Ping An Insurance to double dividend as profit soars 43 per cent
China’s second largest life insurer, which has transformed itself into an online financial powerhouse, reported 2017 profit well ahead of forecasts
Ping An Insurance (Group), China’s second largest life insurer in terms of premiums, has reported a better-than-expected net profit growth of 43 per cent and said it will double its dividend payment.
The insurer reported a net profit of 89.088 billion yuan (US$ 14.075 billion) last year, up from 62.4 billion yuan in 2016. That easily beats the estimates of analysts polled by Bloomberg who predicted a 22 per cent increase to 76.25 billion yuan.
Ping An will raise its dividend per share by 100 per cent year-on-year to 1.50 yuan.
Meanwhile, mainland online insurance broker ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance reported a net loss of 996.36 million yuan (US$152.71 million) in 2017, a loss per share of 0.77 yuan, against a gain of 9.37 million yuan in 2016. It is the first time the online insurer has reported full-year results since its popular IPO in Hong Kong in September when it offered US$1.5 billion in shares for sale.
At the time of its IPO, ZhongAn reported a net loss of 202.1 million yuan for the first three months of 2017 and said it expected to see a significant net loss for the whole year because of rising costs and commission payments.