Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today for the 2024 Annual Results Announcement Conference. I'm Rachel Hershen, the Secretary of the Group. Today, I'm co-hosting today's event with Mr. Lin Jianwei, the Head of International Public Relations of the Group, who is present at the Hong Kong venue, where we're simultaneously running this event through onsite and webcast. First, Mr. Lin will kick off by introducing the management team from Hong Kong.
Thank you, Rachel. The management team members in Hong Kong venue are Dr. Ma Mingzhu, Chairman of the Group; Mr. Michael Guo, the Co-CEO of the Group. Next, Rachel will continue introducing the management team in Shanghai venue.
Thank you. In Shanghai, we have Mr. Xie Yonglin, President and Group's Co-CEO; Ms. Fu Xing, Senior Vice President and incoming CFO. Today's meeting will begin with the four-year business performance overview by Ms. Fu Xing.
After that, we'll open the floor to questions. Now, please welcome Fu Xing.
Thank you, Rachel. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for the 2024 Annual Results Announcement Conference. Thank you for your long-standing trust and support to Ping An Group. On behalf of the management, I'll walk you through our 2024 business performance. Next slide. You are our old friends, so I believe you must remember our House picture. For that house picture, we actually upgraded the picture into a triangle. It has been upgraded in terms of the format and the content. What is the reason behind that change? This is because we want to help people to better understand the core of our strategy and understand our commitment to become a world-leading integrated finance and health and senior care service provider. What can we bring to our retail customers?
The expertise makes life easier. Through three professionals, there are a professional financial advisor, a professional family doctor, and a professional senior care concierge to provide—they could provide worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving services. We are customer-centric, and we provide one customer, multiple accounts, multiple products, and one-stop services. For senior care services, we aim to provide the most cost-effective services for them. Act on the payer, we integrate the suppliers and provide the four-delivery network. The four-delivery network means the services will be delivered online, in-store, at-home , and in corporate. Also, another highlight is our technology. Technology empowers our financial core businesses. Thanks to our advanced deployment in the data and technology, we have already built this industry-leading nine databases and five libraries. Now we are entering the AI era.
Thanks to our first-mover advantage, we manage to improve our service quality, save our costs, and improve our efficiency, as well as prevent the risks. Such clear strategy and the execution of the strategy will help us navigate through economic cycles and deliver good results. Next slide to see our core indicators' performance. Against such a challenging environment, which provides opportunities and challenges at the same time, we actually made steady performance and improvement. First, we can look at the numbers in the revenue. The revenue actually achieved RMB 1,028.9 billion, up by 12.6%, and our net profit actually up by 9.1%, and our OPAT up by 9.1%, and our net profit up by 47.8%. Considering the size of Ping An, such a result is no easy job. Then look at the asset side and liability side of the insurance business.
At the liability side, let's take a look at the MBV. On the like-for-like basis, MBV actually up by 28.8%. On the investment side, we also delivered good results. The CII, the Comprehensive Investment Income of insurance funds, actually achieved 5.8%, up by 2.2 percentage points. Such a stable and improving performance actually laid a solid foundation for us to pay back our shareholders. In 2024, we suggested to distribute the dividend of RMB 2.55 per share, up by 5% year- over- year. Actually, our dividend distribution has been increasing for 13 years in a row. Next slide. I have three keywords to summarize our highlights. They are stable operation, deepening strategy, and improving or increasing dividends. In terms of stable operation, our revenue and profit have maintained an upbeat trend. Our revenue is up by 12.6%, and our net profit is actually up by 47.8%, showing an improving trajectory.
The second keyword is the strategy deepening. When we look at the integrated finance or when we look at the health and senior care services, both areas have shown improving effects thanks to the transformation. For integrated finance, first, we summarize these keywords into three highs. First is the high scale. We have covered 242 million retail customers, which account for the majority of the middle-class families in China. The second high is the high retention. The customers who have spent more than five years with us account for 72.2% of the total customer base, and their retention is as high as 94.7%. The third high is the high penetration. The customers with more than four contracts account for over one-fourth of the total customer base, and their retention rate is even higher, reaching 98%.
