Security firms and representatives of independent directors as well as the matrix analysts and the media representatives. The executives attending the briefing in Hong Kong include Mr. Ding Xiangqun, Chair of the PICC Group and PICC P&C. Mr. Yu Ze, Vice President of PICC Group and President of PICC P&C. The executives attending the briefing in Beijing include Mr. Zhao Peng, Vice Chairman and President of PICC Group. Mr. Xiao Jianyou, Executive Director and Vice President of PICC Group and President of PICC Life. Mr. Cai Zhiwei, Vice President of PICC Group. Mr. Zhang Jinhai, Vice President of PICC Group. Mr. Shao Li Duo, President of PICC Health. There are three items on the agenda. First, Chairman Ding will make opening remarks. President Zhao will introduce the operating performance. Finally, there will be a management Q&A. First, I would like to invite Chairman Ding for opening remarks.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome, dear investors, analysts, and friends from the press to today's annual results announcement. It is our pleasure and honor to have the face-to-face opportunity with the investor community. For a very long time, we have received the long-term support and assistance from investors, analysts, and the media. Therefore, with this opportunity, I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to you all. Today, I would like to present three points. First, a brief overview of the past year. Second, our future strategic direction that you may be particularly interested in and our key initiatives for the year of 2025. Let me start with 2024. Last year, I could say it's quite extraordinary. For PICC Group, it was also a year of perseverance.
We faced multiple challenges, including the transformation of old and new driving forces, the downward trend of interest rates, and the fluctuations in the capital market. Nevertheless, PICC Group actively leveraged the functions of insurance and achieved high-quality growth. Yesterday, we published our results. The results show that we achieved steady progress with a total operating revenue of RMB 709.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%. Net profits reached RMB 42.9 billion, a YoY increase of 88.2%, and ROE was 16.7%, an increase of 7.1 percentage points compared to the previous year. These are the major statistics. We also showed effective insurance performance. We maintained the industry's highest figures, and we ranked the top in the industry, the end-of-region liabilities, number of claims, and payout expenses as well. Last year, we handled nearly 500,000 claims daily, totaling payouts of RMB 1.23 billion. That really demonstrated the functions of insurance.
The innovation driver is also yielding results. Let's take P&C as an example. We actively explore the new models for risk reduction in property insurance and steadily promote the big health ecosystem. We have also introduced pioneering products such as comprehensive long-term catastrophe insurance that cover all types of disasters and catastrophes. These show our efforts on innovation. We also demonstrated strong and effective risk and prevention. Our major insurance subsidiaries saw improved comprehensive risk ratings and good performance in key monitoring indicators. For more details, our President, Zhao Peng, will present shortly. That is the first point reveal of performance in 2024. Second, in the new journey, what is the future strategic direction of PICC? I believe many of you are interested at this point. We already had thorough discussions at a group level and based on the national circumstances as well as the development strategies of the group.
We launched this systematic planning at the group's annual working meeting at the beginning of this year and determined to implement the excellent world-class first-class strategy as the insurance financial group. In broad terms, it refers to solid implementation of the five key articles by adhering to the mission of people's insurance, serving the people with a focus on the functions of insurance risk protection and capital circulation, striving to be the leader in safeguarding people's well-being, the pioneer in social governance, and the pillars supporting the real economy without commitment to the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics, building a world-class insurance financial group. That is the goal that we set for ourselves. For the excellence or the first class, we also provide explanations clearly.
It means excellent functions, efficient operations, distinct businesses, modern governance, and international competitiveness, thereby achieving the real five excellence on these different fronts. The first is outstanding functions, which is closely related to the Chinese characteristics. We highlight functionality, decent supply-side structural reform, and continue to lead in serving economic security, social protection, and disaster prevention, while consolidating and elevating our market inquiries to match China's vast market with first-class protection functionality. This is the first dimension of the excellence strategy or the first-class strategy. Second, efficient operation. We center on value and benefit as the two centers and pursue high quality, better profitability, superior structure, and stronger technology to lead in value creation and achieve the first-class operational performance. Third, distinct core businesses because we are a comprehensive financial group.
We need to concentrate our core business, which is property and casualty P&C, life insurance, and investments in the three core segments. We will consolidate the core advantages of P&C insurance, enhance competitiveness in life insurance, and promote investments to play a vital role in business development and profit growth by contributing to the comprehensive strengths of the PICC Group. This focus is on first-class comprehensive services. Fourth, modern governance. We adhere to the two unifications, advance the modernization of the governance system and governance capabilities. We optimize the group's business portfolios, resource allocation, and ensure long-term stability with first-class governance capabilities. Fifth, international competitiveness. We maintain an open mindset and steadily expand overseas markets and participate in global market competition. For countries along the Belt and the Road Initiative, we would like to shape first-class international presence.
As a comprehensive financial group, this is how the five first-class strategies should be interpreted. 2025 marks the first year of the implementation of the five excellence or first-class strategy. We will focus on deepening six reforms while solidly executing four priorities, drawing momentum from reforms, vitality from innovation, and efficiency from management, striving to convert our motivation into tangible achievements. For the deepening of six reforms, as I said, we will draw momentum from reforms. That is about the governance and the organizational structure and visualization as well as the personnel system. That is based on analysis of the reality of the PICC Group. For governance reform, it focuses on the governance body's responsibilities, and we will use the minimum cost to achieve the maximum effectiveness on the reform of the governance.
For the strategic management and group level, we will improve the functioning structure of the group. We will strengthen and refine line management and group capabilities, allocate resources at the group level, and effectively respond to market competition. That is on the strategic management of the group. Next is grassroots development mechanisms. We need on that front to balance regulation and flexibility so that we can truly continue to serve the building of the service ecosystem. For grassroots, we need to further expand the space for development and elevate our market competitiveness. The fourth is on the customer resource sharing mechanism. We maximize customer value with platform services, strengthen one-stop customer service for PICC products and services. We will deepen the one-stop service so the good products and services that can be provisioned in a more convenient manner.
That's reform on customer resource sharing. Next is the digital reform. I believe you know that direction very well. Already, what we need to do is to improve top-level design and enhance digital applications facing the grassroots level. That's quite important. We need to enhance grassroots level resource sharing so customers can benefit from our digital services. People on the front line and across the levels also have access to better digital services. The last is the personnel reforms. We will systematically review and adjust the positions, ranking, performance, income position, talent pool systems, and mechanisms within the group so that we can cultivate a favorable environment for dedication and entrepreneurship. For priorities, we will continue to draw momentum from innovation, seek results from management.
We serve our mission and deepen financial supply-side structure reforms, leveraging insurance capabilities, deepening people's sense of gain, happiness, and security while exploring new venues for growth. The second is high-quality development. For that concept, there are several main aspects versus the provision of product quality, second service insurance, structural optimization, and lastly, profit generation so that we can create new momentum and advantages for future development. The third priority is robust risk control and prevention with a balance between growth and safety. We lead the industry in compliance and with stronger risk prevention and controlling key areas with also a strong risk compliance culture securing the risk bottom line. That is the third priority. The last priority in this strategy is on the team building, the workforce. We will coordinate the three talent pools of management professionals and sales for first-class teams.
Last but not least, I would like to once again thank you all for your continued support to PICC Group. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chair Ding. Next, allow me to invite President Zhao Peng to present business ethics.
Dear guests, investors, analysts, and media friends, good afternoon. Recently, the various companies are announcing their results. I know you have a busy time. Thank you very much for attending our business briefing. Just now, our chairperson gave you an overview that I wanted to give you more details on our operation. In 2024, we earned revenue of RMB 537.7 billion, up 6.7%. Net profit of RMB 42.9 billion, up 88.2%. Net assets amounted to RMB 367.2 billion, up 10.7%. Our ROE stood at 16.7%, up 7.1%. Our total assets reached RMB 1.77 trillion, up 13.4%. The board recommended a whole year distribution of a dividend of RMB 0.18, up 15.4%.
In 2024, we achieved good results in high-quality development. First, the functional role of insurance for 40 levers. We served 302 million individual customers and 7.72 million institutional investors, covered RMB 3,175 trillion of risk, and paid RMB 448.5 billion of claims or RMB 1.23 billion a day, and settled 180 million claims, all tops of the industry. We also handled 255 catastrophes and major accidents, winning the recognition of our regulators and local authorities. Second, we witnessed efforts in five major areas of finance. Tech insurance provided this protection of RMB 31 trillion, covering 120,000 high-tech companies and 57 self-specialized innovative companies, and invested RMB 32 billion in technology companies. Green finance provided protection of RMB 184 trillion and wields 11.59 million EVs and made a total green investment of RMB 100 billion.
