China’s Ping An Insurance H1 Profit Rises 3.9%

Ping An Insurance Group Co. of China, China’s largest insurer by market value, reported a 3.9% rise in first half net profit, the first increase over this period in three years, a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange showed on Tuesday.

The group posted a net profit of 60.3 billion yuan ($8.81 billion), from 58 billion yuan a year earlier, after two successive years of first half net profit dips as the insurer battled a 54 billion yuan exposure to indebted developer China Fortune.

The group’s gross written premiums fell 2.5% to 283.6 billion yuan from the year before, while the number of retail customers rose 3.2% from the end of last year to 122 million.

Despite the profit rise, Ping An remains cautious.

“Substantial uncertainties will remain regarding COVID-19 as well as the domestic and overseas environment in the second half of 2022,” the chairman of the insurer said in the results, adding that the group faces “severe challenges.”

Its banking unit Ping An Bank posted 25.6% growth in first-half net profit, with a non-performing loan ratio of 1.02%, holding steady from the end of 2021.

($1 = 6.8459 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Ziyi Tang and Engen Tham; editing by Kirsten Donovan)

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Profit Loss
China