Ping An, symbol of a changing world

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Of course, the opening of the country's economy has brought within the reach of insurers an enormous middle class eager for consumption and modernity, it was nonetheless necessary to be outfitted with the codes and the keys to capture this enormous wealth.

The genius of Peter Ma, founder of Ping An, lies with his move placing research and development at the core of his strategy from the very beginning. Consequently, the holding company, which devotes 10% of its annual profits to R&D expenses, is now employing 3 900 scientists, 30 000 developers and a total of 94 000 employees in its technology departments by 31 December 2022.

The group's all-out digitization has turned the traditional insurance model on its head, creating value, enabling fine segmentation of the customer base and introducing new distribution channels.

It is to this global and integrated vision that Ping An' owes it success, with the gigantic "Tech Company" capacity to massively sell more than 1 000 different insurance products to hundreds of thousands of customers through a high-quality distribution network. Another illustration of this technological gamble is that the six million annual job interviews are conducted by artificial intelligence, which also drives claims management with personalized compensation, voice prints, facial recognition and score-based compensation.

This spectacular development of Ping An comes obviously under the specific framework of economic liberalism advocated by the authorities. This strategy allows the Chinese private giant to compete with its foreign counterparts for world leadership, even if it means letting them take a stake in its capital.

Mission accomplished for Ping An, whose shareholders were the Americans Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and the British HSBC.

Atlas Magazine N°201, May 2023 [1]