[Interpreted] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today for the 2024 Annual Results Announcement Conference. I'm Richard Sheng, the Secretary of the group. Today, I'm co-hosting today's event. Mr. [ Ling Jung Wei ], the Head of International Public Relations of the group, who's present at the Hong Kong venue. We're simultaneously running this event through on-site and webcast.
First, Mr. [ Ling ] will kick off by introducing the management team from Hong Kong.
[Interpreted] Thank you, Richard. The management team members in Hong Kong venue are Dr. Ma Ming, Chairman of the group; Mr. Michael Guo, the co-CEO of the group.
Next, Richard will continue introducing management team in Shanghai venue.
[Interpreted] Thank you. In Shanghai, we have Mr. Xie Yonglin, President and Group CEO; Ms. Fu Xin, Vice Senior President and incoming CFO.
Today's meeting will begin with the full year business performance overview by Ms. Fu Xin. After that, we'll open the floor to questions. Now please welcome Fu Xin.
[Interpreted] Thank you, Richard. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for the 2024 Annual Results Announcement Conference. Thank you for your long-standing trust and support to Ping An Group. On behalf of the management, I'll walk you through our 2024 business performance.
Next slide. You're our old friends, so I believe you must believe -- must remember our house picture. And for that house picture, we actually upgraded the picture into a triangle. It has been upgraded in terms of the format and the content. So what's the reason behind that change? This is because we want to help people to better understand the core of our strategy and understand our commitment to become a world-leading integrated finance and health and senior care service provider.
What can we bring to our retail customers? The expertise make the life easier. So through 3 professionals. They are professional financial adviser, professional family doctor and professional senior care concierge. To provide -- they could provide worry-free, time-saving and money-saving services. We are customer-centric and we provide 1 customer, multiple accounts, multiple products and once-job services. For senior care services, we aim to provide the most effective services for them, act on the payer, we integrate the suppliers and provide the 4-delivery network. The 4-delivery network means that services will be delivered online, indoor, in family and in corporate.
Also, another highlight is our technology. Technology empowers our financial core businesses. Thanks to our advanced deployment in the data and technology, we've already built this industry-leading 9 databases and 5 libraries. And now we are entering the AI era. Thanks to our first-mover advantage, we managed to improve our service quality, save our costs and improve our efficiency as well as prevent the risks. Such clear strategy and the execution of the strategy will help us navigate through economic cycles and deliver good results.
And next slide, you see our core indicator performance. Against such a challenging environment, which provides opportunities and challenges at the same time, we actually made steady performance and improvement. First, we can look at the numbers in the revenue. The revenue actually achieved CNY 1,028.9 billion, up by 12.6%; and our net profit actually up by 9.1% -- and our OPAT, up by 9.1%; and our net profit, up by 47.8%. Considering the size of Ping An, such result is no easy job.
And then look at the asset side and liability side of the insurance business. At the liability side, let's take a look at the NBV. On the like-for-like business -- on the like-for-like basis, NBV actually up by 28.8%. And on the investment side, we also delivered good results. The CII, the comprehensive investment income, of insurance bonds actually achieved 5.8%, up by 2.2 pps. Such a stable and improving performance actually laid a solid foundation for us to pay back our shareholders.
In 2024, we suggested to distribute the dividend of RMB 2.55 per share, up by 5% year-over-year. Actually, our dividend distribution has been increasing for 13 years in the row.
Next slide, I have 3 keywords to summarize our highlights. They are stable operation, deepening strategy and improving or increasing dividends. In terms of stable operations, our revenue and profit has maintained upbeat trend. Our revenue up by 12.6% and our net profit actually up by 47.8%, showing improving trajectory.
The second keyword is the strategy deepening. When we look at the integrated finance or when we look at the health and senior care services, both areas have shown like improving effects, thanks to the transformation. So for integrated finance, first is we summarize these keywords into 3 highs. First is the high scale. So we have 242 million of retail customers, which account for majority of the middle-class families in China. The second high is the high retention. So the customers who have spent more than 5 years with us account for 72.2% of the total customer base, and their retention is as high as 94.7%. And the third high is the high penetration. The customers with more than 4 contracts account for over 1/4 of the total customer base, and their retention rate is even higher, reaching 98%. So high scale, high retention and high penetration have actually paid a solid foundation for a virtuous cycle of our business growth.
And for the health care, our food delivery network as well as our layout in the senior care network have been deepening. We have already formed a doctor team, over 50,000 people, and our partnered hospitals achieved 36,000. We have covered 100% of the top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals. And this 4-delivery network is going to be our competitive moat in the future.
