Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.

2318.HK
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.HK flagHong Kong Stock Exchange
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964.23BMarket Cap

Q4 FY2023 · Earnings Call TranscriptMarch 21, 2024

APIChatGPT

Sheng Ruisheng

[Interpreted] Good morning. Welcome to the 2023 annual results announcement for Ping An Group.

I'm Richard Sheng, the Board Secretary of the company. I will be hosting the meeting together with [indiscernible] in Ping An.

We'll be doing this via on-site with webcast and conference call. We're going to have Mr.

Ling to introduce you the management team in Hong Kong. Thank you.

Here, we have Dr. Peter Ma, Chairman.

Also in Hong Kong, we have co-CEO and Senior Vice President, Mr. Michael Guo.

And Ms. Fu Xin, Senior Vice President.

Back to you Mr. Xiang to introduce the management present in Shanghai.

Unknown Executive

Thank you. In Shanghai, we have President and co-CEO, Mr.

Xie Yonglin; Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Zhang Zhichun; and Chief Investment Officer, Mr.

Benjamin Deng. Ms.

Fu is going to take you through the 2023 business overview and the management on both venue will take your questions. Ms.

Fu, please.

Xin Fu

My dear friends from the media, dear colleagues, good morning. I'll be presenting you the business overview for 2023 of Ping An.

Please take a look at Slide 5, which is a picture that you know very well, the chart of house. If you've been following Ping An, you will notice this chart very well, which speak of our strategy, which is Integrated Finance + Healthcare and Elderly care.

And the foundation of this house is the technology empowerment. And subsequently, we're going to share with you our strategic measures and how to deepen the implementation of that strategy.

The next slide, just to report to the media, our business performance in 2023, revenue was RMB 1.03 trillion, up by 4.7% year-on-year. Attributable to OPEC was RMB 118 billion, operating ROE, 13.2%, dividend per share was RMB 2.43 per share, growing by 0.4%.

As you can see, Ping An group has always attached importance to shareholder return. For 12 years in a row, we have been enhancing the dividends.

For the last 12 years accumulated dividend payout was RMB 290 billion. Since the listing, we have closed RMB 310 billion dividend payout.

And also, let me talk about NBV. The new business value grew by 36.2%.

That growth have been seeing double-digit growth across the last 4 quarters with thanks to our solid measures of life insurance reform. So in NBV, we're going to have a life and health, attributable operating profit, excluding one-off items and adjustment of assumption, L&H attributable operating profit grew by 0.6%.

The number of individual customers, as you know, we are a company with integrated health. We look at the number of customer, the activity per customer, profit per customer.

The most important foundation of business is a number of the retail customers, which grew by 2.2% to 230 million. In the meantime, there's shareholder equity, RMB 988 billion (sic) [ RMB 899 billion ], which is up by 3.4%.

So that was briefly on the full year results. Now on the following slide, I'm going to share with you that despite 2023 being a very challenging year with changing economic environment.

The management has presented results that's quite remarkable. On the Board meeting yesterday, many directors have acknowledged the efforts put in place.

On the group level, our core business here. First of all, let me stress that we have stable and resilient core business, Life, Bank, P&C has maintained stable.

The 3 business combined RMB 140.9 billion attributable operating profit down by a slight 2.8%. Lot of you are interested in life insurance, thanks to the form and deepening reform measures over the years, we have seen results of high-quality development.

The channel model aging channel has been significantly changed. The NBV was up by 36.2%.

The capability -- the productivity per person -- per agent was actually improved by close to 90%, which is a leading metrics in the industry. The income per agent also improved by close to 40%.

The second change is the deepening of the multichannel operation. You see, the bank channel among the multichannel reform, bank has been showing great momentum.

New business value grew by 77.7%. The non-agency channel contribution put together to -- amount to 16.5% that thanks to the 4 plus 3 strategy.

Well, we used to have 1 agency now -- channel. Now we have 4 channel: Agency, Bank, community grids and part time agency.

