Inovation at Ping An

Ping An is nominated in the Global Innovator category at the Qorus Innovation in Insurance Awards 2024. We asked the bank to present its strategy and actions in terms of innovation.

Why do you consider your company a Global Innovator?

Our innovations have profound impacts on insurance industry, ranging from extended customer care to elevated operational excellency. As a world-class company, we explore and utilize ecological resources, and ride the cutting-edge technology trends such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI).

Technology advancements have transformed insurance industry operation models. Our projects play a crucial role in revenue growth, cost reduction, and customer satisfaction. These innovative exemplars set new industry standards by disrupting customer interactions, empowering agency operations, and redefining workforce tasks and training. Through GenAI new paradigms, we are positioned as a leader ready to reshape the global insurance landscape.

These innovations not only deliver substantial social and commercial value but also prudentially adhere to security, privacy, and regulations. Our impacts have extended beyond the Chinese market and started to benefit the global markets such as South Asia and South Africa through Ping An subsidiaries.

How is a culture of innovation achieved across your company?

Our decision-makers share a consensus: innovation is the key to continuously improve customer well-being, business growth, and operation efficiency. This vision is instilled by setting everyone the same goal and linking everyone's efforts to the broader impacts on both the corporation and society.

Our innovation culture can be summarized in three aspects: effective utilization of information, efficient allocation of resources, and alignment of incentives.

The data-driven culture supports comprehensive analysis, actionable goal-setting, and effective process management. This is achieved through the data and strategic insights support from business functions.

The culture of resource leveraging optimizes asset deployments and maximizes collaborative potential. We achieve this by establishing collaborative frameworks that facilitate sharing and synergy. Additionally, we encourage cooperation with alliances, which extend our capabilities and resources.

Additionally, we cultivate an innovative culture through a fair reward system that embraces learning from failures and minimizes conflicts of interest.

What are the major goals and results obtained from your ongoing innovation strategy?

Our long-term innovation commitment is to enhance corporate competitive advantage, which is divided into the following aspects:

Goal 1: Increase Customer Satisfaction and Revenue Growth:
Results: One PingAn increases customer engagements by 40% and maintains a 5-star satisfaction rating. It contributes to a gain of $36 million USD. ANN helpd 330,000 agents to boost sales, contributing to a gain of $20.8 billion USD.

Goal 2: Improve Cost Reduction and Operation Efficiency:
Results: CraftMaster and One PingAn together slash marketing and operation costs by $51.4 million USD. ANN cuts training costs by 40%, while Avatar Coach reduces additional expenses by 25%. Together, they improve agency operation significantly.

Goal 3: Excel Social Responsibility:
Results: One PingAn cuts carbon emissions by 71,905 tons. We achieve 100% compliance with stringent standards for content deployment and data protection, leading to reductions in misleading sales practices. It underscores our commitment to environmental sustainability and public trust.

How does your company manage the overall innovation process?

We manage the innovation through a well-designed organization structure, streamlined processes, and broad collaborations.

We establish an agile team structure. The team is from different departments, including Recruitment, Training, Marketing, Management, Administration, Operations, App Platforms, IT, and AI. Under this structure, the team works together on initiation, fast failing, implementation, product market fit, and scaling. 

Our approach begin with an analysis of market feedback and technology trends. The team identifies critical pain points for customers and employees, pinpointing real needs and feasible solutions. Subsequently, they converts these insights into functional prototypes, and engages with industry influencers to amplify product visibility and undergo rigorous testing.

In the final phase, the team works with external service vendors and internal operational units, leverages a broad spectrum of expertise and resources for effective iteration and market introduction. This holistic approach refines our products, and ensures their competitive advantages in the global market.