High scale, high retention, and high penetration have actually paid a solid foundation for a virtuous cycle of our business growth. For the healthcare, our four-delivery network, as well as our layout in the senior care network, have been deepening. We have already formed a doctor team, over 50,000 people, and our partnered hospitals achieved 36,000. We have covered 100% of the top 100 hospitals and three A hospitals. This four-delivery network is going to be our competitive moat in the future. Next slide about our core business highlight. For the life and health business, here I would like to use one keyword, which is the reform and innovation. You are aware of our life reform in the past four years, which is like a deepening reform. I will show you some numbers.
First is that our MBV is actually increasing by 28.8% year over year on the like-for-like basis. This number has been increasing for eight quarters in a row, and a double-digit increase for eight quarters. The second highlight is the agent channel's MBV, which rose by 26.5%, and agent-per-agent MBV rose by 43.3%. This number has also been increasing for 12 quarters. For our non-agent channels, our banker channel's MBV rose by 62.7%, with increasing productivity. For our life reform, there is a highlight which is related to our multi-channeled strategy. For the non-agent channel, including our banker and including our community finance channel, their MBV contribution has already increased to 18.7%, up by 2.2% year- over- year. This is a great result of four-year deepened life reform.
For the second highlight, if you look at our P&C insurance, actually our revenue rose by 4.7%, and its net profit rose to RMB 15 billion, up by 67.7% year over year. I'll explain why its net profit surged so much. First is the CGI business that we've already resolved with them. The second is the underwriting profit, which keeps very stable. The third is the investment in the P&C insurance sector, which has been doing a great job in 2024. Three factors combined have delivered a really good result on winding from P&C. For this slide, I would also like to share with you the highlights about insurance funds investment portfolio. Our CII last year actually achieved 5.8% as the group in all, up by 2.2 percentage points year- over- year.
For life and health business, CII actually reached 6%, which is a very difficult result to achieve. Next slide. Let's take a look at the OPAT of the group. As I just mentioned, our OPAT of the group rose by 9.1%, and the core three businesses actually maintained very stable performance. OPAT of the core three businesses rose by 2.3%. Another highlight is from the asset management sector, which reduced the loss by 42.6%, and we believe the profit trajectory is improving. Next slide about the OPAT of life and health insurance. On the left-handed side, you could see that through this waterfall picture, compared to our year beginning, the CSM balance, there was a reduction, but this is mainly due to our assumption change on the investment return for the long run. We changed down from 4.5% to 4%.
Excluding that impact, actually, the OPAT would be similar to last year. Also, the OPAT is primarily driven by the CSM. As you can see on the right-hand side, the CSM release has been reducing. However, such decline has been narrowing throughout the last three years. With the MBV continuing to increase and the CSM continuing to increase thanks to improving expense ratio, claim ratio, and persistency ratio, our operating variance will continue to turn positive, and we believe that will contribute positively to the OPAT of life business and CSM as a whole. Next slide is the investment return. I would suggest you look from two perspectives. One is the current period, and one is the long term. On the current period, our CII actually rose by 2.2 basis points year- over- year.
Against such a complicated environment and lowering interest rate trajectory, this result is very difficult to achieve. On the long term, you can see our past 10 years' average investment return. Our CII reached 5.1%, and our NII average actually achieved 5%, both exceeding our investment return assumption. Be it at the current period or the long-term period, our investment for the insurance fund has been sound and stable. Next slide about our asset portfolio from the investment. First of all, you can see that the insurance funds have already grown by 21.4%, which is also because the customers have an ever-increasing demand of the insurance policies, and our capacity for investment continues to grow. Secondly, let's also take a look at the exposures in the property market. Many of the friends from the media care about the exposure in the property market.
Starting from 2023, this number used to be 4.5. Last year, 4.1, where for this year, the number has been further narrowed to 3.5. It is also worth mentioning that we do have the rental business, which can generate very stable cash flow, which will help to sustain the insurance investment business. It is a very important cornerstone. In other words, the exposure has been further narrowed, and the underlying assets have been very healthy, with substantial and robust cash flow generation in the long run. Next slide, please allow me to share with you the solvency ratio. With C-ROSS II, you can see that no matter for our group or the life insurance or the property and casualty insurance, the solvency remains well above the regulatory requirements. We also, in the near future, the solvency is going to remain quite robust and stable.