And also thanks to the diversification uniqueness of our product, insurance plus healthcare, insurance plus elderly care. And very importantly, another reform will be on the gradual significant improvement on quality.

One metric will be the 13-month policy persistency ratio improving by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. The 2.5 percentage point improvement has been quite remarkable.

So -- we have talked about the dividend. For 12 years in a row, we have been increasing the dividend.

The dividend yield is highly competitive among the peers. So the 2 main business here, which is the P&C insurance.

On the P&C side, most essentially, we didn't look at the quality of the business, and we have excellent quality. Internally, for 12 -- for 5 years, we have great improvement, Auto combined ratio of 97.7% outperforming the peers, excluding one-off, excluding natural disasters, only 96.6% combined ratio.

And that metric is a result of the digitalization measures, digital execution and it's also cost savings that we have put in place in the years. And I'd like to share with you now on the bank.

The key word of bank is the risk resilience, which is excellent. A few years -- a few days ago, the bank has published full year result, and you can see the profit of the bank grew by 2.1%, and we have also noted the balance sheet remained very stable.

The NPL at only 1.6%, cover ratio of provision at 277%. So those are some of the key metrics and performance highlights.

On the next slide, this is the distributed -- profit distribution. A few key points here worthwhile sharing with you.

First of all, as we say, we maintained stable attributable operating profit, RMB 140.9 billion of the 3 core business, only a slight decline of 2.8%. And Life profit has been very healthy, excluding one-off items.

As you know, this year, we have revised down the investment return assumption from 5% to 4.5%. Excluding this factor, L&H is actually growing by 0.6%.

So that result is rather remarkable resilient. And also, if you look at this slide, the contribution like L&H has high contribution, which is over 89.1%.

So core business remained very robust. The next one is on the L&H operating profit maintaining stable and robust.

As we talk to the analysts in the last conference, they have been asking questions around it, which is the contractual service margin. The CSM balance remains huge over RMB 760 billion.

Such a balance is the solid foundation for future release of profits. And also the operating variance was 48% in a positive range, which goes to show the persistency ratio, expenses ratio and those metrics has continued to show favorable changes.

The next slide is the solvency adequacy and the Phase 2 C-ROSS, the solvency adequacy has been significantly higher than the regulatory requirement. We are more than twice as much as the regulatory requirement.

The comprehensive adequacy was also very good. So in terms of the dividend payout in the last 12 years, we continue to raise the dividend with a CAGR above 25%.

So maintaining the dividend ratio speak to our confidence of our core business and future growth. On the bottom left shows the fund available to the group, maintaining a very stable level.

Going forward, you can see in terms of sustainability and ESG, we are going to be driving more value for low-carbon, social responsibilities. A lot of media awarded us with his rewards and accolades.

And then as you can see, we are #33 on Global 500, #1 in global insurance. So that also thanks to your recognitions of our operation capabilities and the future outlook.

So that was a very brief overview of the 2023 performance. And then I hope subsequently, we can count on you for your continued support and interest.

We believe in 2024, '25 and '26, we're going to be on track of high-quality development with promising future. Thank you.

Sheng Ruisheng

Thank you, Ms. Fu.

Due to the time interest, we actually have a very diversified material in our presentation material. We have the business performance by business lines, and the outlook of our future strategy and business.

For more details, you can check our presentation material. But now we'll kick the floor to Q&A session.

Sheng Ruisheng

In the session, we will rotate questions between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Please identify yourself before raising the question.

And please raise no more than 2 questions each time. Well, first, have the friends of the media in Shanghai venue to raise questions.

First, [indiscernible] from CCTV Finance.

Unknown Analyst

I have 2 questions. First question is about business performance.

So we see the OPATs has been declined. I wonder why.

And also to the management, for the subsidiaries performance, how do you take on that? And then another question is about the share price performance we see this morning.

The A share and share price both declined. Now A share price is only 40% -- RMB 40.

And Hong Kong price is around HKD 33. So how do you take the share price and we to your expectation of the future.

