China’s largest insurer Ping An Insurance said its first-half net profit dipped 1.2% from a year earlier to 69.8 billion yuan partly due to short-term market volatility.
Operating profit fell 5% to 82 billion yuan as the annualized operating return on equity contracted by 3 percentage points to 18.2%. It increased the interim dividend by 1.1% to 0.93 yuan.
Its major business, life and health insurance, fell 1.7% year over year to 58.6 billion yuan, as the operating return on equity shrank 5.6 points to 35.6%. The value of new business in the first half, however, jumped 32.6% to 26 billion yuan. Property and casualty insurance products recorded 9.3 billion yuan in net profit, up by 7.4% from a year ago, as Chinese residents turned conservative amid concerns about the economic downturn.
The banking business showed strong growth, with the net profit rising by 14.9% to 25.4 billion yuan. The net interest income fell 2.2% to 62.6 billion yuan, as the annualized net interest margin dropped 0.21 percentage point to 2.55%.Notably, it individual savings expanded 10.9% to 1.1 trillion yuan by the end of June, while corporate deposits slid 1.9% to 2.2 trillion yuan.
The asset management business slumped 62.3% to nearly 2 billion yuan and the operating profit of the tech business dived 57.6 percent to 2.3 billion yuan over the same period.