Let's also take a look at the sustainable growth. Ping An Group, as a company dedicated to sustainable development and social responsibility, will create value to our shareholders, customers, and more importantly, to the society at large. On the right side, there are some owners. In 2024, on MSCI ESG rating, Ping An registered a double-A performance, maintaining its position as number one in the Asia-Pacific region in the insurance industry for three consecutive years, which is actually a great award that's been given to Ping An for our performance. On slide 15, we summarize the owners and awards. We retain our robust position and being the number one global insurance company in the Fortune Global 500 ranking. We also be ranking as the top one for the most available insurance brands worldwide. This is indeed showcasing our brand strengths.
Last but not least, I'd like to show you the dividend distribution. This is also a concern for many investors as well as media friends. On slide 16, on the right side, it shows you the track record of the dividend. For a long time, we have highly valued the shareholder returns. We continue our dividend policy with very strong market competitiveness. The proposed dividend for 2024 is RMB 2.55 in cash per share, a well-wide growth of 5%. The absolute value growth was RMB 0.12 per share. The reason is because we are very confident for the substantial growth for our business in the near future. In other words, the total cash dividend has increased for 30 consecutive years. It is not easy to be achieved.
Once being IPO'd, our total dividend has already approached RMB 400 billion, which also showcases our return to the shareholders with great confidence. For the past six months, with more policies being rolled out by the central government, including some benefiting and prevention policies to the housing market, to the stock market, and to the national economy, as a responsible group, we're going to leverage the policy advantage to create value to our customers and the shareholders. With all the policies, we're still very confident for the future economic development in China for our business and our key operational metrics. With such a solid performance, we're still very confident for our future dividend policy. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Let's now welcome the questions from the media. As usual, we're going to welcome questions from Shanghai and Hong Kong by turns.
Due to time reasons, please make sure no more than two questions per participant. Please also help to identify yourself before you raise a question, along with the names. Let's start from Shanghai venue, please. Let's welcome Mr. Guo from CCTV first.
Thank you. Thanks for the moderator. I come from CCTV Finance Channel. My first question is that last year, the net profit of the company reached RMB 126.6 billion, growth by 47.8%. How are you going to comment on your performance? Is it in line with your expectation? My second question, there are many policies from the central government to introduce the long-term funds to be in the market. For sure, the insurance funds are going to play a role there. What would be your investment in the Asia market? Any further strategy? What would be your investment strategy? Thank you.
Thank you. Let me help to respond to the first question. Generally speaking, for our management team, we are satisfied with our 2024 performance. The performance is in line with our expectation. I have three sentences to comment my observation of the 2024 performance. My first sentence, the performance is in line or even slightly exceeds the management's expectation. We have a stable operation with nice progress in a very challenging year of 2024. Madam Fu has already mentioned we have a huge business size, but still our operating profit grew by 9.1%, net profit grew by close to 50%. It is also worth commending that for 30 consecutive years, our total cash dividend continued to grow. My second sentence, we continue to strengthen our strategy, and we continue to deepen our integrated finance, plus healthcare and elderly service.
For example, in integrated finance, the retention rate of the customer with more than four contracts reached 98%. The number of the individual customers reached 242 million, grew by 4% on a worldwide basis. With such a huge customer base, such growth is indeed not easy to be attained. For life insurance, our MBV growth was 28.8%. Property insurance net profit grew by 68%, and the CRR has already reached a very high number. The total investment from the insurance funds grew by 2.2%, compared with the previous year. Our health and elderly care strategy continued to advance to empower our key business. Let me just share with you a set of the statistics. For example, our customer enjoys the health and elderly care, has already covered around 70% of the MBV of the new customer.
If you take a look at our annual report, we have our health platform and self-operated medical institution continue to have a good momentum for growth. Ping An Good Doctor already has a positive gain. The same as the Peking University International Hospital, they also turned loss into profit. The revenue grew by 50.6%. The same as home care for the elders. The high-end home care service has been available in 75 cities, with more than 180,000 customers enjoying this service. We also have more high-end elderly care projects that will be put into operation one after another. After those services have been available, the high-end elderly care service community will bring fresh experiences to our customers, which will also continue to empower our key business. That is the reason I see in 2024 our strategy continues to be deepened. My third comment, we continue with reform and innovation.
Let me also share with you what we do on tech-driven innovation. First of all, we leverage artificial intelligence and big data to continue to boost our efficiency. We are diluting the cost. A few statistics for your reference so that our friends from media may know the true picture. For the full year, our AI customer service reached 1.84 billion people times, covering around 80% of the customers of Ping An Group. In other words, 1.84 billion calls or service inquiries have been handled by artificial intelligence. For the intelligent claims inceptions and loss reduction, in anti-fraud has already reached 11.9 billion. It's all been intercepted by artificial intelligence. We also love AI to empower our business scenario to optimize the customer experience. I have a few data to share with you. For example, we leverage intelligent underwriting and claims.