Next slide about our core business highlight. For the Life & Health business, here, I would like to use one keyword, which is the reform and innovation. You are aware of our life reform in the past 4 years, which is like a deepening reform. And I will show you some numbers. First is the L&H NBV actually increasing by 28.8% year-over-year on the like-for-like basis, and this number has been increasing for 8 quarters in a row, and a double-digit increase for 8 quarters.
The second highlight is our -- the agent channel's NBV, which rose by 26.5% and agent -- per agent NBV rose by 43.3%. And this number has also been increasing for 12 quarters. And for our non-agent channels, our banca channel's NBV rose by 62.7% with increasing productivity. So for our life reform, there is a highlight which is related to our multi-channel strategy. For the non-agent channel, including our banca, including our community finance channel, their NBV contribution has already increased to 18.7%, up by 2.2% year-over-year. This is a great result of a 4-year deepened life reform.
And for the second highlight, if you look at our P&C insurance, actually, our revenue rose by 4.7%, and its net profit rose to RMB 15 billion, up by 67.7% year-over-year. I'll explain why its net profit surged so much. First is the CGI business that we've already sold to them. And the second is the underwriting profit, which keep very stable. And the third is the investment in the P&C insurance sector, which has been doing a great job in 2024. So 3 factors combined have delivered a really good result, unwinding from P&C.
And also for this slide, I would also like to share with you the highlights about insurance funds investment portfolio. Our CII last year actually achieved 5.8% as the group in all up by 2.2 pps year-over-year. And for Life & Health business, CII actually reached 6%, which is a very difficult result to achieve.
And next slide, let's take a look at the OPAT of the group. As I just mentioned, our OPAT of the group rose by 9.1% and the core 3 businesses actually maintained very stable performance. OPAT of the core 3 businesses rose by 2.3%. Another highlight is from the asset management sector, which reduced the loss by 42.6%. And we believe the profit trajectory is improving.
Next slide, about the OPAT of Life & Health insurance. On the left-handed side, you could see that through this waterfall picture our -- compared to our year beginning, the CSM balance, there was a reduction, but this is mainly due to our assumption change on the investment return for the long run. We changed down from 4.5% to 4%. So excluding that impact, actually, the OPAT would be similar to the last year. And also the OPAT is primarily driven by the CSM. So as you can see on the right-hand side, the CSM release has been reducing. However, such decline has been narrowing throughout the last 3 years. With the NBV continue to increase and the CSM continued to increase, thanks to improving expense ratio, claim ratio and persistency ratio, our operating variance will continue to turn positive, and we believe that will contribute positively to the OPAT of Life business and CSM as a whole.
Next slide, as the investment return. I would suggest you to look from 2 perspectives. One is the current period and one is the long term. On the current period, our CII actually rose by 2.2 pps year-over-year. Against such a complicated environment and lowering interest rate trajectory, this result is very difficult to achieve. And on the long term, you can see our past 10 years average investment return, our CII reached 5.1% and our NII average actually achieved 5%, both exceeding our investment return assumption. So be it at the current period or the long-term period, our investments for the insurance fund has been sound and stable.
Next slide about our asset portfolio from the investments. First of all, you can see that the insurance funds has already grew by 21.4%, which is also because the customer have ever-increasing demand of the insurance policies, and our capacity for investment continue to grow.
Secondly, let's also take a look at the exposures in the property market. Many of the friends from the media care about the exposure in the property market. So starting from 2023, this number used to be 4.5%; last year, 4.1%; where, for this year, the number has been further narrowed to 3.5%.
It is also worth mentioning that we do have the rental business, which can generate very stable cash flow, which will help to sustain the insurance investment business. It's a very important cornerstone. So in other words, the exposure has been further narrowed, and the underlying asset's been very healthy with substantial and robust cash flow generation in long run.
Next slide, please allow me to share with you the solvency ratio. So with C-ROSS II, you can say that no matter for our group with the life insurance or the property and casualty insurance, the solvency remained well above the regulatory requirements. And we also -- in the near future, the solvency was going to remain quite robust and stable.
Let's also take a look at the sustainable growth. So Ping An Group, as a company dedicated for sustainable development and social responsibility, we create value to our shareholders, customers and more importantly to the society at large. On the right side, there are some onus. In 2024 on MSCI ESG rating, Ping An registered a AA performance, maintaining its position as the #1 in Asia Pacific region in the insurance industry for 3 consecutive years, which is actually a great award being given to Ping An for our performance.
