Text丨Half-combed and long-lasting
After several rumors of resignation, Yu Hong, the 56-year-old general manager of Ping An Life, once again reported that he had submitted his resignation to the company's board of directors.
On September 18, 2024, Ping An Life's official website quietly removed the resume of Executive Director Yu Hong from the director column.
Yu Hong has been the general manager of Ping An Life since 2017, promoted to CEO and general manager in 2019, transferred to general manager and co-CEO in 2021, and returned to the position of general manager in the same year, until his resignation, more than 7 years ago.
This is another female senior executive in the life insurance industry who has resigned at the age of 55 after Pan Yanhong, chairman of CPIC Life Insurance.
At a time when the reform of the entire life insurance industry is in full swing and extremely bumpy, it is extremely intriguing for the two leading insurance companies with the strongest reform intensity, which is extremely intriguing that those who are in such a high position will retire at the point. From the other side, we can see the hardships of life insurance reform, far beyond the imagination of the industry.
Especially for Ping An Life, the past 7 years have been the biggest stage of reform, and even the soul man himself took the helm and commanded, even going to Li Yuanxiang, Ding Xinmin, Lu Min and other local and overseas Ping An Life insurance celebrities, and greatly adjusting the senior management team and provincial team.
In the face of the visible gray rhinoceros and invisible black swans in the general environment, the entire industry has entered a period of shock consolidation, and various core indicators of various companies have declined sharply. However, it is still difficult to stop the embarrassment in the capital market, making the market value of Ping An, known as a dangerous one, difficult to recover.
The most fundamental reason is that the capital market's recognition of the life insurance reform with the individual insurance reform as the core has not yet been put in place and will take a long time.
Especially for most large insurance group companies in China, although they have a comprehensive financial structure, whether it is scale contribution, profit contribution or sales contribution, the core asset is still life insurance.
It is the 4 trillion yuan life insurance sector that supports the name of the top 500 and becomes the foundation of Ping An's profits with an annual profit of 100 billion.
It can be said that Ping An, a comprehensive financial group, has life insurance as the background, not anything else. This also explains why the industry is so concerned about the company, and the associated personnel changes.
Looking at the core management of the business, the chairman of the board of directors in 64, the deputy general manager of 65 years, one in 63 years and one in 66 years, as well as the heads of actuarial, finance, investment and audit of the post-70s, Ping An Life, which is in the critical stage of reform, is undoubtedly changing between the old and new echelons......
However, the market is more concerned about who will cooperate with that soul figure and take the helm of Ping An Life in the reform? Will it be the young man who is moving up the ranks? Why him?
1 Yu Hong's 27 years, 11 positions, 7 years of general manager, after four eras, encountered the most intense stage of reform
Yu Hong joined Ping An in December 1997 and became the general manager of Ping An Life in March 2017, and then briefly served as CEO and co-CEO.
In his 27-year career at Ping An, he has gone through 11 positions, running through business, administration and support lines, and has a complete experience in leading life insurance companies, and once claimed to be "the most loyal fan of Ping An Life".
He has not only been in charge of business departments such as the One Yuan Business Group, telemarketing business, and comprehensive financial department, but also led middle and back office departments such as science and technology support center, Internet center, and product center. When Liang Jiaju and Li Yuanxiang were at the helm of Ping An Life, they also served as assistant to the director of the chairman's office and deputy general manager of Ping An Life, and briefly teamed up with Ding Xinmin, chairman and CEO of Ping An Life, after 2017.
Ping An once commented on her: "Experienced leadership, calm handling, strong control ability, strong organizational management and business development ability", and "has made outstanding contributions to the overall development of Ping An Life".
However, 2017 was also the starting point of this round of fierce reform of Ping An Life, and two years later, Ping An was appointed as the leader of the life insurance reform leading group, which was also the first stage of personnel adjustment:
First, in 2017, Yu Hong was transferred from the position of executive deputy general manager to Zhao Fujun, then general manager of Ping An Life, and then in November 2018, one year after serving as general manager, he was promoted to CEO of Ping An Life, with the full name of "CEO and General Manager".
Looking at the development of Ping An Life, it can be seen that the chairman and CEO is the real leader, or only the CEO is the leader. The same is true of other subsidiaries of Ping An, with the general manager as the second-in-command, and the chairman and CEO as the chairman of the board of directors. In other words, the chairman and CEO, and the general manager are the only two executive chairmen, and they are the real core management of the company.
