Chairman of Tieda, CEO of Liushui

On September 27, 2023, Ping An announced another blockbuster executive change announcement, announcing the departure of Chen Xinying, co-CEO and executive deputy general manager of the group, due to personal and family reasons, and she was replaced by Guo Xiaotao, the group's chief human resources officer who has been with Ping An for only four years.

The sudden departure of the "queen of technology" Chen Xinying, although sudden, is not surprising. In fact, in June 2020, it was once reported that Chen Xinying would leave within a year. But the news was subsequently denied by Ping An. At that time, the technology line in charge of Chen Xinying did not perform well, and the senior management of individual subsidiaries changed frequently, and Chen Xinying faced greater internal pressure.

Intriguingly, after the news of Chen Xinying's departure was announced, many media headlines were the end of the era of Ping'an's "external brain". Ma Mingzhe, chairman of Ping An Group, said in his farewell message to Chen Xinying that Jessica is a "friend of Ping An."

We don't know whether Chen Xinying, who has worked at Ping An for 10 years, is satisfied with the evaluation of "friend", but she is at least much better than the former Ping An co-CEO and her fellow Singaporean Li Yuanxiang. In November 2019, Li Yuanxiang, who was regarded as the "soul" of Ping An Life Insurance and one of the co-CEOs of Ping An at the time, suddenly left and subsequently joined Ping An's competitor AIA, which caused shocks in the industry.

Li Yuanxiang's move to jump jobs that year would obviously not be recognized as "friendly" by Ping An, but Li Yuanxiang judged the situation and made the most favorable choice for his career. According to media statistics, at Ping An, Li Yuanxiang received a total of nearly 100 million yuan in salary and shares from 2011 to 2018, but AIA directly issued an annual salary of nearly 50 million yuan, plus 200 million yuan in compensation.

In addition to compensation, the more important consideration is that Li Yuanxiang has realized that he has no chance of winning in the "horse race" competition of Ping An's core management.

Since its establishment, Ping An's management system has undergone several major changes. In 1988, when Ping An Insurance was first established, the first chairman was Liu Jianting, then president of ICBC Shenzhen Branch, as the chairman of the board, and Ma Mingzhe as the general manager. Until April 1994, Chairman and General Manager Ma Mingzhe shouldered the shoulders; In 2003, Ping An established a new CEO position, Ma Mingzhe became chairman and CEO, no longer served as general manager, and the general manager position was held by Zhang Zixin, the former chief consultant of McKinsey's Ping An consulting project.

In 2018, Ping An's management system changed again, Ma Mingzhe continued to serve as chairman and CEO, and the following are Ping An general manager Ren Huichuan + three co-CEOs (Li Yuanxiang, Xie Yonglin, Chen Xinying). This change in 2018 is considered by the outside world to be Ma Mingzhe's arrangement for "retirement", through the "horse racing" mechanism, the selection of suitable successors, and there is no doubt that the general manager and the three co-CEOs are popular candidates.

A year later, however, the landscape suddenly changed. In October 2019, Ren Huichuan, who has always been regarded as the "prince" of Ping An Group and the successor of Ma Mingzhe, suddenly resigned as the general manager of the group and was replaced by co-CEO Xie Yonglin. Ren Huichuan then moved to vice chairman, a change that effectively meant that Ren Huichuan had been eliminated in the successor race.

In March 2020, Ping An Group once again announced that Ren Huichuan resigned as executive director and vice chairman of Ping An Group due to personal health reasons. However, Ren Huichuan, who resigned due to "physical" reasons, soon announced that he would join Tencent and subsequently become the head of Samsung P&C Insurance.

At the same time that "Crown Prince" Ren Huichuan was marginalized, Li Yuanxiang decisively "jumped ship".

After the two popular successors are out, the only remaining safe officials are Xie Yonglin and Chen Xinying. Until July 2020, Ma Mingzhe announced his resignation as CEO and assumed only the position of chairman. In addition, Ping An hired Yao Bo as co-CEO to fill the vacancy left by Li Yuanxiang.

At this point, the horse racing pattern of Ping An Group has basically become clear. In the board of directors of the group, the executive directors include Ma Mingzhe, Xie Yonglin, Chen Xinying, Yao Bo and Cai Fangfang, and the core candidates are obviously only Xie Yonglin and Chen Xinying. It was at that point in time that Chen Xinying was reported to be able to leave.

As the "external brain" introduced by Ping An, Chen Xinying has led the development of the large technology sector of Ping An Group in the past 10 years. Under the leadership of Chen Xinying, Ping An Technology's business has developed rapidly, and it has successively incubated large technology companies such as Lufax, OneConnect, Ping An Good Doctor, and Ping An Medical Insurance Technology, of which the first three have been listed. However, Ping An Medical Insurance Technology, a unicorn that had high hopes from Ping An Group and raised 8.8 billion yuan in two years, reported its closure in 2022. The remaining three listed companies also fell into a trough after a short period of glory.