It included finance and it took 1,442 health-oriented health insurance projects and provided the 52 million rural households with RMB 2.1 trillion of the protection and it served 18 million new urban dwellers. Our pension finance managed annuities as much as RMB 645 billion and launched industry-first long-term online medical insurance product for middle-aged and elderly individuals. We also launched in digital finance a computing-powered industry chain and released cybersecurity insurance risk. Our insurance for cybersecurity rose by 31%. We also moved ahead in terms of innovation. We conducted over 16 million risk reduction services and achieved a loss reduction of RMB 1.6 billion. We also launched eight categories of 34 health management services with a revenue of 63%. In terms of institutional innovation, we earned a synergistic premium of RMB 24.8 billion, up 7.5%.
In product innovation, we provided RMB 34 trillion of risk protection and premium in RMB 14 billion. In terms of tech innovation, we built a new project and increased our tech investment by 34%. We also upgraded our mobile service generating premium of RMB 145 billion and served nearly 110 million customers. We also developed a fraud detection model and reduced the loss by RMB 1.7 trillion. Of course, we also optimized our structure. The group made our total revenue of RMB 622 billion of 12.5%. Insurance revenue, RMB 537 billion of 6.7%. Household vehicle premium contribution reached 74.3%, up 1%. Individual household premium grew by 18%, 13.7% above the overall premium growth rate. For our regular premium contribution here to 67.9%, up 4.3%. PICC Life at 10 year and more premium grew by 51% and expanded the share by 3.2%. PICC FRP grew by 50% and share by 3.9%.
Investment yield reached RMB 82.2 billion, up 86%. Total investment yield hit 5.6%, up 2.3%. We also comprehensively reduced costs and improved efficiency. The expenses fell by 13.1%, and PICC insurance expense ratio dropped by 1.4%. We maximized our health insurance expense barriers by RMB 1.4 billion and also saved RMB 900 million by centralized procurement. We hit a total profit of RMB 70 billion, nearly 1.1x year on year. We also distributed RMB 0.18 per share, up 15.4%. Our solvency ratio has been on the rise and the capital trends also on the rise. The core solvency ratio reached 225%, up 31%. The comprehensive company solvency ratio reached 281%, up 30%. Our subsidiary remains reasonably solvent. The group combined net assets is RMB 367.2 billion, up 10.7%. PICC Life and Health all achieved a double-digit growth in net assets.
We enhanced ESG management, and sustainability has been also improved. The group regarded sustainability as the current requirements of governance and operation continue to improve the top-level design of green finance and ESG. Innovative green financial products increased green management, implemented the PERT systems, and engaged itself in public welfare and charity and strengthened green and low-carbon operations. The company's sustainability also won recognition of external agencies. MSCI recently upgraded the group and PICC rating to AAA level, the highest among domestic insurance companies. Next, a sector breakdown for the PICC. In 2024, PICC continues to improve its structure with catastrophe net loss above the five-year average by 51%. Sound performance was delivered. Insurance revenue reached RMB 485.2 billion, up 6.1%. Net profit RMB 33.2 billion, up 31%. Net assets RMB 260 billion, up 11.7%. By ratio into 95.5% of performing the industry, ROE 13.5%, up 2.4%.
In addition to interim distribution, RMB 0.332 per share will be paid in 2024 for the whole year distribution coming to RMB 0.54, up 10.4%. For auto insurance, the structure optimized. Household premium reached 74%, up 1%. Third-class liability insurance for household households was on average capped at RMB 2.8 million, up 4.6%. Our profitability also went up. Combined ratio was 24%, down by 2.3%. Underwriting profit came to RMB 9.3 billion, up 7%. We also improved the customer operation. We underwrote 110 million vehicles, up 5.3%. Individual auto insurance penetration reached 76%, up 5.7%. Auto insurance above non-auto insurance by RMB 22.5 billion, up 22.2%. We also grew our NEV business. Premium went up by 58.7%. Household NEV combined ratio was below 100% and achieved profitable operation. For non-auto insurance, first, we earned a premium of individual business of RMB 48.5 billion. Combined ratio stayed below 95%.
We also improved the corporate business. The combined ratio was down by 3% to 31.4%. Risk reduction service coverage ratio rose to 6.6%. Premiums for some products headed into technology surge by 75.9% and became a new growth engine. Three, we enhanced the quality-based service capacity. The coverage ratio of full-cost insurance and planned income insurance spent RMB 320 million, up 21%. Of course, for our non-auto insurance spending, receivable premium fell by 5.1%. Premium receivable rate at 2.2%. We followed in financial strength. The net loss and LAE reserve rose by 58%. We matched the operating cash flow, up by 77%. The cost of the ratio at 211%. Comprehensive operating ratio at 233%. Both reasons are sufficient.
Next, PICC Life. We then reached a revenue of RMB 22.4 billion, up 23%. Net profit is RMB 17.1 billion, significant growth. Net assets RMB 39.6 billion, 10.1% higher than year beginning.
Contractor service margin RMB 92.6 billion, 22.4% compared to the beginning of this year. Regular premiums at RMB 84.3 billion at 13.5% and 13 months of business ratio, 96.3%, 4.1%, could be higher. NBV had increased significantly under comparable standards and BB rates grew by 10.6% year on year. With NBV growing 1.1x , the effective BB increased to 31.7% compared to the year beginning and intrinsic value for 7.7%. Channel transformation is effective. Individual channel, regular premium 10 years and more is 58.7%, rising 7.7%. Bank insurance grew 39.9% for five years and more and 7.9%, could be higher. Group insurance grew by 10.6% for short-term premiums. E-commerce first-year premium by 63.6%. Quality of individual agents also continued to improve. We see monthly average number of excellent agents grew at 8.2%. Average per month effective agents 9.2%, NFIC 5.6%, and NFIP team grew 8.4%.
For health, we realized RMB 27.2 billion, revenue 6.2% higher. Net profit RMB 5.7 billion, up 2.1x . ROE 43.2%, up 25.1%. Net assets RMB 14.8 billion, 26.2% higher. Contractor service margin RMB 20.2 billion, 18.9% higher. Thirteen months of business ratio 93.9%, with 5.1% higher. Under comparable standards, NBV grew 1.4%. The effective BB increased to 35.2% compared to the beginning. Intrinsic value RMB 42.2 billion short-term, 4.8 percentage points. We now have already served 76 million customers across 31 provinces and 333 cities with the online health insurance, which reached RMB 17.8 billion, up 7.5%. Maintaining market leadership in the personal insurance market. We also continue to progress with the health ecosystem. Added nearly 9,600 partner institutions with 4,700 hospitals. Implementing one-stop claim services. For investment, asset assessment wise, under group insurance funds, exceeded RMB 1.6 trillion, growing 14.6%.
Covering re-recovery RMB 1.22 trillion, 26.6% higher to the ROE of RMB 82.8 billion, up 86.2%. With total return of 5.6%, up 2.3 percentage points. Fixed income ROE 4.3%, up 0.3%. OCS stock investment returned 36.3%, outperforming the CSI 300 dividend index by 10.7 percentage points. We sustained optimization asset allocation for fixed income investment to rebalance stable returns with extending duration. Actively seizing long-term treasury and government bond opportunities with the proportion of 9.9 percentage points in equity investment, continuously optimizing position structure and increasing investment in stable profit models and higher-dividend yield VI stocks, growing 26.4%. Active management shows continuous enhancement over the past three years with returns in stock. Asset operations outperformed CSI 800 index by 27.9%. Wealth management abilities are continuously improving. At 67%, portfolio-based asset management products rank in the top 50% of the market and 20% rank top 10%.
We developed innovative business with the ABS, CMBS, and. In 2025, PICC Group will firmly implement central policies, upholding the mission of people's insurance serving the people. We will solidly implement defined major areas of finance, optimize the supply of insurance services reform to address high-quality development challenges, advance innovation and model products, mechanisms, and technologies where we can proactively. A comprehensiveness in risk control, improved compliance, and management at a grassroots level. We have every confidence that we will achieve high-quality goals for the 14-five-year plan and lay a solid foundation for the 15-five-year plan. That concludes my introduction. Thank you.
Thank you, President Zhao. That's a good call. I'll work to an end session. The Hong Kong and the Beijing venues will take turns to ask questions. Those raised in Beijing will be moderated by Mr.
PC or Secretary of PICC P&C. Please let us know your name and institution. Please ask no more than two questions. First, let me invite a question from Hong Kong. Please raise your hand. The lady in the middle.
First, I would like to congratulate management on good performance. Shen Xiaoting from UBS. I've got two questions. First, in terms of advancing the high-quality development of PICC, may I invite the Chair to discuss the upcoming priorities, the concrete work you pay attention to? Second, you mentioned you would like to develop a world-class insurance group. In terms of ROE, do you have some medium to long-term targets for your assessment of subsidiaries? Do you have corresponding changes for adjustment? Thank you.
Thank you. On high-quality development, I'm happy to address your question. I would like to invite the President to address your second one.