On Slide 15, we summarize you the honors and awards. We retain our robust position, being the #1 global insurance company in the Fortune Global 500 ranking, and we're also ranking as the top 1 for the most valuable insurance brands worldwide. This is indeed showcasing our brand strength.
Last, but least, I'd like to show you the dividend distribution. This is also a concern for many investors as well as media friends. The Slide 16, on the right side, it shows you the track record of the dividend. For a long time, we have highly valued the shareholder returns. We continue our dividend policy with very strong market competitiveness. The proposed dividend for 2024 is RMB 2.55 in cash per share, a Y-o-Y growth of 5%, and the absolute value growth was RMB 0.12 per share. The reason is because we are very confident for the substantial growth for our business in the near future. So in other words, the total cash dividend has increased for 13 consecutive years. It is not easy to be achieved. Whilst being IPO-ed, our total dividend has already approached CNY 400 billion, which also showcases our return to the shareholders with greater confidence.
For the past 6 months, with more policies being rolled out by the central government, including some benefiting and provincial policies, to the housing market, the stock market and to the national economy, as a responsible group, we're going to leverage the policy advantage to create value to our customers and the shareholders. With all the policies, we're still very confident for the future economic development in China for our business and our key operational metrics. With such a solid performance, we are still very confident for our future dividend policy. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Let's now welcome the questions from the media. So as usual, we're going to welcome questions from Shanghai and Hong Kong. [Operator Instructions] Let's start from the Shanghai venue, please.
[Interpreted] Let's welcome Mr. [ Guo ] from CCTV first.
[Interpreted] I come from CCTV finance channel. So my first question is that, last year, the net profit of the company reached CNY 126.6 billion, grew by 47.8%. How are you going to comment on your performance? Is it in line with your expectation?
My second question, there are many policies from the central government to introduce the long-term funds to be in the market. For sure, the insurance funds are going to play a role there. So what would be your investment in the Asia market? Any further strategy, what would be your investment strategy?
[Interpreted] Thank you. Let me help to respond to the first question. Generally speaking, for our management team, we are satisfied with our 2024 performance. The performance is in line with our expectation. I have 3 sentences to comment my observation of the 2024 performance.
My first sentence, the performance is in line or even slightly exceed the management's expectation. We have a stable operation with nice progress in a very challenging year of 2024. Madam Fu has already mentioned, we have a huge business size. But still, our operating profit grew by 9.1%. Net profit grew by close to 50%. It is also worth commendable that for 3 consecutive years, our total cash dividend continue to grow.
My second sentence, we continue to strengthen our strategy and we continue to deepen our integrated finance plus health care and elderly service. For example, in integrated finance, the retention rate of the customer with more than 4 contracts reached 98%. The number of the individual customers reached 242 million, grew by 4% on a Y-o-Y basis. With such a huge customer base, such growth is indeed not easy to be attained. For life insurance, our NBV growth was 28.8%. Property insurance net profit grew by 68%, and the CII has already reached a very high number. The total investment from the insurance funds grew by 2.2% compared with previous year.
Our health and elderly care strategy continued to advance to empower our key business. Let me just share with you a set of statistics. For example, our customers enjoy the health and elderly care, has already covered around 70% of the NBV of the new customer. If you take a look at our annual report, we have our health platform and self-operated medical institution continue to have a good momentum for growth. Ping An Good Doctor already have a positive gain. The same as the Peking University International Hospital, they also turned loss into profit. Their revenue grew by 15.6%.
The same as home care for the elderlies. The high-end home care service, being available in 75 cities, with more than 180,000 customers enjoy the service. And we also have more high-end elderly care projects, which will be put into operation one after another. After those services being available, the high-end elderly care service community will bring fresh experience to our customers, which will also continue to empower our key business. So that's the reason I see in 2024, our strategy continued to be deepened.
My third comment, we continue with reform and innovation. Let me also share with you what we do on tech-driven innovation. First of all, we leverage artificial intelligence and big data to continue to boost our efficiency while diluting the cost. A few statistics for your reference so that our friends from media may know the true picture, for the full year, our AI customer service reached 1.84 billion people times, covering around 80% of the customers of Ping An Group. So in other words, 1.84 billion calls or service inquiries being handled by artificial intelligence. For the intelligent claims' inceptions and loss reduction, the anti-fraud has already reached 11.9 billion. It's all being intercepted by artificial intelligence.
