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.