Regarding high-quality development, your question itself is a high-quality question because high-quality development is the first and foremost priority for developing a social modernized country or respect under the current requirements for PICC to grow into a world-class insurance group. Along the new journey at the new stage of development, PICC will comprehensively implement new concepts of development and move forward the group's high-quality development. As I mentioned briefly in my opening remarks around the targets of high-quality development, we will do four things specifically in order to achieve our milestones. Among the four, the first is to provide the high-quality product supply. Second, upgrade our services to upgrade to high quality. Three, high-quality restructuring of our portfolio. Fourth, the high-quality generation of our operating results. In terms of moving for high-quality product supply, the high-quality development requires a better livelihood.
That will need to be realized by the supply of high-quality products. We will center around the major strategies, key areas, and vulnerabilities of social economic development. We will advance our innovation. For example, we captured the social economic trend such as the risk of pricing for new energy vehicles, which has received a lot of attention for high-quality development and corresponding plus apply. We need to improve the risk of pricing capability of our NEVs and also the auto insurance for intelligent driving as well as the liabilities, the insurance, and home insurance. With all these high-quality developments, we can make the social economic development more secure and resilient. Another example, we base ourselves on the pain points and difficulties in terms of health and elderly care and develop accordingly the elderly care product development system that covers the whole population across their life cycles.
Package the products and services for insurance and health management. We address the market needs for the elderly care insurance. We also go along with the requirement of insurance diversification and lead our development by the diversification of product insurance customer services. We will also develop so-called product factories to offer customers with one-stop insurance and financial services. In terms of moving forward, the high-quality supply products, these are the areas where we'll make explorations. Second, in terms of the high-quality upgrading of services, better services is a true lever of customer experiences. Providing first-tier comprehensive services, we need to first focus on customer experience of our services. From that perspective, we need to start with the origin of insurance and do a good job in handling claims and better improve our services. Develop the standardized, consistent, and transparent claim service procedures. Intensify the adoption of digital technologies.
By technological empowerment, we can make our claim services faster, better, and more heartwarming with a high-quality claim system. We are going to realize the core mission of insurance. Additionally, we are going to further improve our business model so as to marry insurance and services. In terms of upgraded services, health management, rehabilitation, and healthcare services, we have our upcoming considerations and arrangements. The next one is about the third priority, namely the high-quality restructuring. High-quality development process is also a process where the industries undergo transformation and upgrading. With the emerging industries will prosper, there will be inevitably the structural changes to the modernized industrial systems. Insurance services need to go along with the industrial trends for more productivity to improve our business structure. We would like to be salient in our core business and balanced in our structure.
That is the common hallmark of world-class insurance companies. We would like to adapt ourselves to the social economic transformation and serve the needs of our customers. We will vigorously develop not only auto insurance but also commercial non-auto insurance in the PNC business. That is one example of the structure shift. Moreover, we are going to roll out our risk reduction services. We do not only do exposed claim handling but also the ex ante risk alert so as to reduce the losses and therefore compensation. We will then improve our operating efficiency in this way. This reduction is a key lever of our structural improvement. For life insurance, we are going to develop more the 10-year business and also expand the scope and improve the quality of our protection business.
For commercial health insurance, we are making active exploration in terms of the commercial health insurance well connected with the basic insurance. We are going to follow guidance of the competent authorities, the ministries and commissions of the government, and go along the policy of connecting basic medical insurance and commercial ones and make our impact. In terms of investment, we will also play out the role of insurance as a patient investor and also make transition towards the alternative investment and the business. The structural high-quality changes will be followed by the generation of high-quality results. That is also the foundation of our sustainability. Our results are economical, social, and also relevant in terms of risk and compliance because they are essential dimensions also of the high-quality development. We need to stick to the correct concept of operation, performance, and the risk.
Enhance the improvement management of underwriting and also do a better job in terms of asset liability management and consistently improve our capability through better management. In terms of the social contribution behind all the targets, there is profound connotation. Our services are not slogans but effective enabling services. We need to use insurance to guard people's livelihood. We need to be a leader in terms of such a guardianship and also service of the real economy and the provision of first-tier protection. These are the targets of our high-quality development. As a leader of the insurance sector, solid protection of risks and compliance operations are also the areas that we need to exemplify as the inevitable and essential requirements. We need to be more resilient against risk so that we can go farther ahead steadily.
Thank you, Mr. Chen. I want to take up the second question.
In the company, we propose the target to be a world-class insurance and financial group. That includes the creation of first-class operating results. The long-term ROE will need to outperform the industry average among listed companies so as to create more value to shareholders. While assessing the performance of the subsidiaries, we focus on six priorities. The first is the focus on serving the national strategies and real economy and the people's livelihood and social development. We did a good job in terms of writing the five major articles of finance. We are also rolling in a plan to invest the long-term capital.
Second is stable business growth. With that, we place more focus on the quality of the. Where we continuously optimize the business structure and we actively improve the sustainability of the whole company. Third is the continuous improvement of the effectiveness.
As the Chairperson mentioned, we always adhere to quality first and prioritization of effectiveness. We continue to address both the cost reduction and efficiency gain on both the asset and liability side so that we can improve the underwriting profitability as well as ROI, ROE. The fourth is concentration on coordination because we have the group advantage. We can strategize and coordinate the six aspects covering the strategy system for the customer on challenge and products and services so that we can truly accelerate the growth. The group benefits is a focus on the reform. Depending on efforts, we will continue to promote the innovation of the product and service and management system. In particular, a focus on insurance serving the customers with new business models and technologies we are also researching.
Then the mid and long-term performance indicators that will look at the net profits, ROE, and ROI, especially for three to five years. The duration of six is risk prevention and control will continue to promote the comprehensive risk management and upgrade our action plan with enhanced focus on key areas. Our priority is asset liability management and proactively address these issues starting from 2024.
Thank you very much, Chairperson Ding and Mr. Zhao. Now we'll give the floor to the leading of the second row in Beijing.
All right. Thank you for the introduction. My name is Sun Ting. I'm with Guotai Junan Securities. I'm with Suho in Suzhou Securities. Sun Ting, so congratulations. Seems like the results are very satisfactory and dividends also showed the growth. I have two questions.
The first one is for property insurance because we know the combined ratio actually increased last year slightly. My question is for 2025, are there any guidance for the major indicators, for example, the auto, non-auto on the premium growth, and also combined ratios, expectations, and decisions? The second question is about the overall group performance. We noticed for the recently concluded decisions, and the government work report also mentioned insurance multiple times. I would like to know about the development directions, which seems to show uncertainties on the broad term for the entire industry in the future. How do you see the new development opportunities for the group in the future? What is your thinking on the future development?
Okay. Thank you for your question.
First, on 2024 performance, in the past five years, that was the year that we had the biggest losses from catastrophes, which happened nonstop from the beginning to the year end, started with frosting and a snowstorm. We did not expect that after October, but the last one was in Hainan and quite substantial losses. Net losses, as Chairperson said, actually is 51% higher than average over the past five years. The specific amount was last year was RMB 115.57 billion. It is RMB 5.2 billion higher than average. Compared in 2023, it is RMB 111.8 billion. That is RMB 3.7 billion higher than 2023. That is 13.4% higher than 2023. Just according to the Hong Kong new standards, that will be 98.8%. Also net profit on the RMB 57.13 billion.
For the new standards, the Hong Kong and our old standards, when it comes to agriculture insurance in China, we had lots of reserves. For the catastrophes last year and the year before, we could use those reserves. For the Hong Kong accounting standards, that is not accounted for. The actual losses, if we use the 19, it's more accurate is the 98.5% because that looks at the current year, present year revenues. For the old standards, the combined ratio for the domestic standards, that will be 97.9%. For Hong Kong, it will be 98.1%. It actually dropped 0.1 percentage points both, which means that for PICC P&C, the resilience against catastrophes continued to improve as we said in previous announcements after doctory. We have the capacity to combat two.
After last year, we have the capability to actually combat three doctor-level typhoons, meaning a loss of above RMB 3 billion for each typhoon disaster and without affecting our combined ratio of around 98% or 97%, depending on the standards in Hong Kong or domestic market. With the leadership of the group, the property has launched a series of reforms on systems and mechanisms, which achieved great success in terms of the professional capability of the teams of the workforce and also the management control capabilities of the underwriting. That is a solid foundation for 2025. Our resilience improved. I would like to note it gave it 19.85 or 98.8 of combined ratio as new standards, which does not include the non-fulfillment expenses. For that, our standards are relatively prudent and conservative. Look at our peer companies.