Around 93% of the claims would be underwrite insurance. The proportion of the flash claim of the life insurance already be 56% in total. Those are all being greatly empowered and supported by data and the AI in our whole business service process. For example, in property insurance, the auto insurance, the flash claim, the efficiency has been improved by 4,000 times. In other words, AI indeed boosts the business efficiency. The AI-assisted diagnostics and treatment makes the accuracy more than 99%, and the accuracy of the auxiliary diagnosis and treatment is more than 95%. That is the reason I said our management team feel happy with overall performance, including reform and innovation and the deepening reform strategy. We're looking into 2025.
We're going to carry on with our policy, focusing on the key business, further increase revenue and reduce cost, while at the same time continue with reform and innovation, at the same time for risk prevention. I do believe starting from 2025 to 2027, we're going to have a promising future. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for Mr. Guo for raising the question. Let me just respond to your second question. That is regarding the insurance funds to the market. There are a few points. First of all, we're going to respond to the national policy. Starting from H2 of 2024, many ministries and the Department of China continue to introduce the mid and long-term funds to get into the market. They also have a series of encouraging and supportive policies for that, optimizing the structure of the capital market, improving the vitality of the market.
We have already responded to such call. A few days ago, we were also applied to the State Administration of the Financial Supervision, and we approved to participate in the long-term stock investment pilot program. We are responding to the national calls for this. My second point, we are still very positive on the capital market growth in China in long term. Ping An is a very important institutional investor and confident as famous for its patient funds. We are still positive on Chinese economy for high-quality growth. We are very patient regarding our investment and operation. You can see some of our practice, no matter for the high-dividend bank stocks or the new energies, high-quality manufacturing power, or humanoid robots or artificial intelligence, we also keep an eye on those high-valuated industries. As a patient fund, we continue to invest in diversified verticals.
We truly believe the high-quality growth of the economy will also help intend to boost the economic growth. China continues with the reform in the capital market. In other words, listed companies pay much attention to the shareholder returns. There was a number in 2024, the total cash dividend made by the listed company making a historical high in 2024. Such continued enabling environment will provide a good blessing for the long-term insurance funds to be in the capital market. We are still very positive on the capital market as a whole. Certainly, we are committed to the value investment that navigates through the cycles. We pay attention to the security, liquidity, and the balance with the investment return. Back in the shareholders' meeting, Mr. Ma has always mentioned about five matches in terms of the insurance funds investment, and we need to keep a stable style.
These five matches are the investment return match, time match, duration match, product match, as well as regulatory policy match. We will adhere to such a stable value investment philosophy. Next question goes to the Hong Kong media representative, please.
Good morning. I'm Ouyang Yifeng. I would like to ask a question about the participating insurance. It declined a little bit, but due to the MBV margins increase, the overall MBV actually increased. Does this trend going to continue? Also, the premium declined, was it because of the participating insurance higher percentage in the overall product mix? What is the percentage between the participating and protection insurance in the product mix? I also want to ask a question about the stock purchasing, as the regulator mentions that insurance funds have a higher potential to allocate the investment into the equity market.
How higher the floor is going, how higher the ceiling do you think it's going to reach? Is there any other options outside of the banking stocks? Is there any other sectors you favor in H share markets? Thank you.
I'll take this question. First, about the participating insurance structure and percentage. In terms of with lowering pricing rates, there will be several trajectories of participating insurance. First, its percentage is going to increase in our product mix. As you just mentioned or asked about exact percentage, but because we haven't got the numbers from the first quarter, I can't share the specific numbers with you. However, since last press conference, I've already mentioned that we believe, or we estimate, participating insurance is going to increase its percentage in the product mix across the industry. I think the current movement has already reflected our previous projection.
The second, with the lowering pricing rate, the margin of the participating insurance is going to increase. It's a mathematic problem. More importantly, whether the participating insurance can generate enough return for the customers and for the company, this will depend on our capability to generate investment return. Right now, our investment return results, as well as our investment portfolio. If we look at these two factors, you could see why we're confident that this year and in the future we'll be able to generate return for our participating insurance customers higher than the market average return and increase our participating insurance competitive. The second question about the equity investment percentage, I'll share with you there are three factors we would consider about equity asset allocation. First, our investment needs to be long-term and needs to go through the economic cycles.
