The insurance incumbent turned technology giant

Author
Rahul Mathur

Rahul is the Startup lead at Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab in London. Prior to joining Accenture, he was an Insurance Product Manager at Laka Insurance, a London headquartered early stage InsurTech start-up which recently won at the British Insurance Awards 2019.  Rahul holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Warwick. He is an Ambassador at the Asia InsurTech podcast.

This episode is brought to you by:

Ping An Group   

About Ping An Group

Founded: 1988

Began as an insurance company in China; now, a China headquartered holding company with assets spanning across insurance, banking, healthcare and technology verticals.

200M customers across product lines.

Fun fact Recently committed $15bn over the next decade towards technology investment.

 

In this blog I will cover:

  • 5 ecosystem strategy
  • Highlights of Q3 financial results
  • Ping An goes global
  • What can we learn from Ping An Group?
  • In-house technology to SaaS; an emerging trend

 

5 ecosystem strategy

Ping An’s ecosystem approach can be split into five categories: [1]

  • Healthcare
  • Auto
  • Financial
  • Smart home
  • Home

In this blog, I will focus on the Healthcare,  Auto and Financial aspects of the 5 ecosystem strategy; this blog will provide a high level overview rather than a deep dive.

Healthcare

Ping An Good Doctor

  • Hong Kong listed
  • 62.7M MAU (Monthly active users) and 2.3M MPU (Monthly paying users) as at 30/06/2019 [2]
  • Good Doctor partnered with SE Asian super app GrabPartnership with Grab announced – August 2018 [3]
    • Launch of Grab Health in Indonesia – 23/10/2019 [4]

AI powered smart clinic – China [5]

  • Dubbed as “one minute” clinics
  • Aims to reduce check-up waiting times from 3 hours to 8 minutes.

 

Auto

Autohome

  • One stop shop for all motor related needs.
  • NYSE listed
  • Ping An holds 53.9% stake [6] [7]
  • 38.8M DAU as of 30/06/2019 [8]
  • $116M Net profit for Q2 ‘19

 

Ping An Auto Owner app

  • 20M MAU; 80M total downloads
  • 45M motor insurance customers have the app downloaded.
  • AI based damage self-assessment tool has 95% accuracy.

 

Financial

Lufax       

  • Wealth management and retail lending platform
  • $4.96bn in retail AUM
  • Ping AN Group holds 41% stake; private valuation of $39.4bn [9]

OneConnect

  • Ping An’s technology arm; beyond China, forays into SE Asia and EU
  • 618 banking clients; 84 insurance clients
  • Previous round valuation – $7.5bn; expected to IPO in Hong Kong [10]

 

Highlights of Q3 financial results

  • Acquired 29.72M new customers in ’19
  • 39% of whom came from users within the 5 ecosystems.
  • 10% increase in app user base to 594M
  • P&C business recorded 75.5% YoY increase in Operating Profit

Ping An goes global with OneConnect

Hong Kong forays

  • Launched eTradeConnect blockchain based supply chain platform for HKMA in October ‘18 [11]
  • Acquired virtual bank license from HKMA in March ‘19 [12]

 

EU expansion

  • Finleap Connect; OneConnect JV with FinTech venture builder Finleap – August ‘19 [13]
  • Select EU investments by Global Voyager Fund include Finleap, Joonko. [14]

 

 

PING AN GLOBAL VOYAGER FUND INVESTMENTS

$1 bn fund; 9 public investments; roughly $200M+ committed

 

What can we learn? And, who is learning?

 

#1: Upstream value capture

Ping An examples – Autohome investment and Good Doctor launch.

“Fast followers”:

Acko Insurance (India) acquired Vler Technologies – June ‘19 [15] (Closely resembles Ping An’s acquisition of Autohome.)

Policybazaar (India) launched DocPrime in ’18 [16]; SBVF portfolio synergy through Good Doctor investment

 

#2: Partnerships with tech companies

Ping An example – ZhongAn (JV with Tencent and Alibaba); HK IPO exit in Sept ‘17 [17]

“Fast follower”:

Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance (South Korea) partners with Kakao to launch a non-life digital insurance company – October ‘19 [18]

 

In-house tech to SaaS: Is this a new trend?

Ping An example: OneConnect (FinTech arm) once built technology for in-house use, but, has now licensed its technology throughout Asia.

Examples from the wider industry:

ZhongAn Technology (established 2016) by ZhongAn Online as a SaaS provider of FS related technologies[19];notable partnership with Grab for online insurance marketplace – Jan ’19 [20]

Trov (USA based InsurTech) “pivoted” (*) from D2C to B2B2C (SaaS model); notable partnership with LBG [21]

I think pivot is the wrong phrase here; it is an incredibly intelligent move to iterate on a proposition by being consumer facing (D2C) and then “transfer learnings at a premium” (KTP model) to corporates who cannot do the former.

 

Some questions for you to think about

  • Do you think other insurance companies can replicate Ping An’s strategy?
    • Think about what AXA is doing with AXA Next, AXA Venture Partners and Kamet in Europe
  • What do you think about insurance companies (and intermediaries) moving upstream by owning auto marketplaces and healthcare platforms?
    • Think about Acko owning VLer and Policybazaar launching DocPrime
  • What are the implications of Ping An looking Westward?
    • OneConnect has the potential to offer bank-as-a-service (similar to 11FS Foundry and Starling Bank) whilst partner Finleap has built a fully digital insurance company – Element Insurance (Germany) that is operational!

 

About the author

  • Rahul is the Cohort & Communications lead at Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab in London.
  • Prior to joining Accenture, he was an Insurance Product Manager at Laka Insurance, a London headquartered early stage InsurTech start-up which recently won at the British Insurance Awards 2019.
  • Rahul holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Warwick.
  • He is an Ambassador at the Asia InsurTech podcast; reach out via LinkedIn or Twitter.
Author
Rahul Mathur

Rahul is the Startup lead at Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab in London. Prior to joining Accenture, he was an Insurance Product Manager at Laka Insurance, a London headquartered early stage InsurTech start-up which recently won at the British Insurance Awards 2019.  Rahul holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Warwick. He is an Ambassador at the Asia InsurTech podcast.

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