PING AN ALMOST DOUBLES FULL YEAR PROFITS

China-based Ping An Insurance (Group) has reported a net pre-tax gain of 8.00bn yuan ($1.01bn) for 2006, up from 4.26bn yuan the year before, slightly lower than a pervious analysts’ consensus of 8.15bn yuan. Premium income was up 35.31% to 87.94bn yuan, with life sales generating 72.87bn yuan of premiums and 5.7bn yuan of the company’s profit. Releasing its annual figures, Ping An warned that it was operating in an increasingly competitive environment, but predicted that its current development was “sustainable”. Ping An’s share of the Chinese life market grew 0.9 points to 17%. It now has more than 32m life policy customers. In the p/c arena, market share grew 0.8 points to 10.7%, making it the third-largest p/c player on the Chinese mainland, after PICC P/C and China Pacific Property. Gross written premiums rose 33.1% to 16.07bn, with “significant growth” being recorded in all three business lines. Claims rose 36.5% to 7.18bn yuan, while expenses rose by 32% to 3.03bn yuan. The combined ratio was 95.4%, fractionally up from 95.3% the previous year. Embedded value rose by 35.58% to 65.57bn yuan. Ping An said that it anticipated an rapid increase in wealth on the mainland this year and that it would therefore be focusing on its banking and asset management units. A final dividend of 0.22yuan per share was proposed, bring the annual yield to 0.54yuan per share.