Right. Good morning. Welcome to the 2023 End-of-results Announcement for Ping An Group. I'm Richard Sheng, the board secretary of the company. I will be hosting the meeting together with Jen, Lin Jianwei, chair of our in Ping An. We'll be doing this via onsite, which webcast and conference call. We're gonna have Mr. Lin to introduce you to the management team in Hong Kong.
Thank you. Here we have Dr. Peter Ma, chairman. Also, in Hong Kong, we have Co-CEO and senior vice president, Mr. Michael Guo. And Mr. Fu Xing, senior vice president. Back to you, Mr. Sheng, to introduce the management president in Shanghai.
Thank you. In Shanghai, we have president and Co-CEO, Mr. Xie Yonglin.
首席财务官。
Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Zhang Zhichun.
首席投资官，邓斌先生。
Chief Investment Officer, Mr. Benjamin Deng. Mr. Fu is going to take you through the 2023 business overview, and the management on both venues will take your questions. Mr. Fu, please.
All right. Dear friends from the media, dear colleagues, good morning. I'll be presenting you the business overview for 2023 of Ping An. Please, take a look at slide 5, which is a picture that you know very well, the chart of house. If you've been following Ping An, you will know this chart very well, which speaks of our strategy, which is integrated finance plus healthcare and elderly care. The foundation of this house is the technology empowerment. Subsequently, we're going to share with you our strategic measures and how to deepen the implementation of that strategy. The next slide.
Just to report to the media, our business performance in 2023, revenue was CNY 1.03 trillion, up by 4.7% year-over-year. Attributable OPAT was CNY 118 billion. Operating ROE 13.2%. Dividend per share was 2.43 CNY per share, growing by 0.4%. As you can see, Ping An Group has always attached great importance to shareholder return. For 12 years in a row, we have been enhancing the dividends. For the last 12 years, accumulated dividend payout was CNY 290 billion. Since the listing, we have closed CNY 310 billion dividend payout. Also, let me talk about BV. The new business value grew by 36.2%. That growth had been seeing double-digit growth across the last 4 quarters, which thanks to our solid measures of life insurance reform. So in NBV, we're gonna have a life and health attributable operating profit, excluding one-off item and adjustment of assumption.
L&H attributable operating profit grew by 0.6%. The number of individual customers as you know, we are a company with integrated health. We look at the number of customers, the activity per customer, and profit per customer. The most important foundation of the business is the number of the retail customers, which grew by 2.2% to 230 million. In the meantime, there is shareholder equity, CNY 988 billion, which is up by 3.4%. So that was briefly on the full-year results. Now, on the following slide, I'm going to share with you that despite 2023 being a very challenging year with changing economic environment, the management has presented results that's quite remarkable. On the board meeting yesterday, many directors have acknowledged the efforts put in place. On the group level, our core business here, first of all, let me stress that we have stable and resilient core business.
Life, Bank, P&C has maintained stable. The three businesses combined CNY 140.9 billion, attributable operating profit down by a slight 2.8%. A lot of you are interested in life insurance. Thanks to the reform and deepening reform measures over the years, we have seen results of high-quality development. The channel model, agent channel, has been significantly changed. The MBV was up by 36.2%. The capacity, capability, productivity per person, per agent, was actually improved by close to 90%, which is a leading metric in the industry. The income per agent also improved by close to 40%. The second change is the deepening of the multi-channel operation. You see the banca channel. Among the multi-channel reform, banker has been showing great momentum. New business value grew by 77.7%. The non-agency channel contribution put together amounts to 16.5%. That's thanks to the 4+3 strategy, where we used to have one agency now, channel.
Now we have 4 channels: agency, banker, community grids, and part-time agency. Also, it's thanks to the diversification uniqueness of our product, insurance plus healthcare, insurance plus elderly care. Very importantly, another reform will be on the gradual significant improvement on quality. One metric will be the 13-month policy persistency ratio improving by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. The 2.5 percentage point improvement has been quite remarkable. We have talked about the dividend. For 12 years in a row, we have been increasing the dividend. The dividend yield is highly competitive among the peers. The two main business here, which is the P&C insurance. On the P&C side, most essentially, we need to look at the quality of the business. We have excellent quality. Internally, for 12 for five years, we have great improvement.