This also means that Ping An Life has entered the short-lived Yu Hong era after the era of Liang Jiaju, Li Yuanxiang and Ding Xinmin.
During this period, Yu Hong has teamed up with two real executors of Ping An Life's reform, the first being Lu Min, who took office at the end of 2019 as the chief insurance business executive officer of Ping An Group and secretary of the Party Committee of Ping An Life. In the era of Lu Min, Ping An ushered in a large number of personnel adjustments at both the headquarters and the provincial level, and there was even a drastic measure to demote team members on the spot.
A year later, at the end of 2020, Ping An Life was reformed and replaced, and Yang Zheng, chairman and CEO, took office, and Yu Hong's position was changed to "general manager and co-CEO". Half a year later, in the first half of 2021, Yu Hong ceased to be the co-CEO, and only retained the position of general manager.
Such a drastic high-level adjustment has attracted countless attention, and in essence, it should be a helpless move. The reason behind it is simple and straightforward: the inertia of the past model has weakened, and various indicators have become more and more embarrassing. In other words, development is stymied.
On the surface, premium income has continued to expand upwards as usual, but core indicators such as manpower, new orders, new business value, and continuation rate have declined sharply. This also means that the margin of premiums has turned down after 2017. 34.07%, 21.13%, 10.52%, like free fall. Even the marginal margin, when it turned negative, did not improve.
Especially in the three years of the epidemic, it is even more choking:
Negative growth for three consecutive years. It was not until 2023 that it floated and took a breath, and it was not until the first half of 2024 that the downward trend was stopped, and a positive growth of 5 points was achieved, leading the top five listed companies.
Judging from the business data, it seems that Ping An Life has eased up. However, metrics such as the new business value ratio are still being repaired, and they are no longer the same as they used to be. The new unit has returned to the level of seven or eight years ago, and the remaining margin, which is the most representative of future profitability, has also fallen from about 960 billion yuan in 2020 to 774.4 billion yuan in the first half of the year.
In fact, it's also a pain for the entire industry. Due to the particularity of the life insurance industry, the profit of the current year does not reflect the operating conditions of life insurance companies at this stage. The current year's profit reflects the quality of the policy for the previous five, 10 years, or even more. The key indicators that best represent the current business situation are embedded value, new business value ratio, new policy premium, and residual marginal value, which represent the future.
The decline in new premiums represents a concern for future growth, while the decline in embedded value and residual margin is a decline in future profitability. In the past, Ping An has always led the giant insurance companies in these two indicators; However, the past few years have become the point of its struggle to pursue reform, and the data was not optimistic for a while.
This also explains the performance of its A-share market to some extent. The past seven years have undoubtedly been a painful one, and they are a stage that the domestic life insurance industry has never experienced.
2 What did Yu Hong do in his seven years? From science and technology + to product +, the "three warps and four latitudes" health care system
Yu Hong's seven years are exactly the seven years in which the domestic insurance industry has been exploring its own business model at a time when various technologies have impacted and the internal and external environment has changed drastically.
At the beginning of his tenure, Internet players who "subverted everything" were disrupting the entire insurance market.
Six or seven years ago, under the innovation trend led by the Internet ideology, the most conspicuous thing was the endless product innovation and online sales. The leading companies also began to explore the empowerment of those "bells and whistles" before the industry.
Yu Hong, who is sitting in the position of general manager of Ping An Life, closely follows the group's technology and finance strategy, and gives a strong "technology +" strategy to Ping An's "finance + technology" strategy.
At that time, technology + was extremely appropriate, and the idea was simple and straightforward: all 1.4 million agents were armed with AI and technology, and turned into insurance 007.
However, these seemingly good ideas were "stolen" by the escaped industry beta. In the face of the industry's manpower decline, this personal risk army quickly collapsed after a short period of glory. Of the 1.4 million agents, there are only more than 300,000 left.
In fact, in the second year of Yu Hong's tenure, the margin of Ping An Life has passed a high point.
The premium margin fell from 34.07% in 2017 to 21.13% in 2018, and the growth rate of embedded value also fell from 37.76% in 2017 to 23.54% in 2018.