Xin Fu

Thank you for the question. I'll answer your first question about the business performance.

I believe you attach great importance to our business performance. So operation is under this bad macroeconomic backdrop.

Our business performance is closely in line with macroeconomic landscape, which is very challenging in this year, and very -- a lot of uncertainties, but we are confident on the fundamentals of the Chinese economy. And there are some volatilities, for example, first, capital markets volatility.

The market -- the capital markets volatility in the past year as we see the CSI down along with the HSI. So this volatility and the index decline has affected the whole financial industry as well as the insurance industry.

But we believe that the capital markets decline has already been priced in our share price and its future impact is limited. Secondly, this one-off profit decline is due to credit risks.

And in terms of the credit risks, Ping An business sector, there are some of subsidiaries under risk exposure. For example, our Lufax Holdings, it has the retail financing retail loans.

And in the past 2 years, it has been very challenging for them. But in terms of -- when we look at some internal indicators, we found those indicators already bottomed out, and they are turning around.

So we believe they won't affect us adversely too much in the future. Thirdly, I would like to share that we have been always prudent in doing provisioning this charge.

And in the past few years, we have done revaluation assessment and doing provision and charge for our assets. This has made a solid foundation for us to cope with the future risks and uncertainties and also build a solid foundation for our assets and our balance sheet.

I believe the OPAT decline is mostly due to the one-off items. But in the next 3 years, when we return to the high-quality development trajectory, the diligence.

This is something we are very confident about.

Unknown Executive

Here I would like to add some color, but what important is not to look back but to look forward in the next 3 years, how Ping An would become in the future. Firstly, our strategy is very clear.

Integrated finance and health care and elderly care strategy is stable. And constantly build a solid foundation for our future growth.

Secondly, our main businesses are very stable, be it the NBV of life insurance or our agent channels productivity per agent continuously growing. These are all indicators of stable development of core businesses.

It is not an easy task to achieve such a performance. Thirdly, we are very good at enforcing and our enforcement has been highly recognized by the industry, while fully confident in our future development, and we believe we could provide value to customers, employees, shareholders and society at the highest level possible.

I'll answer your question about the share price. In terms of the share price, as you mentioned that the decline in our share price today, I think this has nothing to do with our fundamentals.

Our share price is severely undervalued. There are many factors influencing the share price.

There are macroeconomic factors, market factors and some dynamic factors. So there are myriad factors influencing the share price and one single day share price movement doesn't reflect our fundamentals.

And here, check the share price is quite undervalued, which doesn't reflect our performance, be it PB or PE, as you already mentioned, our PE, PB and our core business indicators, including our live business NBV and most importantly our dividend, our payout ratio has been increasing in the past 12 years, which is much better than the industry average. So be it the fundamentals or the future growth potential where the best pick for the value investment.

Okay. Next question from Hong Kong venue.

Sorry. I would like to add some color.

Xiaodong has mentioned a lot already, Already. Like we have very clear strategy, and there are indicators showing that our main businesses quite stable.

Meanwhile, we're in a very good industry. Our strategy features in integrated finance and health care and elderly care.

These sectors are very promising. As this journalist just mentioned, we have low PE and PB multiples.

We agree with you. So we believe, actually, if you are excellent, you will not be missed.

And the price will return to where it's supposed to be to reflect the actual value of the company. So we are confident.

Next question we'll invite the gentleman in middle to raise the question.

Unknown Analyst

Dear management, so in terms of the share price, do you have any plans to increased the payout ratio this year or to implement a buyback plan to support the share price. Second question is about the insurance business.

How do you take on the insurance industry this year as well as the macroeconomic landscape this year. So in the first quarter, from the first quarter's performance, how do you consider -- how do you consider about this year's performance, given we have a high base in the last year.

Apparently, A lot of attention has been paid to our dividend and our share price. Our dividend policy has been stable.

As you could tell, in the past 12 years, we have been increasing the dividend distribution constantly. And our payout ratio is quite competitive in the market, and considering with the [indiscernible] point.