You know, auto combined ratio 97.7%, outperforming the peers, excluding one-off, excluding natural disasters, only 96.6% combined ratio. That metric is a result of the digitalization measures, digital execution, and also cost-saving that we have put in place in the years. I'd like to share with you now on the bank. The keyword of bank is the risk resilience, which is excellent. A few years, a few days ago, the bank has published full-year results, and you can see the profit of the bank grew by 2.1%. We have also noted the balance sheet remained very stable, the NPL at only 1.6%, cover ratio or provision at 277%. So those are some of the key metrics and performance highlights. On the next slide, this is the distributed profit distribution. A few key points here worthwhile of sharing with you.
First of all, as we say, we maintain stable attributable operating profit, you know, CNY 140.9 billion of the three core business, only slight decline of 2.8%. L&H profit has been very healthy, excluding one-off items. As you know, this year, we have revised down the investment return assumption from 5% to 4.5%, excluding this factor. L&H is actually growing by 0.6%. So that result is rather remarkable, resilient. And also, if you look at this slide, the contribution, like, L&H has high contribution, which is over 89.1%. So core business remains very robust. The next one is on the L&H operating profit maintaining stable and robust. As we talked to the analysts in the last conference, they have been asking questions around it, which is the contractual service margin. The CSM balance remained huge, over some CNY 160 billion.
Such a balance is the solid foundation for future release of profits. Also, the operating variance was 48 in a positive range, which goes to show the persistency ratio, expenses ratio. And those metrics have continued to show favorable changes. The next slide is the solvency adequacy. Under phase 2, C-ROSS, the solvency adequacy has been significantly higher than the regulatory requirement. We are more than twice as much as the regulatory requirement. The comprehensive adequacy was also very good. So in terms of the dividend payout in the last 12 years, we continue to raise the dividend with CAGR above 25%. So maintaining the dividend ratio speaks to our confidence of our core business and future growth. On the bottom left shows the available fund available to the group maintaining a very stable level.
Going forward, you can see in terms of sustainability and ESG, we are going to be driving more value for low-carbon social responsibilities. A lot of media awarded us with this rewards and accolades. And then, as you can see, we are number 33rd on Global 500, number 1 in global insurance. So that also thanks to your recognitions of our operation, capabilities, and the future outlook. So that was a very brief overview of the 2023 performance. And then I hope subsequently, we can count on you for your continual support and interest. I will believe in 2024, 2025, and 2026, we're gonna be on track of high-quality development with promising future. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Fu.
Due to the time interest, we actually have a very diversified material in our presentation material. We have the business performance by business lines and the outlook of our future strategy and business. For more details, you can check our presentation material. But now, we'll kick the floor to Q&A session. In the Q&A session, we'll rotate questions between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Please identify yourself before raising the question. And please raise no more than two questions each time. We'll first have the friends of the media in Shanghai venue to raise questions. First, please, Gu Jinying from CCTV Finance.
I have two questions. First question is about business performance. So we see the OpEx has been declined. I wonder why. And also, to the management, for the subsidiaries' performance, how do you take on that?
Another question is about the share price performance we see this morning. The A-share and H-share price both declined. Now, A-share price is only 40.14 RMB. And Hong Kong price is around HKD 33.00. So how do you take on the share price and what's your expectation of the future? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. I'll answer your first question about the business performance. I believe you attach great importance to our business performance. So our operation is under this macroeconomic backdrop. Our business performance is closely in line with the macroeconomic landscape, which is very challenging in this year and very a lot of uncertainties. But we are confident on the fundamentals of the Chinese economy. There are some volatilities. For example, first, capital markets volatility.
The capital markets volatility in the past year, as we see the CSI down along with the HSI. So this volatility and the index decline has affected the whole financial industry as well as the insurance industry. But we believe that the capital markets decline has already been priced in our share price, and its future impact is limited. Secondly, this wide profit decline is due to the credit risks. And in terms of the credit risks, Ping An's business sector, there are some of Ping An's subsidiaries under risk exposure. For example, our Lufax Holding, it has the retail financing, retail loans. And in the past two years, it has been very challenging for them. But in terms of when we look at some internal indicators, we found those indicators already bottomed out, and they are turning around.