We look at 10 years or 20 years' time span. For us, most important is the percentage of different classifications of assets and the future long-term development direction. First, we are very confident in the long-term healthy development of China's economy. In the capital markets, what are the stocks that represent the long-term stable development? For these companies, we are actually very confident. That would be our direction. The second direction is that we're going to use different instruments to allocate. There are stock investment directly, ETF, Fund of Funds, and Manager of Managers. In different instruments in our portfolio, we'll use different instruments to leverage the investment opportunities in the capital markets in the midterm and the long run. Thirdly, for the current equity asset as a percentage of our overall investment portfolio, I think current percentage and scale are reasonable.
We believe going forward with China's economy going to an upbeat trajectory, with the capital markets going on an upbeat trajectory, we believe that our investment is going to generate stable return and generate benefits for our customers.
Thank you. Next question goes to the media representative in Shanghai.
I'm from Xinhua Finance. I have two questions. One is about technology. Last year, we noticed that there's some movement in the technology subsidiaries under Ping An Group. Does that change come from the adjustment in the strategic positioning of the technology sector? Also for the DeepSeek , for the AI sector, the DeepSeek has become very popular. Could you explain how your deployment in the AI and also your strategy in this area? Third, also we see finally there's a turnaround of Ping An Health.
Could you please introduce your future plan of the medical and senior care services business?
Thank you. I'll answer the first question regarding the technology. The positioning of technology in Ping An Group has been very clear. As Fuzong just mentioned in our overall strategy, our strategy is the integrated finance plus the health and senior care services. The technology is an underpinning factor of those because it can enable the core financial businesses. Our future direction is to look at how the technology can enable our core businesses' stable development. That's our positioning. In terms of the AI, I have three factors to share with you. First is how AI can create value. We think the value can be contributed in two aspects. First is efficiency. Second is the intelligence.
Efficiency means it can enable our operation, our business, and our services to increase efficiency in the long run and improve or optimize our cost for the long run. Intelligence means when we are doing the decision-making, instead of making decisions on intuition, we'll be making decisions based on the data. If you look at the efficiency and smart or intelligence, two aspects, we believe these two will bring significant change and positive impact to the finance industry and health and senior care industry. Why? Because first, they are massive. They take a long time, and they are very expensive. We are confident that technology will generate sustainable benefits for our core businesses. Thirdly, from our technology deployment, we have very strong competitive mode. We call a 9+ 5+ 3 strategy. First, we have a massive number of data.
It comes from our nine databases. It contains medical databases and financial databases, as well as our operation database. It contains a massive number of data. Among all the global companies, I think Ping An ranks leading in terms of the number of the data. This can be a foundation of our AI creation. What is the five? Five means our laboratories. We have very leading research and development capability. We have strong research capability in micro-expression. We have the Silicon Valley laboratories, and they can help us to be at the forefront of the AI development. In terms of the fintech and healthcare technology patents, we have 55,000 patents, ranking number one globally. Another part is about our application scenario. We have three technology companies: Ping An, Good Doctor, and other two.
They can contribute significantly to our internal enabling and the in-depth application of our AI. This 9+ 5+ 3 will help us to build a strong competitive mode in the AI. With the singularity point approaching, we believe that technology investment can enable our business to sustainably grow.
Next question from Hong Kong.
I'm Annie. My question is about, for example, the Hong Kong Government wants to build on the Greater Bay Area senior care services. I'm interested whether Ping An Group is actually interested in developing senior care services in Hong Kong.
I'll take this question. There are three areas. First, the integration of the Greater Bay Area has been increasing. We've seen the flow of customers among different areas more and more frequent.
We have seen the demand of the customers to enjoy health and senior care services in different areas of the Greater Bay Area. Secondly, as a leading financial institution in the Greater Bay Area, our mission is to suffice our customers' needs in finance, in health, and senior care. Domestically, in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan, we have deployed our premium senior care communities, and we have invested in local clinics and check-up clinics. We have some offline famous doctors who are capable of speaking Cantonese to help our Cantonese-speaking customers to enjoy our health and senior care services. Thirdly, after seeing what is going on with the Greater Bay Area, we are exploring our opportunities to expand our health and senior care services to the Hong Kong area and contribute to serve the customers at both sides to enjoy our best services better.