We need to first pick the industry; second, pick the company; third, check the share price. We're undervalued in both PE and PB multiples.

And in terms of the dividend because we are quite confident in the next 3 years business operation. So we'll adhere to our constant policy of dividend.

Unknown Executive

I'll answer your question regarding the Life business. Life business is a long cycle business.

So for the whole industry, either in China or in the Western countries Life business is highly related to the development of local economy. So we have full confidence in the Chinese macroeconomic development.

And we're also confident in the long-term development of the life industry. So this is the prerequisite.

Secondly, you could see our last year's NBV reached great growth. And in the first quarter, in 2024, our NBV also show very positive growth year-over-year.

This has given us full confidence that, first, our life reform was very effective, whether as agent channel or bancassurance channel, community grid, they have achieved great results and made a solid foundation for our future decent development. So we are quite positive -- confident in our NBV growth this year and in the next 3 years.

Secondly, as people pay a lot of attention to life business, it is because life business is core in our company's business. I'd like to ask you to pay attention to our strategy.

Our strategy is about integrated finance plus health care and elderly care. As we communicate with our analysts and friends of the media, usually, we would hear that analysts would refer our strategy as the Wells Fargo Bank plus UnitedHealth model.

We believe this is a very close analogy. And -- but what we are actually doing is an upgrade of that reference.

Firstly, for the integrated finance, we have more than just bank. We have insurance, securities, we have a full suite of licenses of financial businesses.

In healthcare, we have health insurance, life insurance, we have health care services and also we've built this 3-layered service system, which is the online, to store and home delivery. On top of that, we have very powerful technology and AI capabilities.

So backed by this strategy, Ping An Group will continuously deliver stable growth in the future and provide you decent value. And for -- we are fully confident in our profitability and growth in the future.

Sheng Ruisheng

Thank you. A question from Shanghai, the lady in the middle.

Unknown Attendee

I'm reporter from Sinha. I'd like to -- it asks about the live reform, NBV has been showing good momentum but agency headcount continue to drop.

So I wonder when can we expect a stabilization or bottoming up or recovery of the manpower. Another question on bank.

It was going strong last year, but now because the regular change of consistency used in reporting a commission fee, which was quite a big impact. So what do you expect of the bank performance this year?

And any change of business model thereof?

Unknown Executive

Okay. Let me first address the question on agency channel.

There's a lot of interest of interesting channel because that was a very important channel for life insurance. If you look at the industry at large in the past few years, the agency channel has been through a quantitative change, shifting to qualitative change.

For the entire sector, they are reshuffling the strategy, moving from mass manpower campaign and gearing towards more higher quality developments. So lower headcount and lower manpower is an industry trend a lot.

On the other hand, at Ping An where we've been proactively addressing the quality. We're trying to steer the quality on the transformation.

This is our own initiatives. Are we seeing better quality of agencies?

If you look at the results, you can see the productivity per agent. We have been seeing close to 90% year-on-year.

The income per agent 2023, improved by close to 4% compared with 2022. That was based on higher productivity and higher income for our agents.

So therefore, the quality for Ping An's agent has been remarkably different and much better than what it used to be. And in continued development, we also look at the gameplay and strategy for our agency teams.

Instead of just focusing on high-quality agents, but also we're also talking about the high-quality agency teams. So it's not just having different tiers of NBV, [ QVP, FVP ], management of agent by different tiers, but also we have some of the team building metrics to build excellent agency teams.

Instead of focusing on individual agent but also individual agency teams so that we have more capability on a team level. So this is another important change you have seen on agent channel.

So going forward, if you look at the next 3 years, what is our strategy for agency channel? I think there are 3 keywords to bear in mind.

First of all, stabilizing the size; secondly, enhancing quality or improving efficiency; and thirdly, higher productivity. So therefore, on the one hand, we want to continue to optimize the structure of the agency, but also we're going to be stabilizing the manpower so that agency can truly become a solid channel supporting the life business.