With the current situation, the combined ratio of ours is higher than the peers by 0.5 percentage points. That is a non-fulfillment expenses. That is only about 0.1. With a new standard, it is inflated by about 0.5. In 2025, we will continue to strengthen our core businesses. Our plan is the overall business development should be aligned with the GDP growth of China, continue to improve the underwriting capacity and with the normal levels without significant policy changes. We expect that the auto insurance development at the same speed as the market. For combined ratio, our target last year is less than 96. I would like to note that for January and February of 2025, the rate is actually only around 93 for auto insurance combined ratio. It enters 96. Overall, across all insurance types, it is under 94.
For new energy vehicles, it's within 100. We said for home vehicles, it's within 100. We want also the commercial vehicles to be below 100. For non-auto insurance, our anticipation is under 100. We decided to give us an internal target of under 99 or around that. We had an internal discussion of whether it could be lower than 99, but we want to go more conservative, let's say around 91. We can have a simple estimate that if it's 96 and 99.96 or 96 or 100 for these two indicators, then our underwriting profit would double. To that end, our company will continue to invest resources into the reveal of the performance along the entire chain.
Not just the goals and targets, but each and every company is asked to have their own implementation strategies with resource allocations and also with the performance reveal. We ensure that targets and goals are met. Here, I would like to report to you that with the consolidation of the entire auto insurance right now, finally start to be profitable. For the first two months, we actually see that the claims and expense ratios can further reduce. Our target now is lowered from 97% to 96%. For personal non-auto, we believe there is further room for development. As the government's support and promotion of the culture and tourism industries, we will also have a large room of development for service-oriented property insurances. We will also continue to strengthen the pricing models and also the system of independent insurer and underwriter.
For a while, we only improved the coverage and penetration. For the corporate compliance with the registered capital above RMB 200 million, we have insufficient coverage for those with the registered capital below that figure. That is also a room for improvement for the non-auto insurance profitability. The objective reason was the catastrophe for last year, but there is also a subjective reason for the expense ratio to continue to decrease. We will strengthen the risk prevention and control and governance improvement. We further standardized and regulated the pricing system to avoid the unnecessary fees from the intermediaries. For the agriculture insurance, what we also talked about last year is the more efforts on precision.
The precision in underwriting and claims will, because the nonstandard degree is too high, we need to further improve the precision of the management control of the eco insurance. We also need to expand the long-term care insurance and also the occupational injury insurance. That is for 2024 and 2025. Thank you very much. We just mentioned the government work report, which mentioned insurance a couple of times and that brings opportunities and new thinking to the insurance industry and PICC. I would like to share with you our preliminary results before the government report of 2025. Insurance was mentioned 7x and finance 22x . In terms of the numbers of mentioning, it is 2x more than 2024. Content-wise, the government work report mentioned that we need to expand the export credit insurance and the writing scale and the coverage.
That is about the foreign trade and foreign capital, for example, on the deposit insurance fund. Also, more channels to participate in social insurance. That is an inevitable requirement as China deepens the new type of organization strategy. We need to further enhance the adjustment system of the basic health insurance and the benefit system and also strengthen the establishment of long-term care system and the elderly care insurance. That is an improvement of social protection and services for related policies. As I said, there were some issues with insurance that covers lots of fields. As you can see, that demonstrates that insurance itself can absorb the shocks to the economy and civilize the society. That is why in the process of China's modernization insurance industry plays a unique and irreplaceable support and guarantee function.
That is why for the industry and for PICC, this is a historical opportunity for growth.
More specifically, we can understand this matter in the following respect. First, the Chinese modernization requires a material basis, and that will breed opportunities. We will well off both materially and spiritually. That is an essential requirement of socialism modernization. By 2035, China's strength in technology, economy, and the comprehensive strengths will, of course, leap forward. For capital GDP, we will embark on a new height to reach the level of a moderately developed country. According to the global insurance development and economic growth, which forms an S-curve, I experience when per capita GDP reaches $10,000-$30,000, the demand for insurance will accelerate. In 2024, the density of insurance is RMB 4,045, and the depth of insurance is 4.2%.
Compared with the global average, there remains an ample space of development. There is a material basis that will create huge potential for insurance. The second perspective is the opportunities arising from common prosperity, which is also an essential requirement of the Chinese modernization. In China, middle-income groups have exceeded 400 million people. By 2035, the common prosperity of the entire population will undergo substantial progress. In the next 15 years, it is projected that the middle-income group will exceed 800 million people. With larger and larger the middle-income group, the demand for insurance will be effectively unlocked. Diseases need to be treated. The elderly need to be cared, and the weak, the protected. I believe all these requirements will translate into huge insurance demand. For example, for disease, 2023, the expenditure of commercial health insurance represents only 6.7% of the total medical bill of the country.
That shows tremendous space for health insurance. Next, about elderly care. In 2023, the elderly care reserve was only 15.1% of GDP, and the commercial elderly insurance was only RMB 6 trillion-RMB 7 trillion. There is a huge task and space both for the category three of pension. I believe this is also a wonderful opportunity for the vulnerables, 400 million farmers, and 300 million new urban dwellers all need inclusive insurance services, which will embrace an important space for development. After common prosperity, let's be mindful of the modernization of national governance, which will also bring us a lot of space for development. The modernized governance is both the target and the driver of modernization. Insurance helps to stabilize the society and ensure effective social governance. Serving the government in enhancing social governance, especially in response to public emergencies, will be crucial.
Earlier on in our practice, we have already had excellent cases of our practice. We also benefited from the active exploration by both regulators and PICC's. More and more ministries and local governments have already included insurance into the toolkit for social governance. In terms of serving the innovation of social governance, I believe there's a broad prospect for insurance to play its role. Let's take liability insurance as an example. In the P&C industry, liability insurance accounts for less than 10% in premium. In developed countries such as Europe, Japan, Korea, this ratio is typically above 15%. That is also an indicator of the development space. From now to around 2035, we can anticipate a strategic period of opportunity. Also, the opportunities that PICC's need to firmly grasp and leverage. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Yu.
According to my observation, while Madam Yu talked about the future opportunities and thinking and methods you discussed, the present-year initiatives, many of the participants in Hong Kong were nodding. My recommendation to Madam Yu at this moment, she used to work in the banking sector and local markets. She kind of discussed a lot of development opportunities when she talked to us. She just now shared many with you as well. I do recommend Madam Yu to actually speak more to us so as to broaden our thinking. Indeed, there are a lot of things we need to step up our supply. Back to Hong Kong, Madam Yu, who would like to ask a question? The lady of the second row.
Thank you for this opportunity from Michelle from Citi and the analyst. I would like to also congratulate the management on good performance.
I have two questions. First, as Madam Yu mentioned just now, in PICC Group, the target is to be a world-class insurance and financial group, specifically to break it down to the subsidiaries like P&C, Life, and Health. What are the development positions of them respectively? Second, back to NEV insurance. It has also been a new direction which has received a lot of attention in the industry. Last year, the combined ratio was 107% for the industry as a whole. With the regulators issuing many policies, including the opinion on the promotion of high-quality development of NEVs and the Hau Tou Bao platform for auto insurance, I would like to ask the management to give us the current observation of the operating results of NEV and what new policies can be expected for NEV related to auto insurance. Thank you.
Under the target of developing the world-class insurance financial group, what are the positions and targets for our subsidiaries? Indeed, when we make our planning, we need to give serious consideration to these important issues which are covered by your very good question. To build such a group, we need to consolidate and leverage a leading position of PICC in the industry. That is for the overall analysis. We also have a lot of subsidiaries, including the P&C, Life, and Health subsidiaries, which all require clear targets and positions. These subsidiaries need to either be world-leading or domestically leading. These benchmarking shall be translated into profits by balance and gradient pattern of development. P&C is our core business, our main business as well. When we develop it, we need to also move forward the development of Life, Personal, and other insurances.
That is called the gradient and balance development. Externally, in their specific fields, we require the subsidiaries to go up and improve the sophistication. By being bigger and better, they need to build the P&C brand and contribute value to the society and deliver market competitiveness. These are the overall requirements for all these subsidiaries and the positions for them. For example, for P&C, P&C is our corpus. In PICC, P&C is taking leadership positions. It is, of course, required to always consolidate its competitive edge and also carry itself to the improved economic structure. It must be robust in protection. The function has been fully leveraged. It needs to be robust in protection and strength, optimal in structure, and competitive internationally as a P&C company. Its comprehensive strength needs to be leading when compared with the global counterpart.
For personal insurance, as I said, the core competitors need to be constantly intact for health and pension, which are our areas of weakness both in PICC P&C and society. The personal insurance company needs to also improve its branding and increase its contribution. For Life, it needs to better protect households and preserve wealth across succession so as to contribute to the pension insurance protection system for aging population. It needs to have grown, increased value, solid teams, leading services, and solid capital accumulation so as to join the top league among life insurance companies in China. For PICC Life, PICC Life needs to play its supporting role for using health insurance to support people's livelihood and also develop a health protection system with health insurance taking the leadership role, well-governed and first-tier in terms of both scale and quality.