We are actively exploring all kinds of possibilities.
Thank you. Next question from Shanghai, Bin Yu.
Thank you for the opportunity. I'm from Shanghai Security Newspaper. We have seen a very decent performance in terms of the core indicators. What is the management view on that? With the lowering pricing rates, what is the impact on the industry? My second question is related to Ping An's movement in increasing allocation in banking stocks. Aside from banking stocks as an example of long-patient capital, are there any other assets you are going to invest in, and what is your measurement aspect?
Thank you. First, I will take the life insurance question. For the life business, I have three keywords. First is the revealing life reform results. It has been four years since we started the reform, and this 4 plus 3 reform has been revealing its effect significantly.
We have been improving our products, which is the insurance plus health and senior care services, which in turn has actually contributed positively to the results. As you can see, the MBV actually realized a double-digit growth. Our agent channel has been increasing. It has been improving, as well as their productivity and agent's income. Our bank insurance, as well as the community finance channels, are also developing rapidly. The first keyword is the life reform taking effect significantly. Second, about our future development, I think the trajectory is upbeat. Right now, we have this coordination between the liability side and the asset side in the capital markets, especially in the low-interest rate environment. At the liability side, we have 4+ 3 reform taking effect.
On the asset side, we have RMB 5.7 trillion insurance funds, and it is delivering 6% of return in the group. For life insurance and health, the return is 5.8%, which is much higher than our cost of the debt, which can actually continue to lay a solid foundation for the long-term sustainable and stable profitability of the whole group. My third point, we do believe that life insurance has entered into the golden period of development. A key driver, besides what I mentioned just now, for example, like reform and the assets. Another driver is because we do see the demographic dividends being released by the Chinese society. Life insurance is no longer an optionable product. Life insurance is indeed going to be a real demand for the consumers in our society.
As China gets into aging population, life insurance will help to lay the foundation and help us to engage the health and elderly self-service. We are very confident for the life insurance industry. Those are the three points for us to comment on the future of the life insurance. Responding to a second question, you also mentioned about the investment. You know that we are, as I have already mentioned, regarding the asset we invest, we are a long-term capital. We do value investment, and we are very patient. We have three criteria in assessing the investment we go for. First of all, let's talk about our allocation strategy. There are five matches as have already been shared with you. We not purely assess the market hotspot.
We will make sure the investment we made needs to match with our product, our cost, and also the duration of our assets to help us to ride through and navigate the industrial cycles. Secondly, our asset allocation is a barbell type . We do have some high dividend and high yield product, and we also have some growth short-term assets with short-term volatilities. When we do the asset allocation, we leverage multiple tools and make sure both assets will be able to complement to each other in our investment portfolio, not only in generating good alpha now, but also stable alpha in the near future.
My third point, we are still very confident for the future, mid and long-term stable growth of the Chinese economy, and we are also very confident for the stable growth of the capital market, especially if there is any investment for the future economic development, no matter for the bank stocks or our new productivities or our infrastructures. We all have a very strong interest of the investment. We are going to leverage very different investment tools to bring the long-term returns to our shareholders and customers. Thank you.
Let's welcome the media friends from Hong Kong, Jay from Economic Daily, please.
Thank you. Thanks for giving me the chance. I am Jay from the Hong Kong Economic Times. I have a question to you. We say that for Ping An Group, you always keep growing your total cash dividends over the past several years. This is truly worth celebrating.
Let me just ask you, for the most recent financial year, I noticed your full-year dividend grow by 5%, but it seems that the profit attributable to the shareholder grew by 9%. For the full-year proposed dividend, are you still too conservative? Especially if we took a look at the Hong Kong stock market, your stock price in Hong Kong has been downward by 4%. How are you going to interpret the market response? Is there any chance of the over-interpretation of your performance? Do you believe that the investors being over-assumed your performance, but they actually feel shook about that, lead to the stock performance go down, or at least from the Hong Kong stock market? Do you believe your market has been underestimated? Thank you.
Let me hope to respond to the question. Thank you very much.
