44 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018INSURANCE AS
ENTRÉE TO TECH
Jessica Tan has overseen Chinese giant Ping An’s parallel and
sweeping rise in big data.BY SHU-CHING JEAN CHENGLOBAL 2OOO
P
ing An Insurance is China’s biggest insurer, but it really reigns supreme as
the industry No. 1 by profi t and return on equity. Its market capitalization, at
$180 billion, is 74% larger than the country’s old standard, China Life, and
64% above the largest listed pan-Asia insurer, AIA. By this measure it is the
world’s largest insurer except for Berkshire Hathaway.
To make sense of these startling numbers—and of Ping An’s rise to No. 10 on the
Forbes Global 2000—look beyond the stodgy insurance business and into the realm of
high technology whose tentacles reach into every aspect of commerce in China and
eventually show up in the mobile handsets of Chinese consumers.
Ping An has early-mover advantage in mobile apps and underlying technologies
from artifi cial intelligence and blockchain. Spreading across Ping An’s vast territory in
fi nance, encompassing insurance, banking and asset management, are ten startups it has
spawned in the last six years.
The engine and incubator is a wholly owned fi ntech of shoot, Ping An Technology,
which leads the FinTech Top 100, a global survey by consultancy IDC, as China’s top
player, ahead of rival Hangzhou-based Hundsun Technologies backed by Ant Financial.
The ef ort bridges fi nancial big data with healthcare management.
From this wellspring came startups including peer-to-peer lender Lufax, set up in
2012, fetching a valuation of $18.5 billion in a fundraising two years ago; Ping An Good
Doctor, a healthcare portal with 30 million-plus monthly active users whose recent
IPO raised $1.1 billion in Hong Kong; and Ping An Healthcare Technology, a mobile
app for booking hospital visits used by 800 million customers across 70% of cities
in China.
To consumers, the of er is often free mobile apps. But there’s a business-to-business
app: OneConnect, linking 2,400 banks and nonfi nancial institutions and valued at
$7.4 billion in its last funding round.
Ping An’s technology czar is Jessica Tan, a 41-year-old Singaporean who travels back