Another important arm of PICC is investment, which is at par with protection of insurance. We also make it clear investment and insurance shall be the dual wheels in driving P&CC forward. In terms of developing a business and growing profitability, investment will play a key role. PICC Asset is an important subsidiary and a main investment platform of the group. We need to beef up the capability of making equity investment. We invested in this early stage. When companies are small, we also need to invest more into the hardcore technology companies and use good investment performance to serve the socioeconomic development and insurance development. We also need to actively expand the third-party business to meet the wealth management needs of the people so as to develop a first-tier asset manager with service to the overall development, extraordinary performance, and a strong comprehensive capability.
Okay, thank you. Let me address your second question. Indeed, for NEV, many policies have been launched. As the largest insurer in the market, PICC P&C honors its responsibility as a centrally owned financial institution. We take the lead following the guidelines and developing a strategy and push forward the green transition and the real economy service to auto insurance. We indeed co-developed the Hau Tou Bao platform together with the two other industry leaders who have endowed 10 institutions and signed already the first order. In terms of developing NEVs, our advantages have been increasing. In 2024, the company underwrote 11,590,000 NEVs, up 57.3%, representing 11% of the underwritten vehicles. The premium revenue was RMB 50.8 billion, up 58.7%. Its revenue has the premium has accounted for 70.2% of the total. We have covered the largest NEV car park and the customer base as well as the data protection.
That supports the company in leading in terms of the risk pricing. I want to share with you, dear investors and reporters, we have a pricing pilot last year. We made an invest cooperation with a small insurance company. We found our pricing to be pretty accurate last year. This year, we would like to package it as a standardized pricing product shared free of charge with the insurance SMEs for them to use so as to increase the industry's capability in terms of coping with the development of NEVs and growing the ability of the insurance as a whole in terms of serving the country's green transition. Our overall pricing has been leading. The household NEVs, as I said, have been profitable for underwriting. The commercial insurance combined ratio has been more than 5% versus 2023. The NEV profitability level beats the market and our peers.
For underwriting, Jess Lane's work has found a major lead. Also, the newcomers in the industry with which we've established very good channels for management and control for underwriting and claim settlement. The secondary also has reached a deep collaboration with embedded manufacturers as well as the repairers and the maintainers service providers. I would like to report to you on how we view the industry development into the future. First of all, we believe that the main key will be the cost reduction of new energy vehicles, maintenance, and repair cost, which is based on a risk sharing and risk sharing management, Microsoft and the platform. We now have the advantage on the market share of the vehicles as well as the channels. We also boast great capabilities in pricing.
We now are deeply integrated with the OEMs and also the battery manufacturers with that. If the market continues to grow, you can expect that we will have a profitability for new energy vehicles that exceed our overall average auto insurance profitability. For the next steps, on the one hand, we expect policies to continue to implement. At the same time, we would want to also have good interactions with the industry associations and auto insurance. Of course, we will do more research on risk reduction management for safe driving. Thank you very much. Let's go back to Beijing for another question. Thank you, Mr. Ding. The gentleman on the second row, please.
Congratulations for the excellent report. I am with Guotajing. My name is Liu Xinxi. My question first is about the dividends and second is the equity asset allocation.
The first question is we know that the dividend level is higher, but the payout ratio is the difference. I would like to understand more about the considerations behind the adjustment of the dividend payout ratios and what is the future strategy. The second is about equity asset investment because multiple ministries issued the guiding opinions on the mid and long-term investment, institutional capital. The present routine of the CRC also mentioned that the premium should actually allocate about 3% of the new growth to the stock market or the equity funds. We would like to know what is the plan for PICC on the equity allocation and whether you will improve the OCI equity allocation ratio and how is that accounted in the balance sheet for accounting reasons.
Thank you for the question. Actually, there have been analyses and comments from institutions this morning.
We see that dividend is quite a focus. This morning, I talked to the Secretary of the Board, Mr. Zhou, and we were discussing that just this morning. I would like to answer that question here. You mentioned the dividend payout while according to the recommendations of the board last year was RMB 0.18 per share, 15.4% higher. For property, it is 10.4% higher and per share is RMB 0.54. As to considerations, as you know, there is the group and PICC P&C. The reporting enters the new accounting rules already, but for the regulators and the governing authorities, they still regulate and review our performance based on the old accounting standards.
It is a time when forecast and IFRS reviews December 2024, the dividend and the payout actually accounted for or considered the discrepancies between the two different standards, the old and new, and we tried to strike a balance between the two accords with the old standards. Even though that is not disclosed, but I would like to report that with the old standards, the group dividend rate would be more than 30%. We completely considered that. For PICC P&C, that would be above 40%, which was also higher. However, with the new accounting standards, as you probably paid attention to, after the implementation of the new standards, as for listed insurance companies, the net profitability showed more vitality. That is not just the PICC P&C; that is the common problem for the industry.
As you know, with the new accounting rules, more financial assets are categorized as transactional financial assets. The fluctuations of these transactional assets directly reflect in the profitability in the present period. As you know very well, this is just a fluctuation that is on the books. Unless you monetize it, you would see that volatility is a bit greater than the market. That is why when we consider the dividends, we cannot simply look at the rates based on the new standards. You know that very well. For us, we actually need to know where the group dividends come from. It is from the dividends of the subsidiaries. For PICC Life, and I do not know whether you paid attention to the numbers. For Life, the net profitability is RMB 17.1 billion, and health is RMB 5.7 billion, and together it is RMB 22.8 billion.
With the 30% rule of the new accounting standards, the subsidiaries must be higher than that for the dividend. Otherwise, where would the dividend capital of the group come from? That may actually have an impact on the solvency and the capital position of subsidiaries. From another perspective, we also reserve a certain capital to increase the capital capability for the company. For that, we can increase the underwriting and disaster or risk capabilities on the other hand. That is also sustainability in the long-term value creation for the shareholders. With that considered, with the foundation of the existing dividend rate and the old rates, our goal is to achieve the growth for the per share dividend. That is our target. The considerations behind it, and we very much understand your concerns and also recommendations in the future.
We want to focus on the long-term stability and stable growth of a per share dividend at the same time, considering the dividend payout rate and also that under the new accounting rules. In the meantime, we will strengthen our profitable capability in order to provide our shareholders with sustainable and stable expendable returns and to improve the investment balance of the company. I can answer the second question. On January 22nd, the Six Ministries and Commissions of China co-issued the guiding opinions for the promotion of mid and long-term capital into the market. The implementation plan is geared towards more mid and long-term capital to the market. We believe that the implementation policy is indeed to market confidence improvement as well as the long-term healthy development of the capital market.
For the long-term health of the capital market, on the macro level, it is beneficial to the economic restructuring and upgrade of the country as well as the innovation and the development of the new factor productivity and high-quality development. On the micro level, we would very much like to see the healthy development of the capital market. We know if the stock market is good, and so will the investment return on investment ROI, ROE, and that will also be helpful to the performance of the PICC Group. For PICC, the leader of the industry, we informally will implement the requirements with regard to the market entry of the mid and long-term capitals. We will also proactively conduct multiple measures to contribute our strength to boost the confidence of the capital market.
In terms of the specific equity investment strategies, we will continue to uphold long-term investment, value investment, prudent investment, and stable investment or cautious investment to optimize our strategies. We will also lay a focus on the new productive factors development. We will also grasp technology innovation as well as the strategic emerging factors to see what the new investment opportunities are. We will also proactively strategize around the services of insurance, including risk reduction management in key areas such as digitalization, artificial intelligence, technologies, and health, green environmental production, and renewable. These are the key areas. We will also balance the relative returns, equity returns, OCI, long-term returns, value investment, and we will also manage the volatility of the equity investment portfolios so that we can dedicate ourselves to the stability of the equity investment portfolio. You have another question about OCI.
The Chairperson already mentioned that the OCI allocation increased by 26.4% last year. OCI's investment performance was quite impressive, 36.3% of which is 10.7 percentage points higher than the Shanghai Shenzhen 300 index. We will continue to increase the OCI allocations this year. There are several major considerations. First is to stabilize the total returns of the portfolio because the recent years noticed that the interest rate is on a downward trend. That is why the fixed return assets yield is under pressure. We would like to moderately allocate more OCI shares so that we can actually benefit from the interest from the notes. The second is to stabilize the net profits of the group because based on the new accounting standards, OCI shares are not accounted in the present period losses and gains. It does not affect the net profitability of the current period.
That is also beneficial to the net profitability and to the revenue of the group. The third is to have a more diversified and decentralized investment so that it can be seen as a hedge against the risks.
Thank you very much, Mr. Zhao, and also Mr. Hai. Now we'll give the floor to Hong Kong for more questions. The gentleman on the second row, I saw you nodding all the time.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm with Bank of America. My name is Michael and I'll list after questions. The first is about property, P&C, and the second is about life. P&C is about catastrophe claims losses and also corresponding strategies because last year, Mr. Yu said that there were mid-medium-sized catastrophe, not as much as the doxury level catastrophes.
