ZhongAn

ZhongAn is an online insurer with end-to-end insurance capabilities. Launched initially as a property insurer in 2013 by PingAn, Tencent and Alibaba, the company is now a giant within the market, with over 486 million clients served and 8 billion policies underwritten across multiple insurance lines.

ZhongAn’s business model revolves around the harnessing of big data and analytics, which ensures accurate risk pricing, as well as a strong focus on customer insights. In November 2017 the business partnered with Sinosafe Property Insurance and Urtrust Insurance, enabling the insurers to collaborate on big data, including information collected on more than 3M vehicles. Thanks to the huge amounts of user activity data, ZhongAn can employ machine learning to monitor customer journeys and track buyer behaviour. This has helped them identify pain points, allowing them to decrease bounce rates and improve conversion by 4% year-on-year.

ZhongAn later went on to found the wholly-owned subsidiary ‘ZhongAn Technology’, which focuses on researching and developing cutting-edge technologies. The ‘Open Innovation’ venture is free to collaborate with other technologies and business partners to develop the market together.

The following year, the company went public in Hong Kong as the first Fintech company to be listed on the city’s stock market, raising $1.5bn and valuing the group at around $10bn. In March 2018 the venture reported a 2017 net loss of around $157m, caused by unearned premium reserve payments and growing business costs.

In August 2018, ZhongAn launched their one-step claims service e-platform for insurers in collaboration with AXA Tianping. In the same month, they announced an undisclosed funding round from Soft Bank's Vision Fund to expand into further Asian markets before going global. Later that year, their online P&C arm revealed it would be helping traditional insurers across Asia with their digital transformation strategies, starting with Sompo Japan Nipponkoa.

ZhongAn announced that it was joining hands with Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA), Europe's biggest insurance technology conference, in June 2019, to foster the development of InsurTech across the globe.

In July 2020 ZhongAn announced it was partnering with Alipay to launch pet insurance that leveraged nose-print technology - verifying dogs and cats by their individual nose prints, much like humans can be ID-ed by fingerprints.

In March 2021 ZhongAn revealed their FY 2020 results. It announced it had broken even, with $85m in profit reached, and their health ecosystem had hit 23.9m users. Overall the company is the number 9 insurer in China following 7 years of operation, with GWP of $2.5bn. ZA Bank became the number one over the 8 other virtual banks, and ZA Insure has experienced month-to-month growth of 35%.

In 2021 ZhongAn posted their 2021 Interim results, reporting a GWP of RMB9,841m in the first half of 2021, representing a YoY increase of 45%. Revenue from the technology segment increased by 122% to RMB226m.