We also leverage AI to empower our business scenario to optimize the customer experience I have a few data to share with you. For example, we leverage intelligent underwriting and claims. Around 93% of the claims would be underwritten insurance. The proportion of the fresh claims of the life insurance already be 56% in total. Those are all being greatly empowered and supported by data and the AI in our whole business service process. For example, in property insurance, the auto insurance, the fresh claim, the efficiencies improved by 4,000x. So in other words, AI indeed boost the business efficiency.
The AI-assisted diagnostics and treatment makes accuracy more than 99%. And the accuracy of the auxiliary diagnosis and treatment is more than 95%. So that's the reason I said our management team feel happy with overall performance, including reform and innovation and the deepening reform strategy.
Looking into 2025, we're going to carry on with our policy, focusing on the key business, further increase revenue and reduce cost while, at the same time, continue with reform and innovation, at the same time for risk prevention. So I do believe, starting from 2025 to 2027, we're going to have a promising future. Thank you.
[Interpreted] Thank you. Thanks for Mr. [ Guo ] for raising the question. Let me just respond to your second question. That is regarding the insurance funds to the market. There are a few points. First of all, we're going to respond to the national policy. Starting from H2 of 2024, many ministries and departments of China continue to introduce the mid- and long-term funds to get into the market. They also have a series of the encouraging and supportive policies for that, optimizing the structure of the capital market, improving the vitality of the market. We have already responded to such call. A few days ago, we also applied to the State Administration of the Financial Supervision (sic) [ State Administration of Financial Regulation ] and be approved to participate in the long-term stock investment pilot program. We are responding to the national call for this.
My second point, we are still very positive on the capital market growth in China in long term. Ping An is a very important institutional investor and confident and famous for its patient funds. We are still positive on Chinese economy for high-quality growth. We are very patient regarding our investment and operation. You can see some of our practice. No matter for the high dividend, bank stocks or the new energies, high-quality manufacturing power, or humanoid robots or artificial intelligence, we also keep an eye on those high value-added industry. As a patient fund, we continue to invest in diversified verticals, where I truly believe the high-quality growth of the economy will also help intend to boost the economic growth.
China continue with the reform in the capital market. In other words, listed companies pay much attention to the shareholder returns. There was a number in 2024. The total cash dividend made by the listed companies making a historical high in 2024. Such continued enabled environment will provide a good blessing for the long-term insurance funds to be in the capital market. We are still very positive on the capital market as a whole.
Thirdly, we are committed to the value investments that navigate through the cycles. So we pay attention to the security, liquidity and the balance with the investment return. Back in the shareholders' meeting, Mr. Ma has always mentioned about 5 matches in terms of the insurance fund investment, and we need to keep a stable style. And these 5 matches are the investment return match, time match, duration match and product match as well as regulatory policy match. So we will adhere to such a stable value investment philosophy.
[Interpreted] Next question goes to the Hong Kong media representative, please.
[Interpreted] I'm [ Yang Fung ]. So I would like to ask a question about the participating insurance. It declined a little bit, but due to the NBV margin's increase, so the overall NBV actually increased. So is this trend going to continue? And also the premium declined. Was it because of the participating insurance higher percentage in the overall product mix? And what is the percentage between the participating and protection insurance and the product mix?
Also, I want to ask for a question about the stock purchasing. As the regulator mentions that insurance funds have a higher potential to allocate the investment into the equity market, so how higher the floor is going -- how higher the ceiling do you think it's going to reach? And is there any other options outside of the banking stocks? Is there any other sectors you favor in each year markets?
[Interpreted] I'll take this question. First about the participating insurance structure and percentage. In terms of with lowering pricing rates, there will be separate trajectory of participating insurance. First, its percentage is going to increase in our product mix. As you just mentioned or asked about exact percentage, but because we haven't got the numbers from the first quarter, so I can't share the specific numbers with you. However, since last press conference, I've already mentioned that we believe or we estimate participating insurance is going to increase its percentage in the product mix across the industry. And I think the current movement has already reflected our previous projection.
And the second with the lowering pricing rate, the margin of the participating insurance is going to increase. It's a mathematic problem. But more importantly, whether the participating insurance can generate enough return for the customers and for the company, this will depends on our capability to generate investment return. Right now, our investment return results as well as our investment portfolio, if we look at these 2 factors, you could see why we're confident that this year and in the future, we'll be able to generate return for our participating insurance customers a higher than the market average return and increase our participating insurance competitiveness.