It was also mentioned in Q3 that it is due to the medium-sized catastrophes. His claim amount does not really reach the line, so there is not, so we cannot recover from the reinsurance. For 2025, what is the coping strategy for potential situations? Will you readjust on the reinsurance strategies? The second question is about life. With a low interest rate environment, there is quite some pressure on life insurance. I would like to know for life insurance, what is the geared ratio right now? What are the considerations on lowering the geared ratio and how to really avoid the impact of the spread? Thank you.
Please take your first question .
The investors and analysts are raising the same question as our internal colleagues. When I talk to our Head of Strategy for the reinsurance plan, I ask the same question.
I think the investors have the same level of sophistication as our managers. As a P&C insurance company or insurance company, staying prudent in our strategy is a part of our professional ethics and our bottom line. In terms of handling catastrophe and other disasters, our common principle is pricing management and also risk reduction management, catastrophe management in order to lower our exposure to the catastrophes or major accidents and their impact on our profitability. Reinsurance is one of the tools in our toolkit. In our internal management discussion, as a large company of RMB 500 billion-RMB 600 billion, when we cope with the investors' or group's requirements or the Ministry of Finance requirements, we answer with more stable management and operation so as to cope with the uncertainties caused by disasters. We do not want to use uncertainties to cope with uncertainties.
We try to make ourselves more certain in our management so as to cope with the uncertainties of disasters. For long-term investors in PICC Group and PICC P&C, that is going to be a good long-term solution or answer. There are certain internal discussions. Shall we lower the threshold? Maybe the price will be more expensive, but in case of catastrophe, we can be better prepared. Indeed, the reinsurance market has been quite rigid, and we need to increase our internal capacity to cope with that. Over the past couple of years, the reinsurance market has been rigid for catastrophe, and we try to balance out the overcompensation cost and strike a balance between it and our protection capability.
When a company is increasingly resourceful in terms of the threshold of compensation for both catastrophe and ordinary, insurance has been increased from RMB 600 million to RMB 800 million, from RMB 800 million to RMB 1 billion. Once the threshold is kept very low, among many subsidiaries, there may be some reckless operation in business operation. We try to always refine our management to resolve those issues. As I will mention later, what troubles us is not a few catastrophes. We can handle two or three typhoons or three. Even without overcompensation, we can still cope. When it comes to the management of a catastrophe, reinsurance has been rigid. We have done some work. We have held a conference of geological reinsurance in Dishihu on an annual basis. We actually promote the performance of the Chinese government in terms of handling the city flooding and catastrophe.
The flood in Zhengzhou and Henan will not reoccur very often. The Chinese government has done a lot. I would like the reinsurers to see the temporal impact of the work done by the Chinese government. We will also show them the impact the insurance companies have done in terms of risk reduction. If we compare the rain and the snow catastrophe last year versus those in 2008, we have actually reduced our losses tremendously. I hope the reinsurance market will be less rigid to China and will not transfer their rigidity from the international market to China. We have used a co-insurance consortium to resolve a lot of the uncertain or emerging risks. We can actually also aggregate the capacity of direct insurers and free ourselves from the overreliance on the reinsurance market. This is about the catastrophe.
For the medium level of losses, last year, our institutional business failed to achieve the expected results. It is not the case that our compensation ratio or combined ratio was too high. What mattered was the failure to properly control our expense rate, like in the case of auto insurance. For a medium-sized loss, we need to first set tension to expense and then, second, properly do our pricing. Pricing tends to float with expenses, and our pricing sometimes fails to function because it is not properly linked to the expenses. We need to manage both the expense and, second, the pricing. Thirdly, we need to also properly do our risk reduction management. We have achieved some results, but not as much as we have expected. The next lever is management of claims.
In the past, we end up typically with just the payment claims, but now we have done some screening and relocation before disasters. Now we also take active participation in disaster or emergency response. That makes us much better off and much prepared. We come to the disaster site not only to provide relief, but also to accurately understand and assess the losses, which will be crucial to our subsequent claim handling. We also want to remind the customers after disasters to manage their risks. For both catastrophe and medium disasters, we have such a whole set of management initiatives and solutions. Hopefully, in 2025, we can actually make the impact in numbers as well and bring it back to within 100.
In terms of the liability losses and the response to the interest of different losses, in 2024, both the group and PICC Life paid great attention to the losses from the interest rate spread. Therefore, we took active measures to cope with this and increase the efficiency while cutting costs. By the end of last year, in PICC Life, our overall liability cost was lowered to 3.2. For new business, the figure was even lower. 3.2 was for the entire business portfolio, including renewal. That was capped up by 78 basis points. It is quite a big margin, and in our history, it was also the lowest level in terms of liability cost.
For this year, we believe that we will see continued improvement of the overall economy and the stimulus package in terms of fiscal and monetary policies, the vitality of technology, innovation, and regained confidence in the capital market. PICC Life will leverage the new momentum in the market and work on both the liability and asset side. Optimize our product and business portfolio, increase the investment yield for the medium-long term, and better match the liability with the assets to increase our ability to protect ourselves from the interest spread loss risk. For liability side, we will focus more on cost management and improve the quality of liability.
First, we will need to consider the constraints of liability cost and do a proper level design and increase the protection products of five or more years of term, increase their share, and better improve the optimization of the duration and the value increase. We also need to dynamically adjust the interest rate-related policies on a do of overlooking research and make prudent assessments and necessary adjustments to the expected interest. Instead, we need to increase the supply and share of the floating rate term products. We also need to better share the risk of interest spread losses by adding such a floating rate of products and increasing our sales capacity. Of course, we will also need to prudently determine the return for the universal products and environmental products and consideration of the maximum yield.
On the asset side, we also need to prudently make a long-term asset allocation to increase the maximum yield. First, we will also implement the policy of investing within long-term capital in the funds, increase the share of equity investments, and serve the real economy and the right of five major chapters for finance, and capture the structural and long-term investment opportunities to increase the allocation to equity. Second, in the low-interest environment, we also need to better align our thinking with fixed income investment forward, expect the market yield trends, shorten the gap of duration, use levers to better capture the temporary opportunities, and reduce the gap of duration mismatch. For the bond compatible with the national strategies, we need to allocate more investment and advance the fast chapters of finance.
In 2025, we will increase our investment yield and try to cover the liability cost with a better return on investment to those assets in the liability management. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yu and Mr. Xiao. Next, I would like to invite more questions from Beijing. We're in the middle of the fourth block.
Thank you. The management from Security Times, two questions. First, investment. I want to follow up on the Asia market trends for this year. What is your analysis? And could you also specify your investment strategy? After this question to Mr. Cai, I would like to ask for the non-auto insurance in P&C. The DYCO file reform has been published for consultation in the industry in January this year. What is your attitude of the impact of the DYCO file reform on your finance and your business?
What preparation are you completing for the imminent reform DYCO file?
Thank you for your question about our outlook on the Asia market. For the Asia market this year, we are fully confident. We take a bullish view. There are several aspects. First, the macroeconomic trend in China is still going for the better. That has not changed. We have also noted some recently announced data on finance and PMI. They prove that the Chinese economy is further destabilizing and improving. We have also noticed some recent fiscal and monetary policies launched that are proactive and we believe helpful to boost market confidence and solidify the basis of profitability of particular companies. It was mentioned that the six ministries jointly circulated the opinions on pushing the medium-long term capital to the financial market. PICC recently also formulated the plans to implement this.
First, we are going to step up the allocation to equity assets. Moreover, we will also endeavor to develop more research and investment capacity for equity investment. Additionally, we will also actively participate in the piloting by regulators. Early March this year, as Mr. Xiao Jianyu said, PICC Life already received the FRA approval and will participate in the second tranche of the equity investment by setting up a RMB 10 billion private equity investm ent fund.
Second, we also believe that the valuation level of the Asian market is within the reasonable range for now. Horizontally speaking, when we compare Asia's valuation level with other markets, we believe the range is relatively appealing as it is in a reasonable range. Second, vertically speaking, the level of the valuation is around the mid-level over the past 10 years from the perspective of the tiny investment.
We think it's a good time to invest in the Asian market. Third, we also hold the opinion that technology innovation is bringing new structural investment opportunities. We see the emerging AI, robotics, and other strategic sectors witnessing rapid growth in recent years. These new growth momentum will bring about new opportunities for investment. We also have noticed that in recent years, there are international investors that are reevaluating China's assets. They are repricing Chinese assets, and some of them also increase the investment into the Asian market for specific investment strategies. For fixed income, we still focus on longer duration and stable returns. At the same time, we will also work harder on the management to improve the returns on the price difference. I also mentioned that we should optimize the allocation and structure.
