Exclusive | Ping An eyes opportunities as more Hongkongers retire to the Greater Bay Area

Ping An Insurance (Group), mainland China’s largest insurer by market capitalisation, is planning to offer more products and services to capture growing opportunities among the increasing number of Hongkongers moving to other cities in the Greater Bay Area, according to a senior executive.

“When people talk about Greater Bay Area cross-border opportunities, the first thing people always think about is mainland Chinese people going to Hong Kong to buy life insurance,” Michael Guo Xiaotao, co-CEO of Ping An Insurance, said in an interview.

“But in fact, the integration also means more Hong Kong people are going to live or retire in mainland China, and they need insurance, medical, elderly care and car-insurance products. This is a trend that provides big opportunities for Ping An.”

Around 88,000 Hong Kong residents aged 65 or above were living in Guangdong province for most of their time at the end of 2022, an increase of about 11 per cent compared with five years earlier, according to Hong Kong government statistics.

“Ping An Group is one of the largest financial institutions in the Greater Bay Area,” he said. “Some of our Hong Kong customers have asked whether we have healthcare facilities or senior care services in the Greater Bay Area.”

The firm has partnered with the mainland’s top 100 hospitals and has about 50,000 in-house doctors and contracted external doctors. Ping An also has home-based senior care services for its life-insurance policyholders and is building three high-end senior care centres in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Foshan.

“With the ageing population growing in both mainland China and Hong Kong, the silver hair economy has huge potential because the spending power of some of these silver hair people is amazing,” Guo said.

Around 1.68 million people aged 65 and above lived in Hong Kong last year, according to official statistics, accounting for 22.4 per cent of the city’s population of 7.5 million.

China had 254 million people aged 60 and above in 2019, according to the World Health Organization, which has also estimated that 402 million people – 28 per cent of the population – will fit into that age bracket by 2040.

Car insurance is another growing opportunity in the Greater Bay Area, Guo said. In February last year, Ping An was among about a dozen insurers to start offering one-stop policies for coverage in both Hong Kong and the mainland. Previously, drivers needed separate policies.

Guo said Ping An has a 20 per cent share of the market for this one-stop car-insurance scheme, and he expects sales to grow as cross-border traffic increases.

The company, which is based in Shenzhen and Shanghai, was founded by chairman Peter Ma Mingzhe in 1988 as a life-insurance company. It has since become a financial conglomerate with insurance, banking, fintech and healthcare businesses.

In Hong Kong, it operates property and casualty insurance, asset management, securities trading and a virtual bank. It is also exploring different options to expand into the life-insurance business in the city, Guo said.

The insurer reported its best half-yearly performance in four years on Thursday. Net profit rose by 6.8 per cent to 74.62 billion yuan (US$10.5 billion) in the six months to June 30.

Stronger sales in the life and general insurance businesses, and better banking profits, drove the growth, offsetting declining profit in the company’s asset­management and technology-related revenues.

“For next year, we expect all the things to continue to grow,” Guo said. “We are looking forward to expanding or deepening our strategy execution on the integrated finance, insurance and other healthcare services.”