The second question about equity investments percentage, I'll share with you, like there are 3 factors we would consider about equity asset allocation. First, our investment needs to be long term and it's to go through the economic cycles. We look at 10 years or 20 years time span. So for us, most important is the percentage of different classification of assets and the future long-term development direction.
So first, we are very confident in the long-term healthy development of Chinese economy. So in the capital markets, what are the stocks that represent the long-term stable development? And for these companies, we are actually very confident. So that would be our direction.
And the second direction is that we're going to use different instruments to allocate. There are stock investment directly, ETF, fund of fund and manager of manager. So in different instruments in our portfolio, we'll use different instruments to leverage the investment opportunities in the capital markets in the mid-term and the long run.
And thirdly, for the current equity asset as a percentage of our overall investment portfolio, I think current percentage and skill are reasonable. And we believe going forward with Chinese economy going to an upbeat trajectory, with the capital markets going on the upbeat trajectory, we believe that our investment is going to generate stable return and generates benefits for our customers.
[Interpreted] Next question goes to the media representative in Shanghai.
[Interpreted] I'm from Xinhua Finance. I have two questions. One is about technology. So last year, we noticed that there are some movements in the technology subsidiaries on European group. Does that change come from the adjustments in the strategic positioning of technology sector?
And also for the DeepSeek for the AI sector, the DeepSeek has become very popular. Could you explain how your deployment in the AI and also your strategy in this area?
And third, also with the -- finally, there is a turnaround of Ping An Health. So could you please introduce your future plan and -- of the medical and senior care services business?
[Interpreted] Thank you. I'll answer the first question regarding to the technology. The positioning of technology in Ping An Group has been very clear. As Fu Xin just mentioned in our overall strategy, our strategy is the integrated finance, plus the health and senior care services.
And the technology is an underpinning factor of those, which, because it can enable -- so it can enable the core financial businesses. So our future direction is to look at how the technology can enable our core businesses, stable development, and that's our positioning.
And in terms of the AI, I have 3 factors to share with you. First is how AI can create value. We think the value can be contributed in 2 aspects. First is efficiency. Second is the intelligence. Efficiency means it can enable our operation, our business and our services to increase efficiency in the long run and improve or optimize our cost for the long run.
And intelligence means when we are doing the decision making, instead of making decisions on intuition, we'll be making decisions based on the data.
So if you look at the emergency -- efficiency and smart or intelligence, 2 aspects. We believe these 2 will bring significant change and positive impact to the finance industry and health and senior care industry. Why? Because first, it's -- they are massive. They are -- they take a long time, and it's very -- they are very expensive. So we are confident that technology will generate sustainable benefits for our core businesses.
And thirdly, from our technology deployment, we have very strong competitive moat. We call a 9 plus 5 plus 3 strategy. First, we have massive number of data. It comes from our 9 databases. It contains medical databases and financial databases as well as our operation database. It contains massive number of data. And among all the global companies, I think Ping An ranks -- leading ranks in terms of the number of the data. So this can be a foundation of our AI creation.
And what is the 5? 5 means our laboratories. We have very leading research and development capability. We have strong research capability in micro expression. We have the Silicon Valley laboratories, and they can help us to be the forefront of the AI development. In terms of the fintech and health care technology patents, we have 55,000 patents, ranking #1 globally.
Another part is about our application scenario. We have 4 -- we have 3 technology companies, Ping An Good Doctor and other 2. They can contribute significantly to our internal enabling and inducting publication of our AI.
So this 9 plus 5 plus 3 will help us to build a strong competitive moat in the AI. And with the singularity point approaching, we believe the technology investment can enable our business to sustainably grow.
[Interpreted] Next question from Hong Kong.
[Interpreted] I'm Annie. My question is about, for example, the Hong Kong government wants to build on the Greater Bay Area senior care services. So I'm interested whether Ping An Group is actually interested in developing senior care services in Hong Kong.
[Interpreted] I will take this question. There are 3 areas. First, the integration of the Greater Bay Area has been increasing. We've seen the flow of customers among different areas more and more frequent. So we've seen the demand of the customers -- from the customers to enjoy like health and senior care services in different area of Greater Bay Area.
And secondly, as a leading financial institution in the Greater Bay Area, our mission is to suffice our customers' needs in finance, in health and senior care. Domestically, in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan, we have deployed our premium senior care communities, and we have invested in local clinics and checkup clinics. We have some offline famous doctors who are capable of speaking Cantonese to help our Cantonese-speaking customers to enjoy our health and senior care services.