So that was some of the strategy and direction that we have for the agency channel. So we have 4 channels.

That will be the first channel. And let me come to the other one.

But the reason we look at agency channel because it's very important, but for Ping An Group. We actually, we have 4 plus 3 where we have 4 channels that really set us apart from other life insurance company in the vision to agency channel.

We also have banker channel. As alluded to in your question, banker is a channel that we are building now.

The growth momentum has been very strong. And thirdly, we have community grids.

That is a channel that's proprietary to Ping An. And also, we have 1 million part-time agents.

So let me talk a bit about community grids. That is unique to Ping An, that we created in our reform based on existing customer base, based on the geographical distribution, based on the value potential, then we're breaking down them into grids.

So by bringing down the customer base in the grids, that was the approach taken by the Chinese government during the COVID pandemic trying to or attempting and successfully curbing the spread of the disease and infection. So that actually help us to manage and operate our existing client base better by providing services, by providing the persistency ratio improvement, by improving up-selling and also by providing more product of integrated finance and also more health care, NPV care and health care services so that a customer will have a greater sense of value.

So we can explore more value from the customer. So community grid, in our view, is a highly potential channel going forward.

So therefore, even though, of course, you are looking at life insurance, but we're moving from 1 channel into now 4 channels and all 4 channels are at different stage. There are those who are mature.

There are those that are still in early stage. There are those that are growing.

So that kind of a layout and structure will support the long-term sustained high-quality development of life insurance. That is a very important point I'd like to make -- clear to you.

And the media also asks about the regulatory policy for bancassurance. If you take note, you will see the financial regulators, recently and announced in past time -- in this past year, they have been focusing on the compliance and regulations of the industry.

There are a range of measures and policies. Firstly, I think the regulatory requirement and policies are all in line with the long-term stable, high-quality development for the industry.

We absolutely welcome and in strict compliance, particularly in banker, particularly this policy can help to address some of the long-term problem or challenges in, for example, the commission fee loss. There's some insurance company out there who are using high commission fees to compete in the market.

But now with this new policy of consistency reporting, use of commission fee. Those behavior will be curbed, and also in terms of operating efficiency and risk management, risk control, all this will be beneficial.

So that kind of regulatory policy for those companies who have strong operations, strong product offering and strong service capability, great branding, multi-channel, multi-offering. That policy is going to be a robust and strong support.

And it is really in our favor.

Sheng Ruisheng

Thank you, Mr. Guo.

Second question from Hong Kong.

Unknown Attendee

I'm [indiscernible] from Economic Daily from Hong Kong. Let me follow up on the strip price and dividend.

You talk a lot about share price dividend. However, stock price, I mean, the job to now -- from [ RMB 90 ] per share 2 years ago.

So there's been some lack of confidence from investors and also talk about dividend payout in the next 3 years, and you talk about how confident you are to maintain the dividend payout policy and you are confident with your operation. What's the reason for that confidence?

And also the asset management was recorded with a hefty loss last year. What has contributed to the loss of asset management?

Is there any provision that's necessary? And what measure you have this year to really reverse that kind of loss?

Xin Fu

Thank you. For share price and dividend, it is all based on the underlying confidence for our business.

That was a great question. Why we are so confident for the company in the future?

The first source of confidence is coming from robust, stable core business. As you can see, the life insurance, P&C, bank and the main lines of business excluding one-off item, they are showing positive growth.

That is very robust. For life, Mr.

Guo has talked about the 4 plus 3 strategy in life insurance, in the past years of life reform, we have seen strong results, the NBV 36.5% growth that goes to show the positive results. The NBV will turn out to be the solid foundation for value release.

So that's on the life insurance side. Now if we take into account what Mr.

Guo talked about integrated finance, healthcare, well-being, elderly care, where we continue to drive more synergies, and that is going to be a very effective strategy. And on that, let me share with you.