Thanks for keeping an eye on our performance and the dividends. Yes, indeed. I have to say our dividend is truly aligned with our performance as a whole. I have already shared with you for the past 30 years, the total cash dividend, the absolute value kept rising. Our total dividend since IPO has accumulated to be RMB 400 billion. No matter as a value stock or a high dividend stock, our performance is truly competitive in the market to all the investors. Secondly, we're still very confident over our dividends because we are confident over our stable performance. I have already shared with you our performance of the life insurance, property insurance, no matter for MBV, Premier or investment, they all register very steady growth, and which will also boost the ever-booming momentum for future improvement.
I do believe we're going to maintain a very stable dividend policy, truly making sure the dividend is in line with the profit we made and providing better return to our shareholders. Responding to the stock price, I think something I feel truly proud of is that Ping An Group is a big group. The total liability is expected to be RMB 30 trillion on our balance sheet. Our profit is already more than RMB 100 billion. In other words, the stock market performance is going with the microeconomic development. People always call us China proxy. It seems the performance is very much like the sentiment from the market. If you purely take a look at the stock, if you ask me to handpick the right stock by myself, our board always makes some private discussion when we invest.
We take a look at the industry, the prospect, and the fundamentals. We believe the healthcare and elderly care would be the most promising future with a huge demand in China. We also have very stable fundamentals. As long as you ask whether we were beyond estimated, I believe, yes, to some extent, our market cap has been underestimated. It may have further room for further improvement. Thank you.
Sorry, I would like to make one more comment regarding the stock price. A few points from me. First of all, we are very confident for our long-term and stable growth. It's not only because of us. You see, for our investors and our analysts, they all upregulated the stock price for Ping An Group as a whole. We are confident about the market. There are many variables that may lead to the stock price fluctuation.
Especially for the past few days, the stock price went up a lot, where today we also have a few peers whose stock price continued to go down. Let me just tell you, it's not a group-specific phenomenon. The short-term stock price fluctuation may be subject to multiple factors and variables in the market. Certainly, we're still very confident for our future and sustainable long-term growth. One day, our value would be reflected by our stock price. Because first of all, we have a very clear strategy: integrate finance plus healthcare plus elderly care. Secondly, we have a very robust management team who can translate our strategy into concrete actionables. You can see it from our performance and our improving performance. Anyhow, certainly, we always have a saying, "The gold will always shine." We always believe our core value would be visible by the market at last.
Thank you. I come from Ping An News. I have two questions. My first question, the interest rate has been maintained at a very low. What about your interest rate spread? The second question, there are so-called five initiatives for financial development. How are you going to interpret that? Thank you.
Let me just hope to respond to the question. Thanks for Mr. Hu. No matter for the new or the old policy, we do not have any so-called interest rate spread. We do not have that. Two interpretations from me. You need to take a look at the stock and incremental growth. Regarding the stock, you need to take a look at the stock assets. In the past, we have a very steady allocation. We have accumulated many long-term bonds with very high yields, as long as the high dividend stocks.
Those are all being taken as the ballast of our business. They generate good returns. From the liability perspective, we have a very balanced data structure. You can see that indeed, the flat rate of the return on the stock is always lower than 2.5, which is an optimization of the existing stock. We also have some protection assets. For that, we have a balanced structure on the participating insurance and also the universal product. Those products indeed are the one we have a mechanism making sure the interest rate would be shared between the group and the customer. Only in that way, our debt cost will continue to go down and continue to be optimized. Regarding the incremental business, let's take 2024 as an example. We continue to allocate more on the high-yield stocks.
You can see the return on the life insurance has already reached 6.0%, and we also continue to trade the trading bonds. This is a nice incremental growth being registered in 2024. I do believe many of our media friends, you probably noticed on the liability side, the regulators have been trying to optimize the cost of the debt, or even the predetermined interest rate has continued to be reduced, the same as the settlement rate for the universal policy. We do not have any interest rate spread there. Let me hope to respond to the second question. In October of 2023, at the Central Economic Committee, it has already mentioned about the five articles of the finance or the five major initiatives. We have already been proactively responding to the national call with concrete actions. Let's take a look at our strategy.
We have integrated finance plus healthcare plus elderly care and tech-driven service. Our strategy is always in line with the five initiatives mentioned by the central government. For execution, for our integrated finance, no matter for the bond, loans, investments, or we have multiple verticals, we do have the advantage from the license. At the same time, as been mentioned by my colleague, we have a huge quantity of the data, and we also have a massive amount of the data that has already gone through the standardization and processing of the financial institutions. Such practice can help to enable us in executing the five major initiatives for the financial industry. Ping An Group also continues to innovate. It is also the source of our expertise and innovation. It can help us to generate some concrete results by executing the five major initiatives.