And thirdly, after seeing what's going on with the Greater Bay Area, we're exploring our opportunities to expand our health and senior care services to Hong Kong area and contribute to serve the customers at both sides to enjoy our best services better. So we are actively exploring all kinds of possibilities. Thank you.
[Interpreted] Next question from Shanghai [indiscernible].
[Interpreted] I'm from Shanghai Securities Newspaper. So we've seen a very decent performance in terms of the core indicators. So what's the management view on that? And with the lowering pricing rates, what's the impact on the industry?
My second question has been -- is related to Ping An's movement in increasing allocation in banking stocks. So aside from banking stocks, as I example of non-patient capital, any other assets you're going to invest? And what's your measurement aspect?
[Interpreted] So first, I will take the life insurance question. For the Life business, I have 3 keywords. First is the revealing life reform results. So it has been 4 years since we started the reform, and this 4 plus 3 reform has been revealing its effect significantly, and we have been improving our product, which is the insurance plus health and senior care services, which, in turn, has actually contributed positively to the results.
As you can see, the NBV actually realized double-digit growth. And our agent channel has been increasing. It has been improving as well as their productivity and agent income. And our bancassurance as well as the community finance channels are also developing rapidly. So the first keyword is the life reform taking effect significantly.
And second, about our future development, I think the trajectory is upbeat. Right now, we have this coordination between the liability side and the asset side in the capital markets, especially in the low interest rate environment. At the liability side, we have 4 plus 3 reform taking effect. And at the asset side, we have CNY 5.7 trillion insurance funds, and it's delivering 6% of return in the group.
For Life Insurance and Health, the return is 5.8%, which is much higher than our cost of the debt, which can actually continue to lay a solid foundation for the long-term sustainable and stable profitability of the whole group.
My third point, we do believe that Life Insurance has entered into the golden period of development, a key driver besides what I mentioned just now, for example, like reform and the assets. Another driver is because we do see the demographic dividends being released by the Chinese society. Life insurance is no longer an optionable product, and life insurance is indeed going to be a rich demand for the consumers in our society.
As China getting into aging population, life insurance will help to lay the foundation and help us to engage the health and the elderly self-service. We are very confident for the life insurance industry. Those are the 3 points for us to comment on the future of the life insurance.
Responding to a second question, you also mentioned about the investment. So you know that we are, as I have already mentioned, regarding the asset we invest, we are a long-term capital. We do value investment, and we are very patient. So we have 3 criteria in assessing the investment we go for.
First of all, let's talk about our allocation strategy. There are 5 metrics, as have already been shared with you. We not purely assess the market hotspot. We will make sure the investment we made need to match with our product, our cost and also the duration of our assets to help us to riding through and navigating the industrial cycles.
Secondly, our asset allocation is a doorbell type. We do have some high dividend and high-yield product, and we also have some growth short-term assets with short-term volatilities. When we do the asset allocation, we leverage multiple tools and making sure both assets will be able to complement to each other in our investment portfolio, not only in generating good alpha now but also stable alpha in the near future.
And my third point, we are still very confident for the future, mid- and long-term stable growth of the Chinese economy, and we are also very confident for the stable growth of the capital market. Especially if there's any investment for the future economic development, no matter for the bank stocks or our new productivities or our infrastructures, we all have a very strong interest of the investment. We're going to leverage very different investment tools to bring the long-term returns to our shareholders and customers. Thank you.
[Interpreted] Let's welcome the media friends from Hong Kong. Jim [indiscernible] from Economic Daily.
[Interpreted] I'm Jay from the Hong Kong Economic Times. I have a question to you. We say that for Ping An Group, you always keep growing your total cash dividend over the past 30 years. This is truly worth celebrating. But let me just ask you, for the most recent financial year, I noticed your full year dividend grew by 5%, but it seems that the profit attributable to the shareholder grew by 9%. So for the full year proposed dividend, are you still too conservative?
Especially if we take a look at the Hong Kong stock market, your stock price in Hong Kong has been downward by 4%. So how are you going to interpret the market response? Are there any chance of the overinterpretation of your performance?
Do you believe that the investors being over assume your product -- your performance, but they actually feel shocked about that lead to the stock performance to go down? Or at least from the Hong Kong stock market, do you believe your market has been underestimated?
[Interpreted] Let me help to respond to the question. Thank you very much. Thanks for keeping an eye on our performance and the dividends. Yes, indeed, I have to see our dividend is truly aligned with our performance as a whole.
I have already shared with you for the past 30 years, the total cash dividend, the absolute value kept rising. Our total dividend since IPO has accumulated to be CNY 400 billion. So no matter as a value stock with a high dividend stock, our performance is truly competitive in the market to all the investors.
