HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, April 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEX: 2318; SSE: 601318) is pleased to announce that on the occasion of the 52nd annual Earth Day, it has issued "A Letter from Ping An to the Earth", announcing a comprehensive upgrade of green finance activities and setting quantitative green finance performance targets. Through its financial product and service innovations, Ping An will support China's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, help combat global climate change, and promote sustainable social development.
Setting green finance performance targets
In the letter, Ping An proposes a series of performance targets for green finance, leveraging the Group's strengths in finance, including green insurance, green investment and green credit. It also commits to adopting measures to support green growth and sustainable development. Ping An is committed to becoming the world's leading green finance group, helping China achieve its CO2 emission peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality targets by 2060.
Ping An stated that it will fully support the government's approach to transform to a green economy by offering financial incentives for green projects, such as preferential credit interest rates and insurance rates, asset allocation tilting and training, mentoring and other value-added services. It will support innovations in clean technology, renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy technology, carbon capture and ecological carbon sinks, carbon trading and other environmental fields.
Ping An set targets for the annual growth rates for its green investments of no less than 20%, green insurance premiums no less than 70% and green credit balance no less than 20%. By 2025, Ping An aims to achieve the overall targets with investment and credit of RMB400 billion and total green insurance premiums of RMB250 billion. It will actively promote green investment and climate change risk management, provide insurance premiums and offer green channels or preferential interest rate policies on loans to green projects and green companies.
Implementation of concrete action paths in four key aspects
To achieve the green finance performance targets, Ping An has set clear action paths in four key areas:
Green loans: Gradually reducing loan financing support for industries and enterprises with high pollution and high energy consumption and overcapacity, strengthening loan audits and reducing the loan size for emission-control enterprises; increasing financing support for green enterprises and green projects by opening fast-track channels, accelerating the loan disbursement process, or providing special financial offers in the form of loan interest rate subsidies in accordance with the Green Credit Guidelines.
Green insurance: Further enriching insurance products and services, such as new energy vehicle insurance, green building insurance and green credit enhancement insurance, and index insurance for climate and green bulk commodities; introducing corresponding preferential policies to insurance customers of green enterprises or green projects, such as renewable energy projects, energy conservation transformation projects, green building projects, circular economy projects, forestry and other green projects, and engineering insurance.
Green investment: Increasing investment in green assets, including, but not limited to, listed company stocks, bonds, public funds, private equity, debt plans, special asset management and trust plans, and encouraging development and innovation in green financial products.
Matching asset-liability management with reference to the risks in climate change: Assessing the impact of climate change risks on the asset side while considering the impact of insurance products affected by climate risks on the liability side, and ensuring that assets and liabilities match each other in terms of maturity, revenue, and cost, to improve macro planning for future asset allocation.
Ping An will support these activities with its organizational structure, management mechanisms and standards. A Green Finance Committee steered by Ma Mingzhe, Chairman of Ping An, will coordinate the strategy, plans and systems for the Group and its member companies. The committee will oversee a Green Finance Office, and member companies will also set up their own green finance offices. Ping An will establish evaluation standards for green projects and green enterprises in accordance with the guidelines and policies set by the Chinese government and regulatory bodies. With technical support from Ping An's AI-ESG platform, its artificial intelligence-driven Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance platform, Ping An will set identification standards and investment bases for green companies for investors' reference.
Ping An launched its 'low-carbon 100 initiatives', a green commitments campaign in March 2010 to implement low carbon measures across the Group's daily operations, business development and social welfare activities. This latest comprehensive upgrade of the green finance activities addresses priorities in China's 14th Five-Year Plan, including the objectives of "reaching the CO2 emissions peak and achieving carbon neutrality" proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the 75th Session of UN General Assembly in September 2020. Ping An will continue to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities, empower financial services with technologies, support the real economy with financial services, and fully support China's development of a green finance system and a green economy.
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 218 million retail customers and 598 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. 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 BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list.
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