We believe they won't affect us adversely too much in the future. Thirdly, I would like to share that we have been always prudent in doing provisioning charge. In the past few years, we have done the revaluation assessment and doing provisioning charge for our assets. This has laid a solid foundation for us to cope with the future risks and uncertainties and also build a solid foundation for our assets and our balance sheet. I believe the OpEx decline is mostly due to the one-off items. In the next 3 years, when we return to the high-quality development trajectory, this is something we're very confident about. Here, I would like to add some color. What is important is not to look back but to look forward in the next 3 years, how Ping An would become in the future. Firstly, our strategy is very clear.
Integrated finance and healthcare and O2O care strategy is stable and constantly builds a solid foundation for our future growth. Secondly, our main businesses are very stable, be it the MBV of life insurance or our agent channels, productivity per agents continuously growing. These are all indicators of stable development of core businesses. It is not an easy task to achieve such a performance. Thirdly, we are very good at execution, and our execution has been highly recognized by the industry. We are fully confident in our future development, and we believe we could provide value to customers, employees, shareholders, and society at the highest level possible. I'll answer your question about the share price. In terms of the share price, as you mentioned that the decline in our share price today, I think this has nothing to do with our fundamentals. Our share price is severely undervalued.
There are many factors influencing the share price. There are macroeconomic factors, market factors, and some dynamic factors. So there are myriad factors influencing the share price, and one single day share price movement doesn't reflect our fundamentals. And here, check, the share price is quite undervalued, which doesn't reflect our performance, be it PB or PE, as you already mentioned. Our PE, PB, and our core business indicators, including our life business MBV, and most importantly, our dividend, our payout ratio has been increasing in the past 12 years, which is much better than the industry average. So be it the fundamentals or the future growth potential were the best pick for the value investment. Okay, next question from Hong Kong venue. Sorry.
I would like to add some color. Xiaotao has mentioned a lot already.
Like, we have very clear strategy, and there are indicators showing that our main business is quite stable. Meanwhile, we're in a very good industry. Our strategy features integrated finance and healthcare and elderly care. These sectors are very promising. As this journalist just mentioned, we have low PE and PB multiples. We agree with you. So we believe, actually, if you are excellent, you will not be missed, and the price will return to where it's supposed to be to reflect the actual value of the company. So we are confident.
Next question. We'll invite the gentleman in the middle to raise the question. Dear management, so in terms of the share price, do you have any plans to increase the payout ratio this year or to implement a buyback plan to support the share price? Second question is about the insurance business.
How do you take on the insurance industry this year as well as the macroeconomic landscape this year? So in the first quarter from the first quarter's performance, how do you consider how do you consider about this year's performance given we have a high base in the last year? Apparently, a lot of attention has been paid to our dividend and our share price. Our dividend policy has been stable. As you could tell, in the past 12 years, we have been increasing the dividend distribution constantly, and our payout ratio is quite competitive in the market. In considering with Mr. Xie's point, we need to first pick the industry, second, pick the company, third, check the share price. We're undervalued in both PE and PB multiples.
In terms of the dividend, because we are quite confident in the next three years' business operation, so we'll adhere to our constant policy of dividend. Thank you. I'll answer your question regarding the life business. Life business is a long-cycle business. So for the whole industry, either in China or in the Western countries, life business is highly related to the development of the local economy. So we have full confidence in China's macroeconomic development, and we are also confident in the long-term development of the life industry. So this is the prerequisite. Secondly, you could see our last year's MBV reached great growth, and in the first quarter in 2024, our MBV also showed very positive growth year-over-year. This has given us full confidence that, first, our life reform was very effective, whether it's agent channel or bancassurance channel or community grid.
They have achieved great results and laid a solid foundation for our future decent development. We are quite positive confident in our MBV growth this year and in the next three years. Secondly, as people pay a lot of attention to life business, it is because life business is a core in our company's business. I'd like to ask you to pay attention to our strategy. Our strategy is about integrated finance plus healthcare and out-of-the-care. As we communicate with our analysts and friends of the media, usually, we would hear that analysts would refer our strategy as the Wells Fargo Bank plus UnitedHealth model. We believe this is a very close analogy. But what we are actually doing is an upgrade of that reference. Firstly, for the integrated finance, we have more than just a bank. We have insurance, securities.
We have a full suite of licenses of financial businesses. In healthcare, we have health insurance, life insurance. We have healthcare services. And also, we built this three-layered service system, which is the online to store and home delivery. On top of that, we have very powerful technology and AI capabilities. So backed by this strategy, Ping An Group will continuously deliver stable growth in the future and provide you decent value. And for we are fully confident in our profitability and growth in the future.