Secondly, we're still very confident over our dividend because we are confident over our stable performance. I have already shared with you our performance of the life insurance, property insurance. No matter for NBV, primary or investment, they all registered very steady growth and which were also boost on the ever booming momentum for future improvement.
So I do believe we are going to maintain a very stable dividend policy should -- making sure the dividends is in line with the profit we made and providing better return to our shareholders.
Responding to the stock price, I think something I feel truly proud of is that Ping An Group is a big group. The total liability are expected to be CNY 30 trillion on our balance sheet. So our profit is already more than CNY 100 billion. So in other words, the stock market performance is go with the macroeconomic development.
People always call us as China proxy. It seems the performance is very much like the sentiment from the market. So if you purely take a look at the stock, if you ask me to hand pick the right stock by myself, our Board always make some private discussion. When we invest, we take a look at the industry, the prospect and the fundamentals. We believe the health care and elderly care would be the most promising future with a huge demand in China.
We also have very stable fundamentals. As long as you asked whether we will be underestimated, I believe, yes. To some extent, our market cap is being underestimated. It may have further room for further improvement. Thank you.
[Interpreted] Sorry. I would like to make one more comment regarding the stock price. A few points from me. First of all, we are very confident for our long-term stable growth. It's not only because of us. You see, for our investors and our analysts, they all up-regulated the stock price for Ping An Group as a whole.
We are confident about the market. There are many variables that may lead to the stock price fluctuation. Especially for the past few days, the stock price went up a lot, where, to date, we also have a few peers whose stock price continue to go down.
So let me just tell you, it's not a group-specific phenomenon. The short-term stock price fluctuation may be subject to multiple factors and variables in the market.
Thirdly, we're still very confident for our future and the sustainable long-term growth. And one day, our value would be reflected by our stock price because, first of all, we have a very clear strategy, integrate finance plus health care plus the elderly care. Secondly, we have a very robust management team who can translate our strategy into concrete goal actionable. You can see it from our performance and our improving performance.
Here now, certainly, we always have a saying, the good will always try. We always believe our core value would be visible by the market at last.
[Interpreted] I come from [ Compile News ]. I have two questions. My first question, the interest rate has been maintained at a very low, but what about your interest rate spread?
And the second question. There are so-called 5 initiatives for financial development. How are you going to interpret that?
[Interpreted] Let me just help to respond to the question. Thanks for Mr. Guo. No matter for the new or the old policy, we don't have any so-called the interest rate spread. We don't have that.
Two interpretations from me. You need to take a look at the stock and the incremental growth. Regarding the stock, you need to take a look at the stock assets. In the past, we have a very steady allocation. We have accumulated many long-term bonds with very high yields as long as the high-dividend stocks. Those are all being taken as the balanced stock of our business. They generate good returns.
From the liability perspective, we have a very balanced debt structure. You can see that, indeed, the rate of the return on the stock is always lower than 2.5, which is an optimization of the existing stock. We also have some protection assets. And for that, we have a balanced structure on the participating insurance and also the universal product.
Those products, indeed, are the one we have a mechanism of making sure the interest rate would be shared between the group and the customer. Only in that way, our debt cost will continue to go down and continue to be optimized.
Regarding the incremental business, let's take 2024 as an example. We continue to allocate more on the high-yield stocks. You can see the return on the life insurance has already reached 6.0%. And we also continue to trade on the trading bonds.
So this is a nice incremental growth being registered in 2024. I do believe, many of our media friends, you probably noticed on the liability side, the regulator has been trying to optimize the cost of the debt or even the predetermined interest rate has been continued to be reduced, the same as the segment rate for the universal policy. So we don't have any interest rate spread there.
[Interpreted] Let me help to respond to the second question. In October of 2023, at the Central Economic Work Committee, it has already mentioned about the 5 articles of the finance or the 5 major initiatives. We have already been proactively responding to the national core with concrete actions.
Let's take a look at our strategy. We have integrated finance plus health care, plus elderly care and the tech-driven service. Our strategy is always in line with the 5 initiatives mentioned by the central government. For execution, for our integrated finance, no matter for the bond, loans, investments where we have multiple verticals, we do have the advantage from the license.
But at the same time, as been mentioned by my colleague, we have a huge quantity of the data. And we also have a massive amount of the data that has already goes through the standardization and processing of the financial institutions. Such practice can help to enable us in executing the 5 major initiatives for financial industry.
