Science and technology strategy continues to deepen From The first quarter of Ping An report to see the "winter" skills of top companies

The author | Ke Yi

On April 23, Ping An announced its results for the three months ended March 31, 2020, achieving a net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of RMB26.063 billion, down 42.7% year-on-year, but the operating profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company still achieved a year-on-year increase of 5.3% to RMB35.914 billion.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, domestic GDP fell by 6.8% year-on-year in the first quarter. This is the quarter in which China's GDP has fallen the most since the reform and opening up.

Under the impact of the new crown epidemic, offline business has been blocked, market interest rates have declined, the fluctuations in the global economic environment have intensified, and various unfavorable factors have been faced, and investors may have reserved some room for exploration in the hearts of insurance companies that have recently been released.

Judging from the first quarterly report, among Ping An's many business sectors, life insurance and health insurance were deeply affected by the epidemic, with the value of new business in the first quarter of 16.453 billion yuan, down 24.0% year-on-year; property insurance, banking and other businesses performed better and still maintained a growth trend; Ping An technology business deserves special attention, with a total revenue of 19.844 billion yuan, an increase of 6.0% year-on-year. Ping An Good Doctor, Ping An Medical Insurance Technology, Ping An Smart City and other businesses have developed rapidly.

Ping An technology has also been applied to various business sectors such as life insurance, property and casualty insurance, and banking, effectively alleviating the impact of the epidemic. Obviously, after full preparation and continuous investment, science and technology has become one of Ping An's core "wintering" skills.

<h4>AI fills 80% of the online insurance vacuum</h4>

The decline in insurance company premium income is expected.

Based on past experience and Chinese consumption habits, the Spring Festival is the peak sales season of the year in the insurance industry. In this "opening" period, insurance companies will come up with the best solutions and best products to motivate employees and feedback users.

However, this year's epidemic has poured cold water on the insurance industry.

On February 3, the stock market opened sharply, and the insurance industry was also affected. On the first day of the opening of A-shares, many insurance companies such as Ping An, Chinese Life, Chinese Insurance of China performed poorly, and Ping An performed the best, with a decline of about 6%.

Even so, it is somewhat biased to blame the entire impact on the pandemic.

According to the 2018 Internet Insurance Annual Report, the market size of Online Insurance in China still accounts for less than 20%. Under the impact of the epidemic, the vacuum and lack of the online insurance market have exacerbated the phased failure of the insurance industry to a certain extent.

Compared with SARS in 2003, the abundance of scientific and technological means has changed the industry ecology. With the help of AI, big data analysis and other technologies, insurance companies can accurately understand the needs of users, and carry out product explanation and sales process through online means.

On March 14, Lu Min, chief insurance business executive of Ping An, showed three major tools to support agents' daily sales and customer operations in a live broadcast: AskBob, an intelligent assistant robot exclusive to agents, a golden butler App that provides full-process policy services, a bridge between customers, and pocket E APP, an agent sales and management tool.

It is worth mentioning AskBob, which is an intelligent search engine and AI-assisted decision-making tool independently developed by Ping An of China and equipped with each agent, which can answer various questions and simulate sales scenario training.

There is no doubt that the epidemic will definitely increase the penetration and transformation of insurance companies into fintech. The intelligent tools represented by AskBob can help agents better improve their business level, further promote the conversion of insurance policies and the accuracy of customer services, and win the battle against the epidemic.

<h4>The huge change brought about by the 1% investment</h4>

Danger is change.

The offline business of traditional banks and insurance companies is huge, which is essentially a "manpower output" model. In the face of the "black swan" of new crown pneumonia, the banking and insurance industries need to seek change and development.

In 2017, Ping An established a dual-drive strategy of "finance + technology", on the one hand, through product, service and technological innovation, to create the ultimate user experience, on the other hand, through the development of rich scenarios, to create mature technology applications, expand the scope of services and obtain light return on capital.

Ping An invests 1% of its operating income in scientific research every year, and the results are obvious. According to the quarterly report, as of the end of March 2020, the number of patent applications of Ping An Technology increased by 2,550 from the beginning of the year, reaching a total of 23,933, ranking the forefront of international financial institutions. In addition, in 2019, the total revenue of Ping An Technology's business was 82.109 billion yuan, an increase of 27.1% year-on-year. As of the end of December 2019, technology companies were valued at $69.1 billion, the third largest business after life insurance and banking.

These scientific and technological achievements, widely used during the epidemic period, have contributed to the fight against new crown pneumonia.

Taking Ping An Good Doctor's AI assisted diagnosis and treatment system as an example, it includes four major sections: intelligent critical care monitoring system, AI intelligent auxiliary consultation system, rational medication monitoring system and intelligent medical safety monitoring platform, which can help doctors solve problems more efficiently.

As early as 5 years ago, Ping An Good Doctor invested 3 billion yuan in AI Doctor. AI Doctor can do a lot of basic work: voice and graphic interaction, guide users to accurately describe the disease, form a structured medical history, and provide intelligent diagnostic solutions for reference by back-end specialists.

This series of work makes the connection and communication between doctors and patients smoother. Today, ping an good doctor's market value has reached 122.4 billion, and during the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the cumulative number of visits to the platform has reached 1.11 billion.

Ping An Smart Medical, which serves the B-side, also uses computer vision, NLP, knowledge graph and other technologies to help epidemic prevention and control and auxiliary screening in the epidemic area.

Since February 21, Ping An Smart Healthcare's COVID-19 intelligent reading system has covered 21 provinces and 31 prefectures and cities across the country, landed in more than 1,500 medical institutions across the country, including Wuhan, and provided remote reading services for more than 2,000 patients. Gao Mengxuan, co-general manager of Ping An Smart City, said that the reading system can produce intelligent analysis results in about 15 seconds, and the accuracy rate is as high as 90%. So far, the system has screened more than 20,000 suspected cases.

Ping An Medical Insurance Technology actively builds a macro decision-making big data system for various provinces and cities from the perspective of medical insurance and commercial insurance.

As early as 2014, Ping An Medical Insurance Technology cooperated with the Xiamen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau to build a smart medical insurance information management platform to identify abnormal card swiping fraudulent insurance populations through the "key drug monitoring" in the platform.

During the epidemic period, the health testing center under Ping An Medical Insurance Technology also sent a mobile CT imaging vehicle to screen 5,304 people through the mobile CT imaging vehicle; a total of 33,113 nucleic acid test samples of the new crown virus were undertaken, providing a "better solution" for the screening task at the grass-roots level. Fang Weihao, chairman and CEO of Ping An Medical Insurance Technology, said that the (mobile CT imaging vehicle) business had been laid out two years ago, and the team had carried out more than 600 grassroots screenings and rural free clinics.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, domestic large and small device manufacturers and medical AI startups have come up with many excellent software solutions. However, the "small aircraft carrier" that requires a high degree of integration of software and hardware such as the mobile CT image car is not a scientific and technological achievement in a short period of time, but starts from the underlying technology, solidly polished and adapted, in order to achieve today's "summons must fight, battle must win".

Drys with boats, Gees with fur.

The layout of science and technology must not only have the determination to think of danger in times of peace, but also have the patience of "bench rather do ten years of cold". Under the test of the new crown epidemic, enterprises have once again deeply realized the importance of technology. For Ping An, the epidemic is a review of more than ten years of scientific and technological investment, and it is also a new test. As Ping An said in its quarterly report, this year is a key year for deepening the strategic transformation of "finance + technology" and "finance + ecology". It is believed that Ping An's forward-looking technology layout will continue to play a role in future performance and create greater value returns.

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