Thank you. Question from Shanghai venue. The lady in the middle.
I'm a reporter from Xinhua. I'd like to ask about the life reform. You know, MBV has been showing good momentum, but agency headcount continued to drop. So I wonder, when can we expect a stabilization or bottoming out or recovery of the manpower? Another question on banker.
It was going strong last year, but now because of regulatory change of consistency, use and reporting a commission fee, which was quite a big impact. So what do you expect of the banker performance this year and any change of business model thereof? Okay. Let me first address the question on agency channel. There's a lot of interest on agency channel because that was a very important channel for life insurance. If you look at the industry at large in the past few years, the agency channel has been through a quantitative change shifting to qualitative change. For the entire sector, they are reshuffling their strategy, moving from mass, manpower campaign and gearing towards more higher-quality development. So lower headcount and lower manpower is an industry trend at large. On the other hand, at Ping An, we have been proactively addressing the quality.
We're trying to steer the quality on a transformation. This is our own initiatives. Are we seeing better quality of agencies? If you look at the results, you can see the productivity per agent. We have been seeing close to 90% year-on-year. The income per agent 2023 improved by close to 4% compared with 2022. That was based on higher productivity and higher income for our agents. So therefore, the quality for Ping An's agent has been remarkably different and much better than what it used to be. And in continued development, we also look at the gameplay and strategy for our agency teams instead of just focusing on high-quality agents, but also we're also talking about the high-quality agency teams. So it's not just having, different tiers, of, you know, MVP, QVP, FVP, management of agent by different tiers.
But also, we have some of the team-building metrics to build excellent, you know, agency teams instead of focusing on individual agent but also individual agency teams so that we have more capability on a team level. So this is another important change we have seen on agency channel. So going forward, if you look at the next three years, what is our strategy for agency channel? I think there are three keywords to bear in mind. First of all, stabilizing the size. Secondly, enhancing quality, or improving efficiency. And thirdly, higher productivity. So therefore, on the one hand, we want to continue to optimize the structure of the agency, but also, we're going to be stabilizing the manpower so that agency can truly become a solid channel supporting the life business. So that was some of the strategy and direction that we have for the agency channel.
We have four channels. That will be the first channel. Let me come to the other one. Well, the reason we look at agency channel because it's very important, but for Ping An Group, we actually we have a four plus three where we have four channels. That really is the support from other life insurance companies. In addition to agency channel, we also have banker channel. As alluded to in your question, banker is a channel that we are building now. The growth momentum has been very strong. Thirdly, we have community grids. That is a channel that's proprietary to Ping An. Also, we have 1 million part-time agents. So let me talk a bit about community grids.
That is unique to Ping An in a way that we created, in our reform based on the existing customer base, based on the geographical distribution, based on the value proposition potential. Then we breaking them into grids. So by breaking down the customer base in the grids, that was the approach taken by the Chinese government during the COVID pandemic, trying to or attempting and successfully curbing the spread of the disease and infection. So that actually helped us to manage and operate our existing client base better by providing services, by providing the persistency ratio improvement, by improving upselling, and also by providing more product of integrated finance and also more healthcare, out-of-the-care, and healthcare services so that customer will have a greater sense of value. So we can explore more value from the customer. So Community Grid, in our view, is a highly potential channel going forward.
So therefore, even though, of course, you are looking at life insurance, but we're moving from one channel into now four channels, and all four channels are at different stages. There are those who are mature. There are those that are still in early stage. There are those that are growing. So that kind of a layout and structure will support the long-term sustained high-quality development of life insurance. That is a very important point I'd like to make clear to you. And the media also asked about the regulatory policy for bancassurance. If you take note, you will see the financial regulators recently and also in past time in this past year, they have been focusing on the compliance and regulations of the industry. There are a range of measures and policies.
Firstly, I think the regulatory requirement and policies are all in line with the long-term stable, high-quality development for the industry. We absolutely welcome and in strict compliance, particularly in banker, particularly those policy can help to address some of the long-term problem or challenges, for example, the commission fee laws. There's some insurance company out there who are using high commission fees to compete in the market. That, but now with this new policy of consistency reporting and use of finish commission fee, those act those behavior will be curbed. And also in terms of operating efficiency and risk management, risk control, all this will be beneficial.