I will also optimize the position structure and other insight and stability, which means stable returns from the investment. At the same time, another keyword is new. There are going to be opportunities of investment from the new productive forces, new factors of growth. I can answer the second question. In January 2025, we initiated the industry coordination meeting. Spring Festival this year came quite early, and most financial companies wanted to conclude the annual meeting before the Spring Festival. We actually had the industry coordination meeting in Beijing before the New Year. Our main purpose is to further consolidate the integration of reporting and operations. Second, we want to deliberate with the top players in the industry to see whether we can actually align the reporting operations alignment or the integration on it. Also for the non-auto expenses.
We reached consensus and reported that to the regulatory commission, which strongly supports the integration for the non-auto insurance as well as the expense both, and also supports the same effort for agro insurance. I think that will definitely help with the improvement of the underwriting profitability and risk reduction service quality. All industries should fulfill the regulations on the approval-related reporting so that we can avoid unnecessary over-competition. For the industry, the biggest challenge is not new energy vehicles, but the industry-wide losses for non-auto insurance. That is way greater than new energy vehicles. That is why we talked to the top 10 players, and we need to lead by example. The total expenses actually was lowered by 4.3 percentage points if it was not done across the industry.
Instead, we only worked on those that were within the boundaries of the regulations, but then we would only be able to reduce around 1.2. Second, for the receivable premiums, we also worked on coordination across the industry. For policies commercial, non-auto, less than RMB 100,000, we will actually have the issue the policy after receiving the premiums. We want to really consolidate the integration of reporting and operations and allocate more resources to customer services to establish a risk reduction management commercial model so that the whole industry can actually enter a high-quality development phase for the non-auto insurance. For the auto insurance, we actually see quite evident results of the Matthew effect. This alignment toward the integration of reporting and operations actually was not creating losses for the top players. Instead, we gained from such integrations.
I would like to report to the investors about that. For non-auto sectors, such integration can better unleash the effectiveness of our investment into the risk reduction. It can also really give play to the advantages of the brands at the scale, as well as our strengths in the service network, pricing, and writing claims and talents. In that context, we should support the integration of reporting and operations, and we should even take the lead for next steps on the liability insurance employers and the safety production liability insurance. We should also shore up our efforts on the products and returns so that we can return to our investors with actual benefits. That's all from me.
Thank you, Mr. Cai and Mr. Yu. Next question from Hong Kong, please. The gentleman on the fourth row on the left-hand side, please. Thank you, Management.
I'm Jaric with Morgan Stanley Analyst. Two questions. What are still for life and health the highest growth among all subsidiaries this year? We see for 2024, while there is the intrinsic value and also contract margin, all grew significantly both before and after the presumption. I would like to know about the outlook of the MDV in 2025 and also from the perspective of the product growth and team voting. What are the support we can expect from these two fronts? Second is for health insurance because there have been new industry policies, especially for the IP reform and also the health insurance reform. With that, in terms of the premium growth, product structure, and also long-term profitability, what are the outlooks?
Thank you for the question about MDV as PICC Life. First, it grew 9.6%, which is leading the industry for 2024.
It was 114% of new business value. For 2025, we will take effective measures so that MDV can achieve reasonable growth on the raw level. First, we need to strengthen the spring support being guided by the annual targets. Within the annual targets framework, we should strengthen coordination and adopt flexible strategies to ensure the fulfillment of the annual targets. Second is continuous improvement and optimization of the business structure. Over the past few years, PICC Life and also the Bank Insurance, a five-year period development strategy actually saw impressive growth. For the individual insurance, a 10-year growth grew by 50%. For Bank Insurance, a five-year growth was also very impressive. Business restructuring can support MDV. In 2025, we will also continue to improve the business structure.
For 2025, we will also lay a solid management control over the quality of the businesses. That can improve the value creation capacity. We know that the percentage ratio has already reached 96%. The third is more efforts in lowering the cost and improving efficiency. We should improve the mechanisms for these two targets and strengthen the cost management control and improve the performance of return on investment for the operational efficiency and performance of the company. I would like to elaborate on these two points that you mentioned. One is the product, and the second is the talent team. For the products, we need to implement the requirements of serving in the country.
We need to seize the opportunities of development based on the demands of the society and leverage the competitive strength of the insurance to better answer to the demands of the customers and the market. As the sharpest incent for the personal insurance, there is still a large potential for inclusive insurance. We need to better serve the national strategies as well as the customer needs. One example is the annuity insurance as the commercial insurance and also personal old care insurance as the third pillar. We should make greater strides in long-term care insurance on the healthcare side. For inclusive insurance, we should accelerate the improvement to satisfy the diverse needs of the people and that can improve the premium scale of the company as well as business value and also the societal impact of the company.
That is on the supplier's position of the products. The second is on the high quality and long-term stable development. We should strengthen the position of the security products and also the long-term dividends. We should support optimization of business value and the geared ratio cost control. The third is that in 2025, we should be grounded in different channels of the sales and the customer categorization to better answer to the diverse needs of the customers from different channels and categories so that the product provision system can match the sales channels and the product is managed in a more precise manner. The products and the sales should have a better matching relationship to form a more precise provision system, especially for the five-year long bank insurance products, so that we can better support the new policy growth.
That's all on the three, please. For the team voting or the sales team in particular, it directly impacts the MDV growth and the stability of the sales teams itself. For that, we have several major considerations in 2025. First is all-channel sales team voting. With that, we at the same time will strengthen our efforts on the wealth management and on the wellness team, and the IWP team. On the foundation of the previous two years, we will continue our efforts on that regard. The second is to better adapt to the new reality of the rising organization, which has an impact on the new distribution of the customer bases and the population on our demographic structure. In the cities, we should have a professional, young, and high-performing urban team. We need more resources into that direction.
The third, for the team building, we should guide ourselves on the basis of the fundamental principles and continuously optimize the sales teams so that the sales forces can better leverage the brand advantage of PICC as well as the resource for the company to expand the businesses and to serve the customers. This year, we want to further highlight the brands and the resources of PICC and business development so that the sales teams of the group can actually achieve growth both in terms of volume and quality. Thank you.
Let me address it. As you know, in terms of the CRC and VRP reform that the government is launching measures, they can better regulate the no-physical and the therapeutic behavior of hospitals and control the unreasonable growth of medical expenses and increase the utilization efficiency of medical insurance funds.
In our practice, in terms of the product portfolio restructuring, premium growth, and profitable growth, such measures have been helpful to the commercial health insurance. For PICC, a key part of the area to grow is social security business that is done by both PICC P&C and health. There was quite considerable pressure on profitability with the reforms on expenditure. There has been better control on the medical expenses. Major diseases is an extension of our traditional basic medical insurance. In terms of the large amount insurance of employees for major diseases, the profitability has increased a lot, and that is a boost to our overall short-term profitability. The next one is about the commercial medical insurance. This position has addition to the basic insurance coverage of major diseases.
If the expenses of basic medical insurance are properly controlled, there is also a chance to grow profitability of the commercial medical insurances. For example, for the additional group medical insurance of the institutions, the self-paid part under category A and B can be supplementally reimbursed for the second time. If CRC reform can bring down effectively the medical behavior and therefore medical expenses, the compensation for group insurance can also better achieve profitability. Third, with the DIG and DRP reforms, there is further enhancement of the bottom line role for the medical insurance to secure the minimum medical treatment. With the multi-tiered medical insurance system, the tiered needs of the people for medical services can be met.
With people's livelihood improving, the special needs, medication, rehabilitation, the out-of-hospital care, the new drugs and the medical devices beyond the catalog of medical insurance, the demand has been growing, and that translates to new requirements and development of space for commercial medical insurance. In terms of health management services, there are also certain technologies like the early stage screening of cancer wearables and also the health disease management. They are not reimbursable under basic medical insurance, but can be looked into the future development of health management. Our Chair just as said, the health management and insurance must be focused and also advantageous, and that matches our professional ability. Recently, PICC Health has been innovating products to meet the different needs of the customers and has also developed a whole of medical insurance products that meet market demand.
We have more than 70 million customers and covered under HALIPA long-term medical products. Through innovation, it can already cover the special drugs and advanced technologies such as CAR-T, which are used in outside hospitals. Recently, regarding the people's desire for imported and original drugs, we have also launched Yao Anbao, an online in-patient outpatient medical insurance for the premium needs in the special or international hospitals. We have also launched Ren Renbao as a premium product for medical insurance. It is the industry-first product, which is based on the tax incentives and integrated with the Zhenghebao. In the future, we are going to continue to step up product development and meet the growing needs of the people for more and better medical coverage.
Thank you both. I would like to now invite Beijing for additional questions. The lady on the fifth row, please. Thank you.
