Ping An Insurance Reports First Quarterly Profit Rise in 12 Months

November 23, 2020 by Engen Tham and Cheng Leng

Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd on Tuesday reported a 7.74% rise in net profit, its first quarterly profit increase in a year, as the country’s largest insurer by market value attracted more retail customers.

Net profit rose to 34.4 billion yuan ($5.12 billion) in the three months to September 30 from 31.9 billion yuan a year earlier, Ping An said in a stock market filing in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

It reported 214 million retail customers as of the end of September, up 7% from January.

And in the first nine months of 2020, Ping An’s life and health insurance business, its main profit driver, generated 75.45 million yuan in operating profit, up 9.2% year on year.

However, its nine-month net profit fell 20.9% as COVID-19 adversely affecting its long-term protection business.

“Domestic consumption demand was still recovering, large-scale offline events were still restricted in China, and offline face-to-face meetings had not increased to pre-epidemic levels yet,” Ping An said.

In the short-term demand for insurance will “still be weaker than before the epidemic,” it said.

Ping An Insurance Group is the controlling shareholder of Ping An Bank, which reported a 6.1% rise in third-quarter net profit.

In September it said it had become British bank HSBC Holdings’ biggest shareholder, with an 8% stake.

The company’s lending arm Lufax Holding Ltd, one of China‘s largest online wealth management platforms, this month filed to list in the United States, aiming to raise about $3 billion, Reuters reported.

Shanghai shares of Ping An have fallen 5.1% this year versus a 2.5% drop in the blue-chip China financials index.

The group has a market value of $212.3 billion as of Tuesday.

($1 = 6.7029 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Cheng Leng and Zhang Yan in Beijing, Engen Tham in Shanghai; editing by Jason Neely)