HONG KONG, SHANGHAI, Oct.15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An" or "The Group", HKEx: 2318; SSE: 601318) has maintained its top position among Chinese insurers and ranked second among financial brands the 2020 BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands. Ping An ranked seventh overall, with its brand value appraised at USD33.810 billion, an industry-leading increase of 25% year on year. The list was jointly released by WPP, the world's largest communications service group, and Kantar Millward Brown. Ping An also won the World's No. 1 Financial Service Brand Award.
Lufax Holding, an associate of Ping An, made the list for the second consecutive year, rising seven places to 19th overall and first in the consumer finance industry. Its brand value is USD12.434 billion, an 80% increase year-on-year.
In 2020, the overall brand value of the BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands increased USD996.4 billion, a year on year increase of 12%, or USD106.8 billion, showing strong resilience and brand value creation.
Doreen Wang, CEO, Kantar China and Global Head of BrandZTM, said: "For brands, responding to changing consumer preferences has become more important than ever. China's brand landscape has undergone tremendous changes in the past decade. To some extent, Chinese brands have become world brand leaders by virtue of their high-quality products and world-class convenience. These changes are driven by Chinese consumers and their pride in China's rapid development. Since the beginning of this year, we observed that COVID-19 has dramatically affected consumers' values, attitudes and behaviors, which in turn will affect their demand, expectations, choices and purchases of various brands. To understand the diverse consumers in China today, we are focused on generating deep people-centric insights. Brands must act on these insights and make bold changes when necessary."
2020 is a year of unprecedented change. Although the external environment is complex and challenging, Ping An has maintained its "finance + technology" and "finance + ecosystem" strategies through transformation to online operations and strengthening risk management and control measures to ensure stability in its operations. In the first half of 2020, operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company in the first half of 2020 increased by 1.2% year-on-year to RMB74,310 million. The annualized operating return on equity (ROE) was 21.6%. Net profit declined by 28.2% year-on-year to RMB75,968 million and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company declined by 29.7% year-on-year to RMB68,683 million. Ping An also places great importance on shareholder returns: despite the difficult operating environment, Ping An will pay an interim dividend of RMB0.80 per share in cash, up 6.7% year-on-year.
Lufax Holding, a leading technology-empowered personal financial services platform in China, achieved steady business growth. As of 30 June 2020, Lufax Holding achieved a 12.4% year-to-date increase in the balance of loans under management. The online wealth management business recorded steady growth with client assets rising 8.0% in the year to date.
Ping An aims to empower financial services with technologies. It applies big data, blockchain, cloud and other world class technologies to its core financial business to reduce costs while increasing efficiency, enhance risk management and control, create high-quality products and enhance customer experience. Its innovations include a smart customer-visit assistant, which enables live agents to interact with customers through remote audio and video communication in the online AI Reception Room. The assistant was used 7.72 million times in the first half of 2020. Ping An Property & Casualty uses technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) robots to provide online automatic smart insurance policy and claims services. Ping An Property & Casualty also launched One-click Claims Services, which simplifies the auto claims process and enables non-contact claim settlement anytime, anywhere. Claim reporting now takes only two minutes on average, and claims can be settled in a minimum of just three minutes. Ping An Bank uses AI-enabled retail banking, issuing 4.2 million new credit cards in the first half of 2020, nearly 90% of which were automatically approved by AI.
Ping An also empowers ecosystems with technologies. Over the last few years, the Group has pursued ecosystem development, helping to build brand reputation, improve customer retention, acquire new customers and build relationships with potential customers. During the COVID-19 epidemic this year, Ping An's health care ecosystem has developed rapidly. Ping An Good Doctor medical online platform was accessed over 1.11 billion times, and revenue from online health care services grew 106.8% year-on-year. Ping An provided smart health care services in 90 cities across China, served over 17,000 medical institutions, and helped approximately 413,000 doctors improve their consultation and treatment efficiency and capacity. Smart health care service platform Ping An HealthKonnect provided services for over 800 million people in over 200 cities, with 544 diagnostics centers nationwide.
Thirdly, Ping An empowers financial services with ecosystems, Ping An uses synergies between ecosystems such as health care, auto services and smart cities services to provide comprehensive online and offline services to customers. As of 30 June 2020, Ping An had 210 million retail customers, including 18.09 million new customers in the first half of 2020, 35.4% of which were sourced from internet users within the Group's ecosystems. This strategy has also deepened customer relationships: contracts per customer rose by 1.9 from the beginning of 2020 to 2.69.
The Ping An Group is also a leader in driving sustainable economic and social development, with continued enhancement of its environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) policies and practices. The Group has an MSCI ESG rating of A, and it has built an AI-ESG smart management platform to empower responsible investment. As of the end of June 2020, the Group's responsible investments amounted to RMB1.18 trillion.
Ping An also continues to expand Ping An Rural Communities Support programs. As of the end of August 2020, Ping An had implemented programs in 21 provinces and autonomous regions across China, providing RMB26.596 billion for industrial development and poverty alleviation. It has built or upgraded 1,210 rural clinics and 1,054 rural schools and trained 11,175 village doctors and 14,037 village teachers. During COVID-19 epidemic, Ping An acted quickly to offer insurance protection, healthtech support, supplies and cash totaling more than RMB175 million.
Besides Ping An, the other Chinese companies in the top 10 Most Valuable Chinese Brands are Alibaba, Tencent, Moutai, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Huawei, China Mobile, JD.com, Meituan and China Construction Bank.
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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 health care services through our integrated financial services platform and ecosystems. 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 BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list. For more information, please visit www.pingan.cn.
