a very clever method - to set up a fund as a guarantee.
This proposal was also approved by Yuan Geng at that time, so after the meeting, Ma Mingzhe and Fu Yuning were asked to study the scheme of the work injury fund together.
In this way, from this moment on, Ma Mingzhe will step into another stage of his life and will officially open his "Ma Legend".
The establishment of peace
Although the proposal is good, the reality is cruel, and the unskilled Ma Mingzhe does not know how cumbersome the formalities behind this sentence are.
After the meeting, Ma Mingzhe first found a banking professional, and the bank staff told him that the work injury fund he proposed was already a commercial insurance, and if he wanted to handle it, he had to re-establish a company, and he had to obtain an insurance license from the People's Bank of China, that is, a license to continue the next process.
After knowing this, Ma Mingzhe knew that he had "played big", but Ma Mingzhe did not want to give up, after all, this was his chance to emerge, so he said that these conditions were conveyed to Yuan Geng, Yuan Geng's meaning is also not to give up, he will provide corresponding help when needed.
Therefore, during that time, Ma Mingzhe ran between the company and the bank every day, and in order to meet the relevant leaders, he often waited for four or five hours, but this did not extinguish Ma Mingzhe's passion.
In 1988, the Chinese Bank finally approved Ma Mingzhe's request to establish Ping An Insurance Company.
Also on April 22 of the same year, Shenzhen Ping An Insurance Company was officially established with a registered capital of 42 million yuan, and 32-year-old Ma Mingzhe served as the company's managing director.
Ping An Company was established
In fact, the origin of the company's name is also Ma Mingzhe's participation in an insurance seminar in Hong Kong that year, when he received a business card from the heads of two other insurance companies in Hong Kong at the meeting, one called Taiping and the other called Min'an, so Ma Mingzhe combined the two to form the company's name - Ping An.
When the company was founded, it was only a small regional company, and for a long time, Ma Mingzhe was the "sole person in charge" of the project, and the total number of people in the company was only 13 people.
Interestingly, at that time, there was only one Chinese insurance company in the entire Chinese insurance market, so Ma Mingzhe's Ping An Insurance company naturally became the second largest insurance company in China at that time.
At that time, there was still a passage about Ma Mingzhe circulating in the financial circles:
Wang Xuebing, the president of The Construction Bank at the time, joked to the celebrants at a meeting: "I became the president at the age of 42, what about you?" After listening, everyone looked at each other and smiled, and did not say anything.
However, Ma Mingzhe suddenly said happily: "I became the general manager of the second insurance company in the country at the age of 28, and it is really not easy for you Wang Xuebing to become the president at the age of 42."
Then there was a burst of laughter in the conference room.
However, although Ping An Insurance is the first financial insurance enterprise jointly established in China, the shareholder background is also very strong, with ICBC and China Merchants, which can carry out relevant credit endorsements.
However, these did not have a particularly large effect on the promotion of the business, and the promotion of Ping An's front-line business at that time was still extremely difficult.
The first reason is that many people in China did not know the concept of insurance in that era, and the second reason was that there was only one insurance company in China for a long time, and Ping An, a newly established company, made many people uneasy, and even directly scolded by many people as a liar.
And for the start-up company, recruiting people is also a very difficult thing, the reason why in a long period of time, Ping An has only a dozen people, mainly because many employees think that this company and Ma Mingzhe are not very reliable.
In their words, Ma Mingzhe likes to draw big cakes too much, and he can't help but say to them: "company globalization", "international strategy", "China's first-class company" and so on.
For companies that are just starting out, employees feel like a fantasy, so many people quit after a while.
In short, the start of peace is not easy, but all these difficulties do not seem to be a problem in Ma Mingzhe's view, and even a little happy and expectant, because in his view, everything is difficult at the beginning, and things after taking this step will come to fruition.
The way to success in peace
Although the start was difficult, under the strategizing of Ma Mingzhe, Ping An Company achieved good results just one year after its establishment: revenue of 4.18 million yuan and profit of up to 1.9 million.
For a small insurance company that has just been established, it is already quite remarkable to be able to generate this revenue in that year.
But Ma Mingzhe was not proud of this, on the contrary, he even felt that he had encountered a bottleneck and did not know how to further become bigger and stronger.