So that kind of regulatory policy for those company who have strong operation, strong product offering, and strong service capability, great branding, multi-channel, multi-offering, that policy is going to be a robust and strong support, and it is really in our favor. Thank you, Mr. Guo. Second question from Hong Kong. Hello. I'm Guo Xuelin from Economic Daily from Hong Kong. I'd like to follow up on the share price and dividend. You talk a lot about, share price, dividend. However, stock price, I mean, dropped to now, from HKD 90 per share two years ago. So there's been some lack of confidence from investors and also talk about dividend payout in the next three years, and you talk about how confident you are to maintain the dividend payout policy, and you are confident with your operation. What's the reason for that confidence?
And also, the asset management was recorded with a hefty loss last year. What has contributed to the loss of asset management? Is there any provision that's necessary? And what measure you have this year to really reverse that kind of loss? Thank you. For share price and dividend, it is all based on the underlying confidence for our business. That was a great question. Why we are so confident for the company in the future? The first source of confidence is coming from robust, stable core business. As you can see, the life insurance, P&C, bank, and the main lines of business, excluding one-off item, they are showing positive growth. That is very robust. For life, Mr. Guo has talked about the 4+3 strategy in life insurance. In the past years of life reform, we have seen strong results like MBV 36.5% growth.
That goes to show the positive results. The MBV will turn out to be the solid foundation for value release. So that's on the life insurance side. Now, if we take into account what Mr. Guo talked about, integrated finance, healthcare, well-being, O2O care, when we continue to drive more synergies, and that is going to be a very effective strategy. And on that, let me share with you, we have 230 million customer base in integrated finance. So our customer acquisition cost is far below the peers and below our previous costs like life, P&C, and banks. The customer acquisition cost is about 50% or even 70% of some of the peers. With such a huge client base, with such a low acquisition cost, high efficiency of re acquisition, high retention, low risk cost, I think that is a foundation that underpin our confidence of the future value release.
Now, you have alluded to that in the past year, due to capital market fluctuation, higher credit risk, we have taken some measures. Now, in the past year, particularly in Q4, we have proactively managing, our risks and making prudent provisions. So when we, strengthening the balance sheet, it also consolidate the foundation for the next three years, which is why we are so confident for the results in the next three years, hence the confidence in dividend payout. And I believe share price will, see regression into the fundamentals, as Mr. Guo said. Goal will glitter eventually.
Question from Shanghai, please.
Thank you, for having me. I'm He Kui from Shanghai Securities News. Two questions for management. First of all, the integrated finance plus, healthcare, elderly model, any mo new progress? And also, Dr. Ma has become the director of the Strategy Research Institute.
So what are the new strategy? And also, you talk about some growth that are doing very well. For example, the number of customers, the contract per customer, and value per customer. Those three metrics are very important. So how are they going to perform in this year? Okay. We have a look at the Ping An strategy, integrated finance plus healthcare and out-of-the-care.
If you look at our integrated finance momentum, it has already laid a solid foundation of a customer base. If you check our results statement, our retail customer base has increased significantly to 23 million, and contract per customer stayed flattish. Profit per customer did dip due to the industry momentum and the market weakness.
But if you go a deeper layer to analyze the quality of our customer, our quality, the quality of our customer is very stable and robust. I'll share with you. Our investable assets over 500,000 customers, the number increased 67.6%. This group of customers, contract per customer is 5 contracts, which is 1.7 times of the average customers. So the quality of this group of customer is very high. They are our quality customers. Second, look at the growth of customers. Customers aged between 30-50-year-olds account for over 50% of our total customer base. At this age group, they are healthy, they're robust, and they have promising future. So it's great potential of growth. The third is our retention. The customer retention is 90% in 2023. But if you look at our high net worth income customers, their retention is even higher.
Integrated finance strategy has built this solid foundation for us, which is the three high customers we call high value, high growth, high retention. This group of customers is the core driver of our future growth. Another part is the healthcare and elderly care services. We deliver the services online, to-store, and home delivery. We cooperated with over 1,700 AAA hospitals, and we have 50 we have deployed elderly care facilities in 54 cities with 650 services. So all these services have returned to empower our core businesses, as you could tell from our financial report. Our life business, in terms of the MBV growth, 70% of the MBV contributors are from the customers who enjoy the benefits of plus services. And customer who enjoying the elder care services have increased over 12 times year-over-year. What does this mean? Two factors.
