How has China Ping An, with its core parent company's equity exceeding one trillion yuan and dividends spanning 14 years, used solid data to illustrate long-termism?

(Source: Investor Network - Thinking Finance)

Amidst the fluctuations of the macroeconomic environment and the deep-water transformation of the insurance industry, at the end of March, Ping An Insurance (601318.SH) still delivered a resilient and highlight-filled 2025 annual report to the market.

In a complex and volatile market, Ping An’s attributable operating profit in 2025 achieved a steady growth of 10.3%, with new business value in life insurance soaring by 29.3%, announcing a comprehensive recovery of its core business with double-digit strong growth. Behind this earnings report that exceeded market expectations is Ping An’s successful transformation of “medical and elderly care” into a scaled “second growth curve,” as well as the efficiency revolution brought by embracing the “AI in ALL” strategy.

As a leading industry player, Ping An has not only built a deep moat in its business model but also integrated its development into national strategies, investing over 10 trillion yuan to support the real economy, and leveraging technology to enable risk reduction exceeding 700 million yuan. The solid data in the 2025 annual report provides an in-depth analysis of how Ping An, during the industry’s reshaping period, has charted a high-quality growth path with foresight and steadfast long-termism.

01

Navigating Industry Uncertainty: A High-Quality Financial Performance Amid Multiple Challenges

Currently, China’s insurance industry is at a critical juncture of transitioning from old to new drivers and preventing systemic risks, facing four core challenges. First, the low-interest-rate environment poses “interest margin loss” risks, putting pressure on traditional high-fixed-rate products, and significantly increasing the difficulty of asset-liability matching for insurers.

Second, regulators are actively promoting “reporting and operation integration,” strictly controlling intermediary commissions and fees, rendering the traditional “people-intensive” approach increasingly ineffective. Additionally, the competition in the insurance sector has shifted from “incremental dividends” to “stock competition,” with customer needs evolving from simple risk compensation to comprehensive services across the entire lifecycle. Coupled with high claims rates in new energy vehicle insurance and frequent extreme weather events, these pose unprecedented challenges to insurers’ actuarial pricing and operational capabilities.

Faced with such a severe industry environment, the 2025 annual report shows that Ping An not only stabilized its fundamentals but also demonstrated strong explosive power and healthy fundamentals.

On one hand, the company’s core business entered a “harvest period.” The report indicates that the new business value of Ping An’s life and health insurance in 2025 grew by 29.3%, fully proving that the company’s life insurance reform has entered a high-quality harvest phase. In channel transformation, Ping An has completely shed reliance on scale, achieving “multi-faceted flowering”: in 2025, the average productivity per agent increased by 17.2%; simultaneously, the NBV in bancassurance channels exploded by over 130%, and community grid channels also delivered very high policy persistency.

On the other hand, Ping An has demonstrated a deep financial foundation capable of cycling through periods. In 2025, Ping An’s attributable shareholders’ equity successfully surpassed one trillion yuan, with pre-tax unrealized gains exceeding 90 billion yuan on the asset side. Addressing previous market concerns about real estate exposure, Ping An also reassured the market in the annual report.

The report shows that Ping An’s related exposure has been significantly reduced, with assets mainly concentrated in core cities’ high-quality rental assets, making risks highly controllable. Thanks to this extremely healthy asset mix and stable operating profits, Ping An has maintained 14 consecutive years of increasing cash dividends, sending a strong signal of value return to the capital market.

02

Building a Strategic Moat: “Medical and Elderly Care Collaboration” and “AI Re-Engineering” as Dual Drivers

Against the backdrop of slowing growth in traditional life insurance, Ping An’s countertrend rise hinges on its keen grasp of the aging society’s needs and the use of cutting-edge technology to create a business ecosystem difficult for competitors to replicate.

Today, Ping An is no longer just a financial company selling policies but has transformed into a steward providing “future lifestyle solutions.” In 2025, Ping An’s home-based elderly care service (Ping An Steward) has covered over 100 key cities nationwide. Through its innovative “one doctor + one steward” model, it precisely addresses social pain points such as “unsafe home environment” and “difficulties in seeing a doctor” for the elderly. The company also launched a “Dignity of Life” care plan covering end-of-life care, further completing its service loop.