Ping An Group also continue to innovate. It is also the source of our expertise and innovation. It can help us to generate some concrete result by executing the 5 major initiatives.
For the past more than 1 year, we do have some nice results presented by the 5 major initiatives. For example, we leverage the great strength from a financial and investment to serve the tech economy and the green economy.
In 2024, we invested around CNY 60 billion to support semiconductor industries and the new productivity industries. For example, in the data storage industry, our investment is already more than CNY 10 billion, ranking #1 in China. So we spared all the efforts to support the tech finance.
The same as of green finance. A few data from me for your reference. By the end of December, Ping An Insurance funds, the responsible investment is already reaching CNY 849.9 billion, and the green bond loans is around CNY 160 billion. In 2024, the primary income from the green insurance is CNY 58.6 billion because of our wonderful ESG performance.
We will be ranking #1 as comprehensive insurance of the Asia Pacific region, where, at the same time, we will be proactively advancing the health plus integrated finance, serving the pension finance as a whole.
Now our home care service has already covered 75 cities. The high-end elderly care services already have 6 projects in 5 cities. And we also have the insurance model for insurance part service. The number of insured people was 30 million with the fee reaching CNY 270 million where for the nonfinancial service, you know that with our license, the banking loans, we have provided more than RMB 650 billion for SMEs as a loans. Ping An P&C insurance has already provided CNY 220 trillion for risk protection of the SMEs.
Just now, my colleague has already mentioned about the technology and artificial intelligence. We leverage artificial intelligence and technology to continue to empower our key business.
Starting from business, to service, to operation, to management, we continue to empower ourselves with more in-depth technology to help us to reduce our cost, improve the efficiency and improve accuracy of the decision making and, more importantly, to improve the customer experience.
In 2024, the performance has indeed been blessed because of our technological empowerment and digital finance. During the 2 sessions in 2025, the state council has already had the concrete actionable guidelines for the 5 major articles and continue have a refined interpretation on how the financial industry to serve the real economy.
For example, high-level scientific and resilient development, green transformation and aging population of the society, we will respond to the call of the central government, taking our actions to honor our commitment for the 5 major articles in financial industry.
[Interpreted] In the interest of time, we'll leave the last question to the Hong Kong Value.
I'm from Asia Investors. So my question is related to the 5.8% of CII in insurance funds. This has exceeded the expectations. So what is the reason behind that? Could you please explain the allocation of such -- of different assets have actually contributed to that? How are you going to encounter the future challenges with the adjustment in your investment portfolio?
[Interpreted] I will take this question. As I've just mentioned, our insurance funds is a long-term investment target, and we look at investment targets over a 10-year and 20-year span. And there are several factors we will take a look when -- before we made the decision, and we have repeated mentioned them.
There are 5 matches, as we just mentioned before. So there are products match, regulatory policy match, et cetera. So when we look at the investment return, we look more than just 1 year's return. But also we look at how could this investment return to navigate through different economic cycles.
And secondly, if you look at our allocation portfolio, majority comes from our fixed income products. It's constructed from the -- and there are equity products and there are alternative product investment targets. So in different stage, all different kinds of products will contribute different kind of return to our insurance funds return in general.
So you mentioned why we could generate the 5.8% of CII. The reason are two. First, in our previous investment experience, we have allocated in a lot of high-return asset types. So we took the opportunity in the past to invest in those high-returning investment targets.
And second reason is because we are confident in the long-term development of Chinese economic development. So we actually allocated heavily in the banking stocks in China because they represent the future economic trajectory of China, and they also generate very high dividend in return.
And thirdly, on top of the previous 2 factors, we also allocated balancedly in overseas market, which generated a more balanced return in this challenging environment.
All these factors combined have enabled us to deliver good results in the investment return. And we believe that in the future next few years, we'll be able to generate the investor return that align with our expectation.
And if you look at the future development, our investment philosophy will still be committed to the 5 matches, as I mentioned. And also we will use different instruments. For example, the ETF, manager of manager, fund of funds and many other instruments. We will leverage these instruments together to enhance our investment return and cross different economic cycle and enable us to become the long-term patient funds that actually generates good return.
[Interpreted] Okay. Thank you for your support. If you have more questions, you can reach out to our PR colleagues of Ping An Group.
Also following the CSRC's regulatory guidelines for listed companies #10, market cap management, we have established our market cap management system, which has received Board approval. So going forward, we will intensify our market cap management initiatives and enhance our investment value and maximize the shareholder returns.
That concludes our today's conference. Thank you very much.
[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