To this end, he decided to go to the Insurance Institute in New York, USA for further study. But there was a very real problem in front of him at the time - the language barrier.
New York Insurance Academy
But Ma Mingzhe can say that he does not know anything about English, let alone communication, and does not even know the alphabet, which makes him a headache, after all, it is impossible to bring a translator to class.
Therefore, Ma Mingzhe, who had passed the age of establishment, picked up the books again and began to learn English from scratch.
I have to admire Ma Mingzhe's perseverance, even if the information is developed today, how many people have the courage to learn English from scratch? But Ma Mingzhe did.
According to Ma Mingzhe, during that time, he was learning English almost every day, and he copied nearly 10,000 words of "New Concept English" by hand and wrote them on small cards.
In the end, he copied several large bundles of cards, and Ma Mingzhe carried these cards with him every day, and would take them out and read them in two sentences wherever he went.
For his own strong learning ability, Ma Mingzhe has always used such a sentence to describe: "Last year's Ma Mingzhe could not lead this year's peace." ”
In this way, in April 1990, Ma Mingzhe went to the Insurance Institute in the United States for more than two months, and then went to Hong Kong, Singapore and other places to inspect dozens of insurance companies.
After studying and inspecting these enterprises, Ma Mingzhe found that whether it is talent quality or management level, the gap between Ping An and them is not generally large, so he intends to fully introduce advanced management models from abroad.
In 1992, under the admiration of everyone, Ma Mingzhe served as the chairman of Ping An Insurance, officially became the "number one", and officially changed the company name to Ping An Insurance Company of China.
The reason why Ping An can develop to the later point, in addition to Ma Mingzhe's efforts, Ping An's strong elite team is also indispensable.
At that time, Ma Mingzhe paid special attention to the role of talents in enterprises, and often "invited" elites to join at any cost.
In 1996, McKinsey's chief consultant Zhang Zixin joined Ping An, and three years later he was promoted to CEO of Ping An Group, and by 2000, almost all of Ping An Group's senior officials were foreign elites, all from internationally renowned companies such as Dutch International, AIA and AXA.
Zhang Zixin
In 2003, Leung Ka-koo, one of Hong Kong's five famous working emperors, received an invitation from headhunters to join Ping'an, and after hanging up the headhunting phone, Leung Ka-koo directly dialed Ma Mingzhe's phone:
As soon as I heard that there was an insurance company in the mainland that wanted to invite me, I knew it was you, but could you afford me?"
You know, at that time, Liang Jiaju was already recognized as the godfather of Asian insurance, whether it was assets or status, it had reached the top level, and naturally Ma Mingzhe's invitation was very indifferent.
Liang Jiaju
Therefore, in order to invite him, ma Mingzhe would prepare a few hours in advance every time he met with him, and it was not about salary, he knew that money and wealth might not be so important to him, but talked to him about the mission of inland insurance from the great righteousness of the famous family, and the final result also confirmed that this worked.
Later, Liang Jiaju became the chief consultant of Ping An Life of China, planned a number of action guidelines for the group, and played a major role in the development of the group.
Ji Kuisheng, CEO of Lujin, also said: "He convinced me to come here in 100 minutes, and I often tell my old colleagues that if a foreigner wants to come to China to engage in the financial industry, the best choice is Ping An." ”
Ji Kuisheng
Ping An has always been generous with talents, and from the data point of view, there are several senior managers of Ping An Group with annual salaries of more than 10 million, and more than one million is innumerable.
In this regard, some board members once accused Ma Mingzhe of spending a lot of money to recruit people and questioning the effectiveness of this method, but Ma Mingzhe publicly replied: "The profits created by Ping An executives are enough to pay them 500 years of salary." ”
It is also in the efforts of Ma Mingzhe and these elite teams that the development of Ping An of China has reached an incredible magnitude.
It can be said that around us, many of us have been surrounded by Ping An company, whether it is insurance, banking, securities, funds, etc., there are Ping An figures.
Cooperate with Ma Yun and Ma Huateng
In 2002, Ping An of China already had almost a "full financial license": insurance, banking, securities, futures, funds, trusts and other business licenses, becoming one of the few enterprises in China with a full license.