As with the industry at that time, it seems that this is just a normal correction from a high base in the previous two years. After all, Ping An's stock price was still on the rise at that time.
The resurgence of premium growth in 2019 and the growth of embedded value of only 8 points in 2020 seem to be a reminder of something.
Coupled with the departure of Li Yuanxiang of Ping An Group in 2019, as well as the changes of Ren Huichuan and others, people at that time felt that Ping An was not a problem.
However, the record high premium platform and stock price, as well as the net profit of nearly 100 billion yuan, seem to be the biggest endorsement of Ping An, making all worries seem unfounded. Soon people were relieved of their doubts.
Victory can cover up contradictions, but it cannot resolve them. Turning points always come unexpectedly. After 2020, everything was disrupted and accelerated.
The peak and rapid decline of individual insurance manpower is the best portrayal of the industry's shift from growth to maturity, and it is also the beginning of a new wave of reform for Ping An.
In 2020, the number of Ping An agents dropped from 1.2 million in 2019 to 1.05 million, and the agent activity rate also fell from 60.9% in 2019 to 49.3% in 2020. As for the average monthly income of marketers, it fell by nearly 1,000 yuan, only 4,629 yuan.
During this period, the hottest thing in the industry is the insurance + health care service strategy led by Taikang, and more directly, it is the model of insurance products + pension community + elite agents, which has become a place of competition for giants.
Therefore, in 2020, the element of service began to enter the core strategy of Ping An. In Ping An's own words, it is to "deepen the transformation and promotion of the 'product +' strategy, highlight the 'life insurance service +' characteristics of the product", and the "three warps and four latitudes" health care system has begun to take shape.
At the same time, Ping An's personal insurance team also started a round of adjustments:
From the "three high teams" of high quality, high performance and high quality, to the proposal of "incremental refinement, stock strengthening, and team excellence", and building a "three good and five-star" business department, and launching the "Ping An MVP" and "Wealth Health Care Insurance Planner" certification and evaluation system, so as to form the above-mentioned health care model and elite agent model.
However, similar to the industry as a whole, the performance under the epidemic is still not satisfactory.
In 2021, the value of new business in Ping An's life and health insurance segment was -23.6%, and the new business value ratio fell below 30%. In 2022, various operating indicators will decline again on the basis of 2021, and the embedded value of the life and health insurance sectors will begin to show negative growth.
It will not stop falling until 2024, making the premium growth lead the leading companies. But this year, the eighth general manager of Ping An Life also came to leave.
And who, under the guidance of the soul figure, will continue to move forward with Ping An Life?
3 Who is the successor? The young people of the post-85 generation stand out, why do they favor him?
Who is Ping An Life's successor? This has naturally become a hot topic of great concern in the current market, and there are actually traces of leakage in the different opinions.
That is, one of the reasons for today's news, Yu Hong has been quietly removed from the list of executive directors of Ping An Life, and there are only two executive directors of Ping An Life:
One of them is the executor of Ping An Life's reform, that is, Yang Zheng, chairman of Ping An Life; The other is Cai Ting, deputy general manager of Ping An Life.
According to the old practice, the chairman and CEO, and the general manager constitute the only two core management. Cai Ting, as a post-85 generation, is the youngest executive in a domestic giant insurance company.
Cai Ting, born in 1985, graduated from Antai School of Economics and Management of Shanghai Jiaotong University with a bachelor's degree and studied human resources, joined Ping An in November 2014 and has successively served as project manager of Ping An Group's Chief Innovation Officer Office, research assistant/senior project manager of Ping An Group's Strategic Development Center, deputy general manager of the employee service department of Ping An Group's human resources center (presiding over the work), general manager of the human resources department of Ping An Bank, deputy chief financial officer of Ping An Group, Special Assistant to the Chairman of Ping An Life, Assistant to the General Manager of Ping An Life, etc.
In just ten years, after going through a number of core departments involved in this round of reform of Ping An, it has entered a rapid promotion channel.
Less than a year after being approved as the assistant general manager of Ping An Life in October last year, Cai Ting was recently promoted to deputy general manager of Ping An Life, from the seventh team member to the second team member, and was in charge of Ping An's core and most important focus, the focus of this reform: channel center and product center. The person in charge of the channel before was Yu Hong, general manager of Ping An Life.