Lufax was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2020, but after listing, its performance began to change. At the beginning of its listing, Lufax's market value peaked at more than 270 billion yuan, but today, its market value is only 19.5 billion yuan, and the market value has lost 250 billion yuan. OneConnect is even more miserable than Lufax. After going public in 2019, the performance and valuation were both killing, and its valuation was close to US$8 billion at the time of the Series A financing, but the current market value of OneConnect is only US$120 million.

Ping An Good Doctor, which was listed in 2018, once had a market value of HK$170 billion in 2021, but now it is less than HK$20 billion, a contraction of 88%. A similar problem between Ping An Good Doctor and Financial OneLedger is that it has continued to lose money for many years and cannot achieve profits.

On the whole, although Chen Xinying operated and listed a number of Ping An's technology subsidiaries, the bright publicity of these companies before listing and the poor performance after listing were very different, which also led to many external investors not optimistic about Chen Xinying, and some investors even called Chen Xinying "PPT queen".

Of course, this statement is somewhat emotional and unfair. You know, most of the "external brains" selected by Ma Mingzhe are elites from internationally renowned investment banks or consulting institutions, and the management improvement role brought to Ping An Group in the early years is still very obvious, of course, in this process, most of these external "elites" were "eliminated" by Ping An's internal backbone in the process of horse racing.

Take Zhang Zixin, who took over as Ping An's general manager in 2003, for example, who, like Chen Xinying, is a McKinsey elite. In 2003, when reporting on Zhang Zixin's appointment as general manager of Ping An, Southern Metropolis Daily said, "There is a saying in the industry that Ma Mingzhe is very optimistic about Zhang Zixin and intends to train him as a successor."

From a 2003 report by Southern Metropolis Daily.

In the past two decades, Ma Mingzhe has indeed cultivated several potential successors, from Zhang Zixin to Ren Huichuan, from Li Yuanxiang to Xie Yonglin, and then to Chen Xinying, all of whom are recognized as potential successors.

But after so many years, it seems that only Xie Yonglin is left who can go to the end and remain by Ma Mingzhe's side.

The picture material is from the financial report of Ping An Group over the years.

Objectively speaking, the horse racing mechanism of Ping An is both fierce and cruel, and in this race, age and seniority are not the determining factors.

In terms of age, Chen Xinying was born in 1977 and is currently 46 years old, the youngest of all the popular candidates, 9 years younger than Xie Yonglin, younger than Ren Huichuan and Yao Bo, and even Guo Xiaotao, who took over her position, is 51 years old.

In terms of seniority, Ren Huichuan and Yao Bo became executive directors of Ping An in 2012 and 2009, respectively, while Xie Yonglin, although he joined Ping An Insurance in 1994, was not transferred to Ping An Bank until 2006, after serving as Ma Mingzhe's secretary. In 2013, Xie Yonglin was appointed chairman of Ping An Securities from vice president in charge of Ping An Bank's retail business. At that time, Xie Yonglin began to enter the core senior management queue of Ping An Group.

Cai Fangfang, who served as Ping An's human resources officer, once said in an interview with the media,

"Horse racing is everywhere in Ping'an, and horses always have to accept the horse racing mechanism, but he races with the market. How can the following people not participate? ”

When will Ping An CEO "horse race" end? I'm afraid that no one knows except Ma Mingzhe.

In October 2019, when Xie Yonglin succeeded Ren Huichuan as general manager, when the media asked Ma Mingzhe about his position and responsibilities as chairman, Ping An Group replied, "As the founder and helmsman of the company, Ma Mingzhe will continue to play a core leadership role in the company's major strategic transformation, business model innovation, scientific and technological innovation, talent echelon training and cultural construction." ”

At the 2020 Ping An shareholders' meeting of China, some shareholder representatives threw out the question of "when will Ma Mingzhe retire", in this regard, Ma Mingzhe calmly said that he founded Ping An 33 years ago and built the stage of Ping An, and he has been very happy as the protagonist on stage for more than 30 years, but it is impossible to perform on the stage forever, and people always have a day of retirement.

Ma Mingzhe further talked about the factors that determine when he will retire, first, whether shareholders recognize themselves or not, the right to decide lies with shareholders; Second, whether they still have the ability to continue to create new and greater value for the company; Third, whether Ping An has a better management team.

However, judging from the frequent changes in the core management of Ping An Group in the past three years, Ping An Group still lacks an excellent and stable management team that Ma Mingzhe can completely rest assured. Ma Mingzhe, who was born in 1955 and is 68 years old, seems to continue to take on the heavy responsibility of leading the big ship of Ping An.