Thanks for the time for securing time. Two questions. AI and big data. What is the status of application of big data and AI in PICC? What are going to be their impacts on PICC? Second, 2025 has been said to be year one of autonomous driving. What is the impact of the popularization of intelligent autonomous driving on your auto insurance, especially NEV? What is the forecast for you on the evolution of the NEV car insurance in 2025?
PICC is a team innovating in the concept of digitalization with a special emphasis on the research and application of AI and big data. In our underlying team, claim, risk management, and sales, they have been extensively explored and applied. For big data, we have developed a group-wide big data platform.
In terms of a decision scenario-driven source, direct sourcing, and code development sharing, we have pulled the data resources through the group in terms of 130,000 data sheets from 170-plus systems. More than 50% of the data included in data lakes, and more than 80% of the data have been under sharing and common development. With the centralization of big data, our intelligent review, digitalized risk management, intelligent costs, credit assessment, regulatory reporting, we have seen a lot of the applications in those areas. We have also developed a group-wide unified office for data and intelligence. We have also developed the OCR, ALP, and IPA, and 170 other AI capabilities, and they have been rolled out in different scenarios. For example, in 2024, in more than 70 scenarios, we have offered our support for business applications. They are called more than 100 million times per day.
In 2023, the group launched our autonomously developed AI large model. We have also further improved a computing power model product application for the big model. We have also applied in multiple scenarios. The scenario development has exceeded 100 x. For example, in terms of the intelligent outbound calls, the premium has been increased by RMB 2.8 billion. In terms of the intelligent approval of medical insurance, we reduce our loss by RMB 3.3 billion. In terms of the intelligent Q&A in lieu of a traditional text-based inquiry, our ability to resolve questions with one goal has increased by 35%. The AI coding has taken 40% of our technology development, and the code adoption rate has approached 30%. We are also paying close attention to the future development of AI represented by DeepSeek.
They have received broad attention in the society, and we are of the view that AI will be a main advanced tool for productivity, and that will surely affect overall life including insurance. We believe that in the future, AI insurance will be profoundly impacted and will migrate from the traditional exposure compensation to a sanitary prevention and from standardized products to customized services, from product sales to service ecosystem, from single-play risk management to comprehensive risk management. There is a broad prospect of development. PICC will follow up with the cutting-edge technologies and use this opportunity to move forward our digitalization and AI applications.
We would like to introduce technologies that also orchestrate computing power, algorithms, and enhance information protection and security surveillance, further introduce and apply AI while keeping the data secure and business standardized so that AI will be more and more rolled out in PICC and to improve customer experience. Let me address your second question. In terms of intelligent driving, the cars for series production in China use basically L2 Plus. According to the current legislation, while determining the liabilities of accidents, the owners and drivers of the cars will be held accountable. Therefore, using the existing auto insurance product, the short-term impact is insignificant or less. In terms of the accident rate, we assessed together with leading OEMs, the accident rate has slightly decreased for intelligent driving. The risk is not by the individuals, but by the OTA or system failure.
The individual accident rate has dropped, but the group risk still exists. For intelligent driving, there is incremental market for auto insurance. Recently, the leading companies have been working with us for the L2 level automobiles. We have also earned some premium with a decent compensation ratio or combined ratio. We are now building a pipeline of products for L3 and Plus in terms of the ICVs. We have also planned ahead. In order, we have been able to meet the needs for risk management and insurance products in the event of the launch of L3. We are the only insurance company in China to work with the industry association, including Caltech and the credit insurance, to develop the technical provisions for the industry standards for the compensation of intelligent and connected vehicles or ICVs.
In PICC, we are improving our operating capability end-to-end from underwriting to claim for also an NEV. There are still some potentials for further improvement. We also step up our capability for pricing and improve our business portfolio. We use auto insurance as a window of opportunity to go through our full life cycle of automobiles. It is called CART Plus Everything. The second is full life cycle management. From sales to products, NEVs can be defined as cell phones. The product channels and the development can be both broadened internally. We require NEVs to be treated as mobile phones for product development. Moreover, we continue our innovation and capacity building for product R&D and research. We also do NEV projects overseas recently, according to our own pricing advantages for NEVs.
In order to help the country relieve the difficulties regarding the expansion of NEVs overseas, as well as the high premium and difficult lack of access, we have developed an overseas market. We focus on Hong Kong, Explore Asia, and plan for the global market as a three-step strategy. With AXA, on January the 1st, we signed our first order through PICC Hong Kong for the NEVs, maybe in China, but riding in Hong Kong. The order is signed off by PICC Hong Kong and AXA, but the pricing was done by PICC P&C, and around 50% has been seeded to the domestic insurance company. Along this model, we plan to launch it in Thailand.
There may be a delay of one to two months because of the failure to reach a consensus on seeding in Thailand and other countries. Such a rollout will take place step by step.
That is on one hand because of our arrangement and strategic consideration for new energy vehicles in Austin. We're already in a stage of existing market considering the saturation in China. We would like to focus on the overseas expansion in the next stage and give it to petrol or new energy vehicles. Our pricing capabilities really had a significant improvement with our models. We want to package it as a standard product and provide that to other entities in the industry so that the entire industry can actually be freed from the necessary considerations.
We would like to share our pricing mechanisms free of charge so that we can lead to standardization of the market for a reasonable rationale competition and also the healthy development of the new energy vehicle-related insurance. From the perspective of the National Policy and Government to Work report, there is strong support to their development. Our estimate is that around 2025, the premium of new energy vehicles will be around RMB 150 billion-RMB 180 billion, which will account for about 16%-18% of the total auto insurance premium. That is our expectation, and it also explains our increased investment. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Zhang and Mr. Yu.
To answer to NSERC and Shanghai Stock Exchange's requirements on better services to the investors, on March 30, we announced that we made an announcement, published an announcement for solicitation of questions, and we received lots of positive feedback from the investors. We would like to give our gratitude to your support. Our management has already made very detailed and frank answers on the questions during the current session. There is one representative question and also the last one for the 2024 results announcement. It is that since last year, China raised a lot of new requirements and policies with regard to the market value, regulation, and management, and we see many listed companies are disclosing their market cap management system. I would like to know more about the considerations of the company in that regard.
Thank you. I can answer the question.
Since last year, the top-level design of the market cap management continued to improve. As you know, the 13th, the third plenary session of the 20th party Congress meeting required listed companies to improve quality and also healthy, stable development of the capital market. At the end of last year, CRC also issued guidelines to provide guidance for listed companies to properly address the investment value and to improve the rate levels of returns of the investors. I think these are conducive to the stabilization of the expectations and also the long-term stable development of the capital market. We highly value the market cap management. In the next steps, we'll focus on three things. The first is better performance. Over the past four years, PICC Group and PICC P&C outperformed the market average. I think the fundamental support is the continuously improving performance of the company.
This morning, President Xi Jinping met with the representatives of the industry and of commerce and the people of Congress Hall. He said, "Believing in China is believing in tomorrow. Investing in China is investing in the future." With further consolidated, our confidence and determination, we believe, for a period to come, ensures the industry is at an important strategic period of time. Give it life or property and casualty with these unprecedented and valuable opportunities. We have confidence and the ability to maintain the stable and steady development. We will also strengthen the operations and management to enter the new accounting standards. We will improve the underwriting profits and ROE. The second is dividend optimization, which has always been the focus of analysts and investors. We will comply with the regulations and reference the industry standards. We will optimize the dividend payout policies under the new standards.
We will research based on the core of long-term and stable growth of the per share. At the same time, we'll consider the policy for the payout rate. The third is the diversification of the means and instruments that probably noticed last year. The board of directors already deliberated in the past our market cap management system. On the one hand, we will further consolidate the responsibilities of the board and the management on the management of the market cap. On the other hand, we clarified the tools and means for the management, including buyout and increasing position as well as other measures. We will conduct research and proactively communicate with our supervisors and regulatory communities to leverage the new tools for the improvement of the market value.
At the same time, we will also strengthen our interactions, communications with investors, and listing and the media through roadshows and investor open days, etc., to answer to the concerns of the market. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Zhao. You remind me of two things. I have confidence in confidence itself and believe in believe itself. We'd like to thank everyone for coming to the results announcement, the leadership, the investors, the analysts, and friends from the press. This results announcement has received a lot of attention from the market. It's quite long. Our goal is to better address the concerns and questions from the investors, analysts, and friends from the press and capital markets. I believe that the management actually already answered quite in a very detailed manner.
This is perhaps the longest results announcement because it's almost two hours and a half, and Q&A has exceeded 110 minutes. I actually asked for approval and whether we can extend the Q&A session. I got the approval because we want to answer the questions for our friends and try our best to serve you the best. We see some of the questions are still left unanswered. Some hands were raised but not caught up. We would try our best to find more opportunities to answer your questions in a frank manner in the future and to contribute with our due services. Thank you. That concludes the results announcement today. Thank you.