Periscope | talk to Ping An's general manager Xie Yonglin: I believe that the stock price will gradually reflect ping An's strength

Tencent News "Periscope" author Liu Peng

Attributable operating profit of 147.961 billion yuan, an increase of 6.1% year-on-year; operating ROE of 18.9%; net profit of 121.802 billion yuan; attributable net profit of 101.618 billion yuan, down 29.0% year-on-year - On March 18, 2022, when the life insurance reform entered the deep water zone but the industry still faced weak growth in the short term, Ping An of China handed over its 2021 report card.

Specifically, the 6.1% year-on-year increase in attributable operating profit was mainly contributed by the banking sector. In the life insurance reform link that has attracted the most market attention, in 2021, Ping An Life insurance and health insurance business of China achieved an operating profit of 97.075 billion yuan, an increase of 3.6% year-on-year, and an operating ROE of 32.3%. In deepening the reform of "channel + product", Ping An said that the agent channel has been transformed into a high-quality "three high" team, and the structure has been gradually optimized. In 2021, the per capita new business value of the agent channel was 39,031 yuan, the per capita first-year premium increased by more than 22% year-on-year, and the per capita new business value increased by more than 20%. Nearly 30% of the new life insurance customers come from healthcare service conversions.

On the day of the performance conference, Xie Yonglin, general manager and co-CEO of Ping An of China, said to Tencent News "Periscope" in an exclusive interview that although life insurance is under pressure and deeply adjusted, the business performance of other sectors of Ping An is "very good", such as property insurance underwriting profits increased by 145.7% year-on-year, securities ROE is 1.4 times the industry average, and the annual profit of leasing business is close to 5 billion, "One of the advantages of comprehensive finance is the smooth cycle, the East is not bright and the West is bright." ”

In the past year, Due to the cyclical transformation of the life insurance industry, Ping An's stock price has performed sluggishly. In Xie Yonglin's view, "the stock price is not shouted by shouting, we must do things in a down-to-earth manner, overcome difficulties, and make business, I believe that the stock price will gradually reflect our true strength." ”

To boost the share price, Ping An announced a full-year dividend of RMB2.38 per share to shareholders, an increase of 8.2% year-on-year, with a total dividend of approximately RMB43.1 billion. This is also the 10th consecutive year that Ping An has increased its cash dividend. In addition, ping an of China launched a new round of share repurchase program in August 2021, and as of the end of December 2021, it has repurchased about 77.77 million shares, totaling 3.9 billion yuan.

The capital market also reacted quickly, and Ping An's stock price rose in response, rising by 5.34% as of the close, ranking first among A-share listed insurance companies.

The results of the new bancassurance reform have begun to appear

As an important part of Ping An Group's life insurance reform, the new bancassurance reform has achieved initial results in the past year. Xie Yonglin introduced that on the one hand, the production capacity of the newly formed three high teams is more than twice that of the traditional team, on the other hand, the bancassurance product and system upgrades have also driven the production capacity of the traditional team, and during the "opening red" period in 2022, the intermediate revenue of the bancassurance business from December to the end of February increased by 30% year-on-year.

This is also in line with the reform direction of the entire life insurance industry. Since AIA introduced the individual agency system to the mainland in 1992, with the dividends of the times such as population expansion and economic take-off, the main channel of individual marketers has led the development of the entire life insurance industry in the past 30 years. However, with the change of the age structure of the population, the fading of the demographic dividend, the rise of the Internet, etc., it is difficult to rely on the tactics of expanding the scale of the sea of people.

A recently released life insurance industry report also points to this problem, that is, unstable, low-quality agents have difficulty matching the quality of service required by middle-class and wealthy customers. However, online channels are difficult to shake the mainstream status of exclusive agents (60%) and bancassurance channels (30%), indicating that high-quality agents will still be the cornerstone of life insurance development. In the process of reform, the increase in the number of high-quality agents and the introduction of digital tools are only the first step, but more importantly, the effectiveness of these tools and the changes in agent behavior patterns.

Xie Yonglin said that the new bancassurance team built since last year is a high-quality team, more than 90% of which are bachelor's degrees, "this team is a private wealth management team that will do insurance allocation, and turn insurance policies into part of customer allocation assets."

"From a wealth management perspective, banks themselves have an incentive to allocate insurance." Xie Yonglin explained that as a prominent ping an integrated financial business, it naturally has many advantages, such as customer resources and technological advantages.

"Because of the establishment of a team that understands insurance asset allocation, Bancassurance will definitely develop well and will also drive the group's NBEV (new business value) up." Xie Yonglin cited data that the potential for linkage between banks and insurance is huge, "Ping An Bank has a customer volume of 120 million, and the current insurance penetration rate is only 4.5%. ”

Founder has disposal plans in various business segments

At the beginning of the new year in 2022, Ping An's participation in the restructuring of New Founder Group was approved by the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and Ping An Life intends to invest about RMB48.2 billion to acquire about 66.51% of the equity of New Founder Group.

Xie Yonglin revealed that at present, ping an's first batch of funds have been poured in, and the reorganization work is being carried out in an orderly manner. For the business of Founder Group, medical and health is a sector that is to be strongly coordinated with Ping An's strategy, and the remaining business segments have corresponding disposal plans. But even if it is disposed of, it is necessary to repair the value, with a focus on generating revenue and profits. Xie Yonglin said that Ping An has listed the development goals for 2022 in each business segment of The Fangzheng Group, including the development strategies of each subsidiary and the key work plans of KPIs, and included the corresponding assessment goals.

Xie Yonglin stressed to Tencent News", "Periscope" that Ping An's original intention in participating in founder restructuring was to explore the construction of a group-managed medical model with "HMO + family doctor + O2O" as the core through the coordination of medical resources. At present, 63% of Ping An's more than 227 million individual customers have used medical and health services, and with the integration of medical resources at Peking University, it is expected to greatly promote the sales of health insurance products, highlight product differentiation advantages, enhance customer stickiness, and strive to become China's version of United Health.

Ma Mingzhe also stressed the importance of medical care as early as the 2020 shareholders' meeting, "Finance is the present tense of Ping An, and medical care is the future tense of Ping An." ”

Medical care is placed in such a high position precisely because of its scarcity. Many insurance companies and financial peers currently generally use third-party procurement to establish health management services, facing the problem of homogenization of services and insufficient empowerment of insurance and financial business.

At the same time, as the demographic dividend fades, the insurance industry has been on the brink of change over the past few decades by relying on agent teams to pull new ways. Regardless of the shortcomings exposed by the agent system in the past, today's customers are no longer satisfied with simple insurance protection, but more needs derived from the financial scene.

These needs were distilled by Ma Mingzhe into "insurance with temperature". That is, with the support of Ping An's technology + medical ecology, it can not only meet the insurance and financial needs of customers, but also meet the long-term high-frequency needs of customers in medical, health, pension, life and other long-term high-frequency needs, and each customer will have their own exclusive "general practitioner" and "pension housekeeper" to enjoy a series of services such as Ping An's health management, medical management, chronic disease management, serious illness management, and pension management.

In the third life insurance reform initiated by Ping An, technology and medical care have become the two most important starting points. In short, insurance is not only a financial security, but also an important healthcare provider, which in turn builds a new growth engine through the advantages of services and achieves sustained growth through the cycle.

Xie Yonglin also pointed out to Tencent News "Periscope" in a previous interview that Peking University Medical School has strong research strength and strong synergy with Ping An Group's insurance main business and future medical and health strategy, "which can provide customers with financial services with temperature and scenes." ”