Name: The Business Behind China’s Insurance Powerhouse, Ping An
Uploaded: 2025-09-12T18:01:07.000Z
Duration: 14 min 51 s
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Future continuous

I'm in the heart of Fujian Shenzhen where Ping An's towering buildings dominate the skyline, a clear sign of the powerhouse that it's become. That building just ahead, the tallest in the city, is where I'll be speaking with Group's co-CEO

Participle clauses

Michael Kuo, leading the Chinese insurance and financial services giant.

Past perfect

Ping An Group is one of China's biggest names in insurance. Founded in Shenzhen in 1988, it began as a property insurance company before quickly moving into life insurance, where founder Peter Ma saw a huge untapped opportunity in the Chinese market. By the early 2000s, Ping An had expanded well beyond insurance into banking and asset management. In 2004, it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in what was then the city's largest IPO. Three years later, it broke another record in Shanghai with the world's biggest insurance IPO. Today, Ping An has evolved into a tech-powered financial giant, running digital platforms in health and fintech, offering integrated services in healthcare and senior care.

It's a story of growth that mirrors the rapid rise in China's insurance industry, one that shows no signs of slowing down. When will China overtake the U.S. as the world's biggest insurance market? Right now, our insurance penetration is about 5-6 percent, while in the U.S. it doubles that. So if we think about the growth rate and the difference of the size of the market, it's probably got about 10 years, give or take, to actually get to the size. So we're talking about 2035? Yeah, roughly around that. What's the biggest challenge you face penetrating the insurance market here in China? Well, you know, people always think China is a big market, but China is not a homogeneous market. You got, you know, very well-developed cities in rural areas. Therefore, the people's income is very different. The levels are very different. The amount of money they're willing to spend on life insurance or insurance in general is very different. So that's one of the biggest challenges. It's really about changing people's mindset in how much money they would allocate on protection on the wealth creation. But despite these challenges, China's insurance market is booming. One study estimates it could grow by as much as 10 percent a year, hitting 1.4 trillion dollars by 2032.

Tapping into this growth are the country's biggest insurers, China Life,

Ping'an, CPIC and PICC. Another key driver is China's expanding middle class, where the focus on health, family and financial protection is boosting demand for insurance products. China's economy continues to remain under pressure. Do you see the risks of Chinese consumers cutting back on the insurance product purchases because of the ongoing trade tensions weighing on the general economy?

Well, I see the opposite. Because there's so much uncertainty about the future, people start becoming more conservative. So we start seeing people changing their asset allocation strategy, especially for the middle class family. They start allocating more on the insurance assets, on life insurance policies to be the kind of backbone of their family asset allocation. So that's why we're seeing actually, we believe for the next 10 years, actually life insurance start getting into the golden age. We will actually see continuous growth.

Markets continue to be volatile. Your job as an insurer is to continue delivering those returns. How challenging is it to manage and protect your investment portfolio?

It is very challenging. Now, with the pricing interest rate going down and down, we actually effectively reduce our cost of liability. Then we're facing the assets yield going down as well. But for us, we actually maintain the actually healthy spread margin between the two. So that's how we manage our profitability. If we look at this, we're actually actively allocating our assets between fixed income, which is usually roughly about 80% of the assets investment, then 20% more towards equities, towards property, some of that private equity. It's kind of non-standard asset costs to help us generate a good return.

Since late 2024, Ping'an has built a massive $23 billion stake in major state-owned Chinese banks, taking stakes of up to 18%.

Are you counting on bank dividends upsetting earnings pressure?

We're building this significant amount of portfolio on large-scale state-owned

Chinese banks. That's a very good rationale behind it. Now, the reason that I have to say it's large-scale state-owned Chinese banks is because we see these banks being long-term stable. From the credit risk perspective, we believe these are almost as good as the sovereign risk in a way. So we treat them as quasi-fixed income assets, in a way, that give us a good return of dividend yield over a significant period of time, five to 10 years. We're very comfortable holding this bank for such a long period of time.

Overall, do you expect your insurance and financial services products to continue to be the big growth driver for the group?

Well, yes or no, in a way. So we have good confidence our life insurance, our insurance core business will continue to grow. On the other hand, our strategy is actually more towards integrated finance, plus senior care and healthcare. So we see these kind of two drivers moving forward for the long term.

In Shenzhen, Ping'an is reshaping senior care, responding to a shift in demand. Around 90% of elderly clients now prefer to stay in their own homes. I'm with Ping'an Group's co-CEO, Michael Guo, visiting one such client, Madam Tee Ting Gai, to see how the company is delivering care beyond traditional insurance. Ping'an is leaning on technology to make care easier. Madam Tee can check in with a doctor anytime through the

And if there's an emergency, buttons are placed around the home, even by her bed. And this LiDAR sensor in the bathroom, borrowed straight from the technology used in self-driving cars.