This service system has brought remarkable commercial value. The annual report shows that among customers enjoying medical and elderly care services, their average premium per customer and average number of contracts far exceed those of ordinary customers, contributing over half of the company’s new business growth. Even more compelling, customer retention rate for those using these services reaches 93%, with renewal rates 4 percentage points higher than ordinary customers. Ping An has successfully turned societal “elderly care anxiety” into tangible “business increment.”

Through a single app and a dedicated customer manager, providing a one-stop solution for financial and medical-elderly needs is core to Ping An’s integrated finance strategy. Among its nearly 240 million customers, nearly 40% hold contracts with multiple subsidiaries. Notably, customers holding three or more product types have a retention rate of 99%. This “buy more, leave less” high loyalty stems from Ping An’s continuous delivery of “peace of mind, time-saving, and cost-saving” experiences, building a solid moat around its existing customer base.

“AI in ALL” is more than just a slogan. By 2025, AI is no longer a vague concept in Ping An’s financial reports but has been deeply embedded as an advanced productivity tool across operations. The company has developed over 70k AI agents, with AI chatbots handling 80% of customer service volume.

In underwriting and claims, technological disruption is especially evident. AI-driven processes have achieved a “second-level underwriting” rate of 94% for Ping An’s life insurance policies; over 90% of claims are processed via AI-assisted “instant claims,” with customers receiving payout results within seconds on the app.

Internally, AI-powered “digital sales departments” have reduced management costs by approximately 15% to 20%. With the world’s leading number of patents in finance and healthcare technology, Ping An’s efficiency improvements demonstrate its strength as a “tech leader.”

03

Adhering to Long-Termism: Nourishing the Real Economy with Financial Liquidity and Giving Back to Society through ESG

As a benchmark of China’s financial industry, Ping An always maintains a high political stance, building its business success on serving national strategies and enhancing social welfare.

In supporting the real economy, Ping An leverages its “patient capital” advantage, investing over 10 trillion yuan to support the real economy. In asset allocation, it responds precisely to national strategies, notably promoting “gold” as a core strategic asset and strategically heavy-allocating in “new productive forces,” channeling vast funds into key industries such as semiconductors, robotics, biomedicine, and green energy, actively supporting national industrial upgrades.

In ESG and social responsibility, Ping An has also made a leap from passive compensation to proactive action. In 2025, Ping An Property & Casualty fully implemented a “risk reduction” initiative, using big data and police-insurer collaboration to conduct “Ten Thousand Homes Safe and Bright” campaigns before major holidays like Spring Festival, proactively preventing road accidents and issuing early warnings for natural disasters. In 2025 alone, Ping An’s risk reduction efforts resulted in over 700 million yuan in social losses avoided, embodying the true insurance spirit of “preventive measures.”

Moreover, Ping An continues to lead in green finance, developing innovative green insurance products such as carbon index insurance and catastrophe insurance, and consistently earning high ESG ratings from international agencies like MSCI. In protecting consumer rights, Ping An emphasizes safeguarding the rights of “two regulators and two members” and the elderly, and has upgraded rural revitalization through the “Three Villages Project” involving industrial poverty alleviation and technology outreach, shifting from “blood transfusion” to “blood making” models.

The outstanding performance reflected in Ping An’s 2025 annual report is no accident. While the industry is mired in low-interest rate anxiety and compliance pains, Ping An has already taken the lead in transforming through its “comprehensive finance + medical and elderly care” model and resolute technological empowerment.

Its impressive double-digit profit and NBV growth not only endorse its top-level strategic design of recent years but also prove to the capital market that Ping An, as a high-quality integrated service provider rooted in AI, featuring medical and elderly care, and committed to supporting the real economy, is fully capable of navigating any economic cycle and locking in long-term value amid uncertainties. (Produced by Thinking Finance) ■

(This article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. The market carries risks; invest cautiously.)