HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, June 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Peter Ma, Chairman and founder of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEX: 2318; SSE: 601318), marked the 33rd anniversary of the company with a reflection on the impact of digitalization on human progress and productivity.
Mr. Ma was 33 years old when he founded Ping An Insurance, China's first private joint-stock insurance company, in 1988. Ping An is now one of the world's largest insurers, a leader across financial services in China and a pioneer in new technologies, from fintech to cloud.
"Digitization has raised to a new level humans' ability to understand the world, the underlying principles that govern it and make more intelligent decisions," Mr. Ma wrote in an open message to Ping An executives.
He said this enhanced cognitive capacity is built on three disruptions from technology:
"New technologies also allow us to discover unknown and complex associations in human developments," Mr. Ma wrote. He pointed to Ping An's advancements in medical diagnosis as an example. The conventional process of diagnosing diabetes took into account several disease-causing factors, but Ping An's technology can locate more than 50 health risk factors, more than 300 related diseases or symptoms and more than 2,000 relevant drugs.
Digitalization also brings a new level of speed and automation to business, reducing manual labor and costs. Ping An's rapid auto insurance claim solution enables customers to make claims on a mobile app within three minutes by taking photos of their cars. This fully digital process is driven by AI that has learned images of 60,000 types of vehicles and 24 million parts and components.
AI even enables the company to achieve a more personal relationship with its more than 220 million customers via digital channels, Mr. Ma noted. Human labor alone couldn't deliver Ping An's service standards to such a vast customer base. In 2020, the amount of services provided by AI service representatives grew 41% year-on-year to 1.93 billion times, representing 82% of Ping An's total customer service workloads.
As Ping An looks ahead, the company cannot rest on its technology achievements, Mr. Ma added. "Digitalization will continue to disrupt all areas of life in the 21st century," he wrote. "The market competition will only grow more brutal and winners will take all. We have to remain vigilant and alert to the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead."
A full version of the message is available here.
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 220 million retail customers and 611 million internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Ping An focuses on two over-arching domains of activity, "pan financial assets" and "pan health care", covering the provision of financial and health care services through our integrated financial services platform and our ecosystems; in financial services, health care, auto services and smart city services. Our "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" transformation 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. Ping An ranked 6th in the Forbes Global 2000 list in 2021 and ranked 21st in the Fortune Global 500 list in 2020. Ping An also ranked 49th in the 2021 WPP Kantar Millward Brown BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.
For more information, please visit www.group.pingan.com and follow us on LinkedIn - PING AN.
