How has China Ping An, with its parent company equity exceeding one trillion yuan and dividends spanning 14 years, used hardcore data to interpret long-termism?

Ask AI · Under the long-term strategic framework, how does ESG practice empower corporate sustainable development?

“Investor Network” Yu Ruoli

In the current environment of macroeconomic fluctuations and deep transformation in the insurance industry, at the end of March, Ping An Insurance (601318.SH) still delivered a resilient and standout 2025 annual report.

In a complex and volatile market, Ping An’s 2025 attributable operating profit 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 an industry leader, Ping An has not only built a deep moat in its business model but also integrated its development into the national strategy, investing over 10 trillion yuan to support the real economy, and leveraging technology to enable risk reduction of over 700 million yuan. The solid data in the 2025 annual report deeply analyzes how Ping An, amid the reshaping of the entire industry, relies on forward-looking layout and steadfast long-termism to forge a path of high-quality growth with certainty.

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

Currently, China’s insurance industry is at a critical juncture of shifting old and 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 guaranteed interest rate products, and making asset-liability matching more difficult 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. Moreover, 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 frequency 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 in 2025, the new business value of Ping An’s life and health insurance business 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 productivity per agent increased significantly by 17.2%; at the same time, the NBV in bancassurance channels exploded by over 130%, and community grid channels delivered very high policy persistency.

On the other hand, Ping An also demonstrated a deep financial foundation capable of withstanding cycles. In 2025, Ping An’s attributable shareholders’ equity successfully surpassed one trillion yuan, with over 90 billion yuan of pre-tax unrealized gains on assets. Addressing 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 high-quality rental assets in core cities, making risks highly controllable. Based on this extremely healthy asset mix and stable operating profit support, Ping An has achieved 14 consecutive years of increased cash dividends, sending a strong signal of value return to the capital market.

Building a Strategic Moat: “Medical and Elderly Care Synergy” and “AI Reshaping” Dual-Drive

Against the background of slowing growth in traditional life insurance, Ping An’s ability to turn the tide relies on its keen insight into the aging society’s needs and the use of cutting-edge technology to build a business closed-loop that competitors find hard to replicate.

Today, Ping An is no longer just a financial company selling policies but has transformed into a steward providing “future life solutions.” In 2025, Ping An’s home-based elderly care service (Ping An Butler) covered over 100 key cities nationwide. Through its innovative “1 doctor + 1 steward” model, it precisely addresses social pain points such as “unsafe at home” and “difficult to see a doctor” for the elderly. The company also launched a “Dignity of Life Guarantee Plan” covering end-of-life care, further completing its service ecosystem.

This service system has brought astonishing commercial value to Ping An. 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. More convincingly, the customer retention rate for those using medical and elderly care services is as high as 93%, with a renewal rate 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 customers’ financial and medical-elderly needs is the core logic of Ping An’s integrated finance. Among Ping An’s nearly 240 million customers, nearly 40% hold contracts with multiple subsidiaries. Even more remarkable, 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 “worry-free, time-saving, and cost-saving” experiences, thus building a solid existing customer moat.

“AI in ALL” is not just a slogan. By 2025, AI in Ping An’s financial report is no longer a vague concept but deeply embedded as an advanced productivity across the entire operation chain. The company has developed over 70k AI agents, with AI chatbots handling 80% of customer service volume.

In underwriting and claims, the technological experience is particularly disruptive. Thanks to AI, the “second-level underwriting rate” for Ping An life insurance policies has reached 94%; in claims, over 90% of cases are processed with AI assistance, achieving “instant claims,” with customers receiving payout results within seconds on the app.

In internal management, AI-driven “digital sales departments” have directly reduced management costs by about 15% to 20%. With the world’s top number of patents in finance and healthcare technology, Ping An proves its “tech leader” status through tangible efficiency improvements.

Adhering to Long-termism: Nourishing the Real Economy with Financial Water 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 serving the real economy, Ping An leverages its “patient capital” advantage, investing over 10 trillion yuan to support the real economy. In asset allocation, Ping An responds precisely to national strategies, first publicly promoting “gold” as a core strategic asset, and strategically heavy-allocating in “new productive forces,” channeling massive funds into key industries such as semiconductors, robotics, biomedicine, and green energy, actively supporting national industrial upgrading.

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

Additionally, Ping An continues to lead in green finance, developing innovative green insurance products such as carbon index insurance and catastrophe insurance, and repeatedly earning high ESG ratings from international agencies like MSCI. In protecting consumer rights, Ping An focuses on safeguarding the rights of “two companies and two personnel” and the elderly, and has upgraded rural revitalization from “blood transfusion” to “blood production” through the “Three Villages Project” in industry poverty alleviation and rural tech outreach.

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

Its impressive double-digit profit and NBV growth not only serve as the best endorsement of its top-level strategic design over the past few 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 the real economy, is fully capable of navigating any economic cycle and locking in long-term value amid uncertainties.