This will detect her movements and send an alarm signal to our service centre. Then our person or the service team will just check out straight away.

You spent the last 10 years building up your health and senior care portfolio and your ecosystem. Are you happy with the progress Ping'an is making?

We're moving fast still, but we have competitors moving, if not faster.

These days, our competitors are not traditional financial institutions.

If we look at some of the technology companies, look at Alibaba, look at

JD, look at ByteDance, they actually started getting into the technology enabled healthcare medical services area.

So clearly there's a lot of competition out there. What aspects of your health and senior care model make it hard for your competitors to replicate?

They don't have the online good doctor platform, which provides 24 by 7 family doctor services to our insurance customers. And they don't have this partner network that we have built up for the past few years. Now these days, we're partnering with 40,000 hospitals across the nation, more than 200,000 pharmacies across the nation.

Beyond growing its network, Ping'an is tapping into China's affluent silver economy with senior care apartments like this, across six cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou. This one in

Shenzhen offers city centre living with on-site medical care, rehab, catering and recreational services. Access comes via a life insurance policy worth 18.88 million RMB.

So are you generally saying that health and senior care is not just a revenue centre, but a way to attract and to retain customers from your insurance business?

Yes, because our strategy is we want our customers to have more and more products and services within our Ping'an group. There's not much of innovation per se in the financial products. You get one kind of new idea, new product coming to the market. If it's good, three months later, it's going to be copycat everywhere. However, services can be differentiated and very hard to build. That's why we actually invest a significant amount of money, resources, building up health care services, senior care services, because that actually is very difficult to build over time.

Any plans to replicate your health and senior care model outside of China?

Right now, we don't have such a plan, simply because in China, we still see very strong growth opportunities for Ping'an. And that's where we actually focus on.

Ping'an started in Shenzhen as a small insurance player. Today, it's a financial and health services powerhouse, a transformation attributed to founder Peter Ma. Media-shy but visionary, Ma usually only appears in the group's quarterly earnings briefings. So what's it like working with a legendary figure like him?

I have to say it's very exciting. I've got three words to describe him.

Not complete, but my feeling. Number one is visionary. He's a very visionary leader. He always thinks about what we can do in five, ten years' time, and he always sees industry trends very accurately. Number two, energetic. He's very energetic at such an age.

Yeah, and we usually, we constantly have workshops, you know, three or four hours through the lunch. And then thirdly, I think he's very demanding.

Very demanding. Everything needs to be done yesterday. Whatever we do today, it's not fast enough, but it's very exciting. It's a good pleasure working with him. I learned a lot.

Do you remember the day he appointed you as co-CEO?

No, no, there's no no in front of him. Whatever it is, I would say, yes, but.

Well, he said, you know, Michael, for a person to succeed in Ping An, there are three key factors you've got to remember.

Number one, you have to have the ability, the potential to grow, to perform. And number two, you have to have the environment to perform, to explore your potential. And number three, very important, you need to have a good mentor to guide you through this process.

And right now, I believe you have potential.

Here's an opportunity for you to perform, and I'm going to be your mentor to help you grow and succeed.

What's the working dynamics between the three of you?

If you look at the overall group, we have this analogy of saying our group decision-making is more like a football team.

We have this, what we call two plus seven kind of decision-making process.

Two co-CEOs plus seven kind of functional leaders all together become a football team. And we work together as a team to make a decision.

How would you describe your leadership and your management style?

When I joined Ping An, I joined the PNC property and cashier insurance business. So back then, my management style started changing from coaching, more towards assertive and kind of more the command kind of a thing, because I want to make sure all 40,000 people towards one goal and all march together on the same pace and the same style.

Now, again, I need more businesses, but it's more about CEOs.

Now, my style becomes kind of more of an enabling kind of role.

Me and the CEO just to make sure everybody is able to deliver, and number two, and to grow and develop themselves for the next role.

So enablement is becoming a core part of my leadership style.

So it keeps changing. It's actually very interesting.

Ping An has evolved so much in the last 30 years.

As CEO, what is your ultimate ambition for the group?

Well, if you think about Ping An being grown from zero to where we are today, you know, a trillion RMB company, it's actually all thanks to very much to number one, the overall growth of the Chinese economy, and number two, to generations of the leaders through the Ping An, of course, our chairman, Peter Ma.

So I believe with the continued growth of Chinese economy, there's going to be a number of Chinese companies to become global leading companies.

And I believe Ping An will be one of them.