HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Sept. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or "The Group", HKEx: 2318; SSE: 601318) showcased a range of its digital innovations at the Institute of International Finance (IIF). Jessica Tan, Co-CEO of Ping An Group, was a featured speaker at the IIF Digital Interchange: The Global Dialogue on Digital Finance on the acceleration of digital transformation across the Group as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"COVID has really accelerated digitization even for us, and we have always been on the forefront of digitization," Jessica said. The Group's "finance + ecosystem" strategy is to use technology to empower five ecosystems: financial services, health care, smart city services, real estate services and auto services. These ecosystems help the Group extend its reach to internet users beyond its core financial businesses. As of June 30, 2020, Ping An had more than 210 million retail customers and 560 million internet users.
Ping An's Health Care Innovations at Center of COVID-19 Fight
The health care businesses played a critical role during the pandemic. COVID-19 drove skyrocketing demand for Ping An Good Doctor, the largest mobile internet telemedicine platform in China, with nearly 350 million users as of June 30, 2020. "A lot of consumers with small illnesses don't want to go to hospitals for fear of further infection … I think (demand for telemedicine) is going to continue accelerating," Jessica said.
In the first half of 2020, Ping An Good Doctor saw an average of 831,000 medical consultations daily, up 26.7% year-on-year. Ping An Good Doctor provides end-to-end service for patients, including 24/7 online consultations, prescriptions, referrals, appointments, second medical opinions and drug deliveries – supported by the in-house full-time medical team and proprietary artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical system.
For medical service providers, Ping An Smart Healthcare supports more than 17,000 medical institutions, providing comprehensive services including integrated regulatory platforms, AI-based disease prediction, medical image recognition and AskBob, a consultant and treatment assistance tool. Ping An launched its COVID-19 smart image-reading system in early 2020 to assist doctors with fast and accurate diagnoses to help control the epidemic. The system can generate smart analysis results in about 15 seconds, with an accuracy rate above 90%. AskBob was used 22.04 million times by approximately 413,000 doctors in the first half of 2020.
The rise of telemedicine began long before the pandemic, Jessica noted. "We started working with the government about 10 years ago on how to better manage health care costs." Ping An's AI medical capabilities are helping to control rising costs and support medical professionals to provide more efficient and accurate diagnoses and treatment.
"So in the whole healthcare ecosystem, we really go in with a long-term mentality, providing better services for our customers, not just insurance but also good, reliable online health care services, helping to manage costs across the whole system."
Financial Services Adapted to Remote Working and Customer Service
Ping An's technologies also enabled its financial businesses to maintain service to customers during the pandemic. The company shifted its 1.4 million agents and staff to remote working within five days, Jessica told the IIF. Artificial intelligence (AI) service robots handled 82% of service calls with the rest handled by contact center agents working remotely. Ping An's fintech company OneConnect also helped 60 financial institutions shift to remote working and customer service in the first three months of the pandemic.
Digitization of Government Services Accelerated
Jessica said another trend highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic is the digitization of government services. Ping An's smart city services is helping 118 cities in China digitize their services, including Shenzhen, where Ping An is headquartered. Ping An is working with the Shenzhen government to provide 7,000 services on one mobile app. As face-to-face interactions were not possible in the pandemic, citizens were able to access 70% of the government's services from the app.
Ping An is committed to continue developing its technological capabilities. As of June 30, 2020, Ping An's technology patent applications increased by 4,625 year to date to 26,008. Ping An topped the 2020 global fintech patent ranking list for the second consecutive year with over 1,500 applications in the area. In 2019, Ping An ranked second globally by published digital healthtech patent applications.
About Ping An Group
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An") is a world-leading technology-powered retail financial services group. With over 210 million retail customers and 560 million Internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world.
Ping An has two over-arching strategies, "pan financial assets" and "pan health care", which focus on the provision of financial and healthcare services through our integrated financial services platform and our five ecosystems of financial services, health care, auto services, real estate services and smart city services. Our "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" strategies aim to provide customers and internet users with innovative and simple products and services using technology. As China's first joint stock insurance company, Ping An is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate reporting and corporate governance. The Group is listed on the stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
In 2020, Ping An ranked 7th in the Forbes Global 2000 list and ranked 21st in the Fortune Global 500 list. Ping An also ranked 38th in the 2020 WPP Kantar Millward Brown BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list. For more information, please visit www.pingan.cn.