We have 230 million customer base in integrated finance. So our customer acquisition cost is far below the peers and below our previous cost like Life, P&C and banks.

The customer acquisition cost is about 50% or even 70% of some of the peers. With such a huge client base, with such a low acquisition cost, high efficiency of acquisition, high retention, low risk cost.

I think that is a foundation that underpin our confidence of the future value release. Now you have alluded too that in the past year due to capital market fluctuation, higher credit risk, we have taken some measures.

Now in the past year, particularly in Q4, we are proactively managing our risks and making prudent provisions. So when we are strengthening the balance sheet, it also consolidate the foundation for the next 3 years, which is why we are so confident for the results in the next 3 years, hence, the confidence in dividend payout.

And I believe the share price will see regression into the fundamentals, as Mr. Guo said.

Go, we'll glitter eventually.

Sheng Ruisheng

A question from Shanghai, please.

Unknown Attendee

Thank you for having me. I'm [indiscernible] from Shanghai Security News.

Two questions for management. First of all, the integrated finance plus health care, elderly model, any new progress?

And also Dr. Ma has become the Director of the Strategy Research Institute.

So what are the new strategy? And also, you talked about some growth that are doing very well.

So for example, the number of customer, the contract per customer and value per customer. So those 3 metrics are very important.

So how are they going to perform in this year?

Unknown Executive

Okay, we have a look at the Ping An strategy, integrated finance plus health care and elderly care. If you look at our integrated finance momentum, it has already stated a solid foundation of a customer base.

If you check our results statement. Our retail customer base has increased significantly to 23 million, and contract per customer stayed flattish.

Profit per customer did dip due to the industry momentum and the market weakness. But if you go a deeper layer to analyze the quality of our customer our -- the quality of our customer is very stable and robust.

I'll share with you. Our investable assets over 500,000 customers, the number increased 7.6%.

This group of customers, contract per customer is 5 contracts, which is 1.7x of the average customers. So the quality of this group of customer is very high.

They're our quality customers. Second, look at the growth of customers.

Customers aged between 30 to 50 olds account for over 50% of our total customer base. At this age group, they are healthy, they're robust and have promising future.

So it's great potential of growth. The third is our retention.

The customer retention is 90% in 2023. But if you look at our high net worth income customers, their retention is even higher.

So integrated finance strategy has built a solid foundation for us, which is the 3 high customers we call, high-value, high-growth, high retention. This group of customers is the core driver of our future growth.

Another part is the health care and elderly care services. We deliver the services online to door and home delivery.

We cooperated with over 1,800 AAA hospitals, and we have deployed elderly care facilities in 54 cities with 650 services. So all these services have returned to empower our core businesses, as you could tell from our financial report.

Our life business in terms of the NBV growth, 70% of the NBV contributors are from the customers who enjoy the benefits of plus services. And customer who enjoyed the out-of-care services have increased over 12 times year-over-year.

What does this mean? Two factors.

First, the health care and elderly care services has great potential of growth in China because they meet the demands of customers. Secondly, such high growth means that the customers are well received of our services.

We have called a structure of vertical and horizontal. So horizontally, we have the family doctor to manage the customers from health, sub-health disease, chronic disease and elderly care services provision.

And vertically, we have online, to door and home delivery. So the integrated finance plus health care and elderly care services together will lay a solid foundation for our future development.

This is why we believe that in the next 3 years, our business performance will continue to grow healthily and stably. Thank you.

Sheng Ruisheng

Next question from Hong Kong.

Unknown Analyst

I'm [indiscernible]. I would like to ask Ms.

Fu about coverage provisioning. So I would like to ask what was the assets that incurred that coverage provisioning because for asset business, it's probably Country Garden and they are in facing of some legal risks, does that relate to your provisioning to discharge?

And secondly, you have some holdings with HSBC and whether there's something that you can share with us in terms of your engagement with HSBC.

Xin Fu

Thank you for your question. It's a good question.

So for our provisioning coverage, it's not that we did something special at the end of the last year. It's just after 35 years, our provisioning policy has always been very prudent and conservative.