First, the healthcare and elderly care services has great potential of growth in China because they meet the demands of customers. Secondly, such high growth means that the customers are well received of our services. We have called one structure of a vertical and horizontal. So horizontally, we have the family doctor to manage the customers from health, subhealth, disease, major chronic disease, and elderly care services provision. Vertically, we have online, to-store, and home delivery. So the integrated finance plus healthcare and elderly care services together lay well a solid foundation for our future development. This is why we believe that in the next three years, our business performance will continue to grow healthily and stably. Thank you. Next question from Hong Kong. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Echo. I would like to ask Miss Fu about provision coverage?
So I would like to ask, what were the assets that incurred that coverage provisioning? Because for asset business, it's probably Country Garden, and they're facing some legal risks. Does that relate to your provisioning charge? And secondly, you have some holdings with HSBC, and whether there's something that you can share with us in terms of your engagement with HSBC. Thank you. Thank you for a question. It's a good question. So for our provisioning coverage, it's not that we did something special at the end of the last year. It's just that after 35 years, our provisioning policy has always been very prudent and conservative. And we have reviewed all our assets, and with the prudent principle, we have done an impairment assessment and charged some provisioning. The reason to do this is to consolidate our balance sheet. It is not for a particular project.
And the project you just mentioned actually has a very limited exposure in our balance sheet, and the percentage is very small. It has no impact on our operating results. Also, under this prudent provisioning coverage, after our balance sheets being consolidated, we believe in the next few year in the next three years or in the longer future, our balance sheet's quality will be very good, and which will provide a very good quality or foundation for the future business growth. The second, in terms of the HSBC, as we mentioned before, we don't comment on a specific financial investment target. That's all. Thank you. Next question from Shanghai, please. Dear management, I have two questions. First, it's about, our the insurance company has been a strong supporter of the real economy.
So my question is that, how are you going to wield your insurance funds to support the real economy? And the second is the Founder Securities and the Ping An Securities. So last year, that sec the regulator asked Ping An Group to propose your solution regarding the Ping An Securities and the Founder Securities. Could you share with us some information regarding that? Thank you. You know, Founder Securities is a listed company. It has fully disclosed its business performance, which was pretty good in the past two years. For the two securities company, what we do is to deeply empower well, improve their performance as for what you care about. As for what you care about, as a listed company, I can only answer that under the regulation and requirements, we'll deliver what they want.
I know what you're talking about what you're asking about one license, one company for a specific financial business. The second question, in finance, there are three supportive measurements. The doc we are in line with what the governments want. We will promote the production of the new industries and facilitate the economic development of China. We will revolve around inclusive green finance, fintech, and pension as well as digital finance to support the economic development. To be specific, in terms of the fintech, as we mentioned, we are an integrated finance company. We'll use the advantage of this strategy, using our insurance funds and commercial banks' investments and investment banks to serve tech startups at different stages. We'll support them with loans and increase their risk assistance resistance. There are some specific data.
For example, Ping An Bank has supported SMEs and tech companies over CNY 1,110 billion of loans and insurance. In terms of the finance, the green finance, we have supported the loans to in terms of the green finance, including green investment, green insurance, and green loans. I will not go deep into the numbers because you can see from our financial reports, but total is CNY 49 trillion. The green loans is CNY 150 billion, and it has been growing rapidly. In terms of the inclusive finance, it has something we've been doing for years. We have built a very high-quality inclusive finance structure, and we have been increasing the coverage of inclusive finance and make it more accessible. We have provided nearly CNY 600 billion to micro, small, and medium businesses, and we have provided loans without collaterals.
We have supported, for example, delivery guys with special insurance at Summershort at over CNY 400 billion. In terms of the pension finance, our Michael has already mentioned a lot. Healthcare and elderly care strategy is one of our core strategy. This is our strategic direction, and we'll spend no efforts in delivering it. Michael has already mentioned a lot of numbers and deliberated on how it empowers our whole business and support our customers to enable our customers to enjoy our healthcare services. As of end of last year, home-based elderly care services has already been expanded to 5,460 cities, and nearly 70% already enjoying the benefits of plus service. This is beneficial to our own development but also bring value to our customers. This is what the digital finance is about. We promote three digitalization projects: digital operation, digital management.
