Chinese insurer Ping An plans listing for P2P loan platform Lufax.com

Ping An Insurance (Group) is planning an initial public offering for its peer-to-peer lending platform Lufax.com in a move analysts said will raise the company's valuation.

Total transaction volume on the Lufax platform rose more than 10 times year on year to 512.2 billion yuan (HK$620.3 billion) in the first half of the year, according to its interim report on Thursday.

Ping An, the mainland's second-largest insurer, is "actively considering" a plan to boost the company's value, chief financial officer Jason Yao said yesterday.

Lufax Holdings will own 100 per cent of the equity of Puhui, another business unit focused on offline personal loans, through a connected transaction, Ping An said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange late on Thursday.

Lufax raised three billion yuan by selling stock to overseas investors in a private placement in March. Ping An owned 49.99 per cent of voting rights in Lufax at the end of 2014.

"Lufax will be running online and offline lending business in the future. We will incorporate different … units into this platform and build an O2O (online-to-offline) ecosystem," said Yao.

Analysts said the internet finance business of Ping An is not included in the valuation models.

"We still lack specific data to analyse the earning ability of this segment. It is hard to evaluate the revenue or profit brought in by Lufax or Puhui, even though we know the user number is swelling," said Dayton Wang, an insurance analyst with Guotai Junan International.

Lufax doubled its registered users to 10 million in the first half. If the internet finance business goes public it will lift Ping An's valuation, given that the business enjoys much higher valuation than traditional finance on the mainland, Wang added, citing Taobao as an example.

Ping An reported 62.2 per cent growth in net profit for the first six months on Thursday.