And we have reviewed all our assets. And with the prudent principle, we have done a impairment assessment and charge some provisioning.

The reason to do this is to consolidate our balance sheet. It is not for a particular project.

And the project you just mentioned actually has a very limited exposure in our balance sheet, and the percentage is very small. It has no impact on our operating results.

Also under this prudent provisioning coverage, after our balance sheet is being consolidated, we believe in the next few years -- next 3 years or in the longer future, our balance sheet quality will be very good and which will provide a very good quality or foundation for the future business growth. The second, in terms of the HSBC, as we mentioned before, we don't comment on a specific financial investment target.

That's all. Thank you.

Sheng Ruisheng

Next question from Shanghai, please.

Unknown Analyst

Dear management, I have 2 questions. First, it's about the insurance company has been a strong supporter of the real economy.

So my question is that, how are you going to wield your insurance funds to support the real economy? And the second is the Founder Securities and the Ping An Securities.

So last year that -- the regulator asked Ping An Group to propose your solution regarding the Ping An Securities and Founder Securities. Could you share with us some information regarding that?

Yonglin Xie

Founder Securities is a listed company. It has fully disclosed its business performance, which was pretty good in the past 2 years.

For the 2 securities company, what we do is to deeply empower we'll improve their performance. As for what you care about, as a listed company, I can only answer that under the regulation and requirements, we'll deliver what they want.

I know what you're asking about, 1 license, 1 company for a specific financial business. And the second question, in finance, there are 3 supportive measurements.

The -- we are in line with what the government wants. We will promote the production of the new industries and facilitate the economic development of China.

We will evolve around inclusive green finance, fintech and pension as well as digital finance to support the economic development. To be specific, in terms of the FinTech, as we mentioned, we are an integrated finance company.

We'll use the advantage of this strategy using our insurance funds and commercial banks investments and investment banks to serve tech start-ups at different stages. We'll support them with loans and increase their resistance.

There are some specific datas. For example, Ping An Bank has supported SMEs and the tech companies over RMB 110 billion of loans -- insurance.

And in terms of the finance, the green finance, we have supported the loans to -- in terms of the green finance, including green investment, green insurance and green loans. I will not go deep into the numbers because you can see from our financial reports, but total is RMB 49 trillion.

The green loans is RMB 150 billion, and it has been growing rapidly. In terms of the inclusive finance, it has something we've been doing for years.

We have built a very high-quality inclusive finance structure, and we have been increasing the coverage of inclusive finance and make it more accessible. We have provided nearly RMB 600 billion to micro, small and medium businesses, and we have provided loans without collaterals.

And we have supported, for example, delivery guys with special insurance at some short at over RMB 400 billion. And in terms of the pension finance, Michael has already mentioned a lot.

Healthcare and elderly care strategy is one of our core strategy. This is our strategic direction and we'll spare no efforts in delivering it.

Michael has already mentioned a lot of numbers and deliberated on how it empowers our core business and support our customers to enable our customers to enjoy our healthcare services. As of end of last year of home-based services, home-based elderly care services has already been expanded to 54 cities, and nearly 70% already enjoying the benefits of Plus service.

This is beneficial to our own development, but also bring value to our customers. This is what the digital finance is about.

We promote the digitalization projects. Digital operation, digital managements, we use all these tools to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

In this way, we could bring more value, more profit to our customers so that they can enjoy time and money saving and worry-free financial services. This is what we have been doing to genuinely follow the guidance of this government.

And due to -- we use the -- we have followed the implementation of 5 articles to do our job.

Sheng Ruisheng

The question from Hong Kong.

Unknown Attendee

Hello. I'm a reporter from the Daily -- well, Economic Daily.

In low interest rate environment, what is the investment strategy for the insurance fund? Any change of the environment strategy and how do you cope with a low interest rate environment?

Second, the government encouraged the insurance fund to get into the equity markets. So any plans there?