For this reason, Ma Mingzhe is also called "future tense" by many people in the industry:
"In the past, most of the domestic financial institutions looked at Ping An while looking at Western financial institutions, but now, it is enough to look at Ping An, he is like a person living in the 'future tense', if you want to know what will happen in the future financial business, you only need to see what Ma Mingzhe is doing."
Under the leadership of Ma Mingzhe, Ping An of China ranked eighth in the 2017 China Top 500 Enterprises. It has become a comprehensive financial services group integrating financial services such as financial insurance, banking, and investment.
Not only that, Ma Mingzhe's Ping An of China has not always maintained the tradition, and ma Mingzhe has not lagged behind when the Internet wind is coming.
As a representative figure of the "92 faction", Ma Mingzhe may have been one of the few traditional enterprises that dared to compete with or cooperate with Internet companies at that time.
When BAT divided up the Internet, Ma Mingzhe suddenly stood up, led Ma Yun and Ma Huateng together, and launched a "groundbreaking" online insurance platform - ZhongAn Online.
It is also the first and only Internet insurance company in China.
How influential these three are in the industry, I don't need to say more. As a result, this ZhongAn online has just been released and has attracted the attention of all walks of life.
Everyone's vision for these three is naturally unanimous, so as soon as the product was launched, the insurance policy exceeded 7.2 billion yuan, and on September 28, 2017, it landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and was named "the first stock in the field of financial technology".
On the day of listing, the increase was as high as 15.6%, and the market value once exceeded HK$100 billion.
Not only that, ping an group led by Ma Mingzhe is also one of the largest "landlords" in China, and the shareholders of many well-known real estate companies such as Country Garden can see the figure of Ping An Group.
According to relevant data, Ping An currently has 185.5 billion yuan of immovable assets, and the asset value of office buildings alone is nearly 60 billion yuan, and the rent collection rate is as high as 7%.
Shenzhen Ping An Finance Building
As country garden's second largest shareholder, Ping An Group has accumulated more than 6 billion yuan in dividends from Country Garden, which is not counting the equity price held.
After Ma Mingzhe's various "territorial expansions", Ping An of China has obviously developed into one of the few "big Mac enterprises" in China.
In his 2019 New Year's Day speech, Ma Mingzhe also said: "Last year, Ping An of China's tax payments have exceeded 100 billion yuan, making it the only private financial enterprise in China to rank among the world's top 500 companies."
And according to the data, the total revenue of Ping An Group in the past year was as high as 1218.315 billion yuan, which was converted into a single day revenue of 3.3 billion yuan!
This number is more than Ma Yun's Ali and Ma Huateng's Tencent combined, and it is 10 times that of Moutai.
It can be said that today's Ping An is in a leading position in the industry, both in terms of scale and revenue level.
However, compared with the group's trillions of dollars, Ma Mingzhe's salary is "pitifully small".
Ma Mingzhe: "I am a part-time worker"
Although Ma Mingzhe single-handedly developed the Ping An Group to its current position, he often jokingly called himself a "migrant worker" in public.
He makes sense for saying this.
It is reported that in the equity structure of Ping An Group, almost all the major institutions in the front are the real bosses, and Ma Mingzhe only holds a small number of shares, so it seems that it is not wrong to say that he is a "migrant worker".
Shareholder structure of Ping An Group
And Ma Mingzhe's annual salary is only more than 8 million yuan compared with those high-level executives who often have tens of millions of annual salaries.
Ping An Group wage structure
Of course, Ma Mingzhe's shares are relatively small compared to the top ten institutions, but more than 1 million shares are also worth hundreds of millions.
And over the years, Ma Mingzhe himself must have made a lot of investment, so his specific value is still a mystery in the industry, and we don't know for the time being.
In fact, Ma Mingzhe's positioning of himself is also very simple, just like he said at the company's annual meeting at the time: "I hope that on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Ping An Company, everyone will talk about Ping An and say' The earliest CEO named Ma Mingzhe did a good job"! ”
Now that Ma Mingzhe has stepped down in 2020, his story of Ping An seems to end here, but the legend of him in the industry has been circulating.
In more than 30 years, from a small company of 13 people to more than 50 million customers, the success of Ping An Group is not accidental, And Ma Mingzhe is obviously indispensable!