Ping An Insurance, China's second-largest insurer, has identified a bank of infrastructure projects it could invest in once it has regulatory clearance to do so, says chairman Peter Ma Mingzhe
The revelation came during a profit announcement yesteray that showed the firm had lifted net earnings for the year to December by 35.6 per cent to 4.26 billion yuan.
It also followed an announcement from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) last week of a long-awaited pilot scheme allowing life and non-life insurers to invest up to 5 per cent and 2 per cent of their assets in infrastructure projects, respectively.
Ping An last year built up a team of professionals with more than a decade's infrastructure investment experience, Mr Ma said. Its trust and investment arm also sold several billion yuan of trust products to non-insurance clients last year as preparation for the pilot scheme.
A stronger than expected 0.7 percentage point gain in total investment yield to 4.3 per cent was the key growth driver of Ping An's net profit. Total investment income surged 49.8 per cent, also helped by the expansion of its investment portfolio.
Gross written premiums, policy fees and premium deposits rose 9.1 per cent to 70.76 billion yuan.