Bin Deng

Thank you for the question. Now I'd like to respond in 3 parts.

First of all, what we have done. Secondly, how do we do it?

And thirdly, what's our view on the economic cycle? First of all, what have we done for a long time.

We stick to the strategy of extending asset duration better match of asset liability durations. So we have foreseen the interest rate trends.

In the past few years, we have overweight on the long-duration interest bonds resulting to results. First of all, the asset liability matching of the duration has been excellent.

Calculated by effective duration we basically have largely a perfect match. Of course, if you use a different arithmetic calculation, regardless, we are in a very comfortable position in terms of the match.

But because we have been deploying bond ahead of time, ahead of the curve. So we have been able to lock in a high interest rate compared with the prevailing interest rate giving right to a lot of implied value.

So that's what we have done. At the same time, we have a balanced allocation in equity investment among value and growth stocks.

We have the balance allocation so that we can outperform the market benchmark. So that's also what we have done.

The second reply will be on how do we do it. In 3 words, our investment style will be described as a strategic focus, navigating cycle, technical flexibility, planning ahead, balanced allocation and risk diversification.

Now strategic focus, we have to stay focused. We are going through -- we have to ride through the economic cycle of 10 years.

By tactics, we have to foresee what might be the changes in the market so we can plan ahead to allocate our funds ahead of time, and risk diversification. We often talk about the best way or the most fundamental way to manage risk will be in diversification.

So therefore, balance allocation for diversification to this day has provided stable return. Our investment benefit from balance allocation in equity and bond in equity, we have balanced allocation between value and growth in 2023, 2022, our equity return have been double digit.

We have been outperforming this year at 300 by double digits. So therefore, our investment performance has been stable.

The risk are very well managed. Thirdly, to respond to your question, this is really our view on economic performance or economic cycles.

Well, we always resolve to the same rule, which is economic cycles. We've been through high interest rate.

Now interest rate is going down. In the future, it will go up again.

That's how history repeat itself over and over again. We just have to do well in terms of allocation, long-term allocation, tactics with discipline to respond to market changes and diversify ourselves to diversify risks.

And Chinese economy is going strong, it's going be promising. And we remain -- is going to be the leader, which is performing ahead of the curve.

Sheng Ruisheng

Okay. Maybe last question.

In the interest of time, please be brief. Thank you.

Unknown Attendee

I'm a journalist from Mobile Finance. You see you have revised down the risk discount rate and assumption for investment return.

So for the valuation, what's the mid to long-term impact? In a low interest rate environment, now in terms of the assumption, you are assuming 4.5%.

Would it be revised down further? And the market have been talking about the 3.0 interest rate will be further revised down.

So what's your view on this?

Zhichun Zhang

Yes. Indeed, as you have seen, we have revised down the investment return assumption and discount rate, risk-free.

So after this revision compared with the past, it's going to be seen as more prudent. So you can see there's not just a numerical revision.

It is rather prudent. First of all, investment return, we have taken account of the change in the market environment.

We have taken into account of the long cycle change, like what Mr. Deng has said, this is going to be a long cycle, nothing short.

Life business is a long-term business. So investment return has to link back to the long-term cycle.

So Chinese economy is helpful. We're holding our expectations.

So -- at the same time, we are also looking at the matching model and the Chinese actual association's guidance regarding the linkage between the investment return assumption vis-a-vis the risk-free discount rate. So it was also revised down about 150 bps.

So that revision in comparison to the guidance by the Chinese Association Actuary. We have been actually carry out a bit more prudence.

So we have to be -- carry out these measurements in a way that's prudent, sufficient, but reasonable. So we think Chinese economy is going to do well, and we're going to have internal momentum, and we do see we have a promising future, and we're going to deliver better value for the shareholders.

Sheng Ruisheng

Okay. That's the time we have for today's result announcement.

And if you have any further questions, please reach out to the PR team in Shanghai and Shenzhen. We'd love to take your questions.

Thank you for your support. With that, we conclude the conference today.

Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]