Looking at Cai Ting's background in Accenture and the experience of Ping An Group's strategic development center, such a rapid promotion is obviously quite meaningful. After joining Ping An Life, he was in charge of the Planning Department, the Sales Support Department of the Individual Insurance Division, the administrative brand-related work, and the assistance in the overall planning of the Finance Department, one table and one meeting per week, and digital reform projects, all of which were the core tasks involved in this round of Ping An Life's reform.
It can be seen that Cai Ting, like many current Ping An Young Zhuang executives, was born in a world-renowned consulting and management company, has a background in a prestigious school, and has closely followed and served the soul of Ping An Group.
Lenovo's current high-ranking position in Ping An, such as Guo Xiaotao, co-CEO and deputy general manager, Cai Fangfang, executive director and deputy general manager, Fu Xin, deputy general manager, and Zhang Xiaolu, head of compliance, are all from consulting backgrounds.
In fact, there are not a few executives with the above backgrounds of Ping An, such as Zhang Zixin, Gu Min, and Chen Xinying, who left this year, have all been in high positions such as general manager, executive deputy general manager, and co-CEO of the group, and they are all from consulting backgrounds.
On the one hand, there is a reason why the helmsman of Ping An favors executives with consulting backgrounds, and various consultants have indeed helped Ping An through the confusion and difficulties of 30 years ago and achieved great success. The most well-known is the McKinsey reform, which left behind the wheat who helped Ping An become bigger.
On the other hand, it is the background of a prestigious school and an international vision of consulting ER. For Ping An's traditional insurance business, especially in view of the fact that the age and ability of the life insurance management team are more traditional or even aging, it may be a good choice to use young people, especially those who have no traditional experience and will not be involved in the traditional interest pattern.
As a pure executor, having no mountains and foundations means that you can implement it objectively and thoroughly, and let it go.
Looking at Cai Ting's safe path, this is indeed the case. It has always been very close to the core power department, and what department can better understand a company than HR and finance, especially for the key training cadres, the career of HR and finance department of the group bank is an excellent learning window. After entering life insurance, the reform of the most important large individual insurance sector is logical.
In fact, since Li Yuanxiang left in 2019 and Ding Xinmin no longer served as CEO, in the most violent reform of Ping An Life in recent years, the main executors, whether Lu Min or Yang Zheng, are not from life insurance backgrounds, but have rich experience in Ping An's financial sector, have a deep understanding of "Internet +" technology, and have quite a lot of performance.
This may also represent Ping An's top management's thinking on life insurance reform: the fortress should break through from the outside, break the pattern of internal interests, sweep away all obstacles, jump out of the original model, and reshape the first subsidiary.
Perhaps, this is the idea of Ping An's change of generals.
postscript
As the saying goes, behind the change, there is the change of people. And the change of people is the shadow of change.
Ping An's series of personnel changes may be traced back to Li Yuanxiang's departure from AIA five years ago, as well as the resignation of the young marshal Ren Huichuan.
This makes the paradigm of Chairman Ma Mingzhe + General Manager Ren Huichuan + Li Yuanxiang, Chen Xinxin, and Xie Yonglin co-CEOs appear two vacancies. Subsequently, Yao Bo filled the position of co-CEO of Li Yuanxiang and formed a new "troika" with Chen Xinxin and Xie Yonglin, while Ma Mingzhe resigned as CEO in July 2020.
And after three years of running in the turning era of ups and downs, it is time to iterate again.
On April 26, 2023, Yao Bo resigned as Co-Chief Executive Officer, Executive Deputy General Manager and other relevant executive positions of Ping An and became a non-executive Director. On September 27 of the same year, Chen Xin announced that he would resign as co-chief executive officer and executive deputy general manager of the company on January 1, 2024 and become a non-executive director.
After a meal, only Xie Yonglin was left in the carriage. The current co-CEO position has also been reduced to two: Xie Yonglin and newcomer Guo Xiaotao.
The biggest change is the return of Chairman Ma Mingzhe to the director of the Group's Strategic Development Center.
Obviously, the power restructuring of the "troika" at the group level will also affect the team structure of each subsidiary, and then set off ripples at a more micro level.
The resulting reallocation of resources will continue to inject fuel into the formed reform framework and form a new impetus for development.
This is the underlying logic of a large series of changes.