We use all these tools to reduce costs and improve efficiency. In this way, we could bring more value, more profits to our customers so they can enjoy time and money saving and worry-free financial services. This is what we have been doing to genuinely follow the guidance of the central government. And because we have followed the implementation of five articles to do our job. Now, the question from Hong Kong. Hello. I'm a reporter from the Economic Daily. In low-interest rate environment, what is the investment strategy for the insurance fund? Any change of the investment strategy, and how do you cope with a low-interest rate environment? And second, the government encouraged the insurance fund to get into the equity market. So any plans there? Thank you for the question. Now, I'd like to respond in three parts.
First of all, what we have done. Secondly, how do we do it? And thirdly, what's our view on economic cycle? First of all, what have we done? For a long time, we stick to the strategy of extended asset duration, better match of asset liability management durations. So we have foreseen the interest rate trends. In the past few years, we have overweight on the long-duration interest bonds, resulting in two results. First of all, the asset liability matching of the duration has been excellent. Calculated by effective duration, we basically have largely a perfect match. Of course, if you use a different arithmetic calculation, regardless, we're in a very comfortable position in terms of the match.
Past, because we have been deploying bonds ahead of time, ahead of the curve, so we have been able to lock in a high interest rate compared with the prevailing interest rate, giving right to a lot of implied value. So that's what we have done. At the same time, we have a balance allocation in equity investment among value and growth stocks. We have the balance allocation so that we can outperform the market benchmark. So that's also what we have done. The second reply will be on how do we do it. In three words, our investment style will be described as strategic focus, navigating cycle, technical flexibility, planning ahead, balance allocation, and risk diversification. Now, strategic focus, we have to stay focused. We are going through, we have to ride through the economic down cycle of 10 years.
By tactics, we have to foresee what might be the changes in the market so we can plan ahead to allocate our funds ahead of time. Risk diversification, we often talk about the best way or the most fundamental way to manage risk will be in diversification. So therefore, balanced allocation for diversification to this day has provided stable return. Our investment benefits from balanced allocation in equity and bond. In equity, we have balanced allocation between value and growth. In 2023, 2022, our equity return have been double-digit we have been outperforming the CSI 300 by double digits. So therefore, investment performance has been stable. Risks are very well managed. Thirdly, to respond to your question, this is really our view on economic performance or economic cycles. Well, we always resort to the same rule, which is economic cycles. We've been through high interest rate.
Now, interest rate is going down. In the future, it will go up again. That's how history repeats itself over and over again. We just have to do well in terms of allocation, long-term allocation, tactics with discipline to respond to market changes, and diversify ourselves to diversify risks. And Chinese economy is going strong, is going to be, promising, and will remain, be or is going to be the leader, which is performing ahead of the curve. Okay. Maybe last question. In the interest of time, please be brief. Thank you. I'm Gu Jinying from Number One Finance. You see, you have revised down the risk discount rate and assumption for investment return. So for the valuation, what's the mid to long-term impact in the low-interest rate environment? Now, in terms of the assumption, you are assuming 4.5%. Will it be revised down further?
The market has been talking about, you know, the 3.0, you know, industry rate will be further revised down. So what's your view on this? Yeah. Indeed, as you have seen, we have revised down the investment return assumption and discount rate, risk-free. After this revision compared with the past, it's going to be seen as more prudent. You can see there's not just a numerical revision. It is rather prudent. First of all, investment return, we have taken into account of the change in the market environment. We have taken into account of the long cycle change. Like what Mr. Deng has said, this is going to be a long cycle, nothing short. Life business is a long-term business. Investment return has to link back to the long-term cycle. Chinese economy is hopeful. We're holding our expectations.
So, at the same time, we are also looking at the matching model and the Chinese Association of Actuaries' guidance regarding the linkage between the investment return assumption vis-à-vis the risk-free discount rate. So it was also revised down by 150 basis points. So that revision, in comparison to the guidance by the Chinese Association of Actuaries, we have actually carried out a bit more prudence. So we have to carry out these measurements in a way that's prudent, sufficient, but reasonable. So we, we think Chinese economy is going to do well, and we're going to have a, you know, internal momentum, and we do see we have a promising future, and we're going to deliver better value for the shareholders. Okay. That's the time we have for today's result announcement.
If you have any further questions, please reach out to the PR team in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Shenzhen. We'd love to take your questions. Thank you for your support. With that, we conclude the conference today. Thank you.