For the past more than one year, we do have some nice results presented by the five major initiatives. For example, we leverage the greatest strengths from financial and investment to serve the tech economy and the green economy. In 2024, we invested around RMB 60 billion to support semiconductor industries and new productivity industries. For example, in the data storage industry, our investment is already more than RMB 10 billion, ranking number one in China. We spare all the efforts to support the tech finance. The same as green finance. A few data from me for your reference. By the end of December, Ping An Insurance found the responsible investment is already reaching RMB 849.9 billion, and the green bond loans is around RMB 160 billion. In 2024, the primary income from the green insurance is RMB 58.6 billion because of our uncertain ESG performance.
We will be ranking number one as comprehensive insurance of the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, we will be proactively advancing the Health plus integrated finance, serving the pension finance as a whole. Now, our home care service has already covered 75 cities. The high-end elderly care service has already had six projects in five cities. We also have the insurance model for insurance plus service. The number of insured people was 30 million, with the fee reaching RMB 270 million, where for the non-financial service. You know that with our license, the banking loans, we have provided more than RMB 650 billion for SMEs as loans. P&C insurance has already provided RMB 220 trillion for risk protection of the SMEs. Just now, my colleague has already mentioned about the technology and artificial intelligence. We leverage artificial intelligence and technology to continue to empower our key business.
Starting from business to service, to operation, to management, we continue to empower ourselves with more in-depth technology to help us to reduce the cost, improve the efficiency, and improve the accuracy of the decision-making, and more importantly, to improve the customer experience. In 2024, the performance is indeed being blessed because of our technological empowerment and digital finance. During the two sessions in 2025, the State Council has already had the concrete actionable guidelines for the five major articles and continues to have a refined interpretation on how the financial industry to serve the real economy. For example, high-level scientific and resilient development, green transformation, and aging population of the society. We will respond to the call of the central government, taking our actions to honor our commitment for the five major articles in financial.
In the interest of time, we'll leave the last question to the Hong Kong venue. Please, the last question.
I'm from Asia Investors. My question is related to the 5.8% of CII in insurance funds. This has exceeded the expectation. What is the reason behind that? Could you please explain the allocation of such different assets that have actually contributed to that? How are you going to encounter the future challenges with the adjustment in your investment portfolio?
I'll take this question. As I just mentioned, our insurance funds is a long-term investment target, and we look at investment targets over 10 years and 20 years. There are several factors we will take a look before we made the decision, and we have repeatedly mentioned them. There are five matches, as we just mentioned before. There are product match, regulatory policy match, etc.
When we look at the investment return, we look more than just one year's return, but also we look at how could this investment return navigate through different economic cycles. Secondly, if you look at our allocation portfolio, the majority comes from our fixed income products. It is constructed from the fixed income products. There are equity products, and there are alternative investment targets. In different stages, different kinds of products will contribute different kinds of returns to our insurance funds return in general. You mentioned why we could generate the 5.8% of CII, the reason is, first, in our previous investment experience, we have allocated in a lot of high-return asset types. We took the opportunity in the past to invest in those high-returning investment targets. The second reason is because we are confident in the long-term development of Chinese economic development.
We actually allocated heavily in the banking stocks in China because they represent the future economic trajectory of China, and they also generate very high dividend return. Thirdly, on top of the previous two factors, we also allocated balancedly in overseas markets, which generated a more balanced return in this challenging environment. All these factors combined have enabled us to deliver a good result in the investment return. We believe that in the future, next few years, we'll be able to generate the reinvestment return that aligns with our expectation. If you look at the future development, our investment philosophy will still be committed to the five matches, as I mentioned, and also we will use different instruments. For example, the ETF, manager of manager, fund of fund, and many other instruments.
We'll leverage these instruments together to enhance our investment return across different economic cycles and enable us to become the long-term patient funds that actually generate good return.
Okay, thank you for your support. If you have more questions, you can reach out to our PR colleagues of Ping An Group. Also, following the CSRC's regulatory guidelines for listed companies number 10, market cap management, we have established our market cap management system, which has received board approval. Going forward, we will intensify our market cap management initiatives and enhance our investment value and maximize the shareholder returns. That concludes our today's conference. Thank you very much.