Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the 2021 Interim Results Announcement of China Pacific Insurance Group Co. Ltd. I'm Suzhoujun, Board Secretary of CPIC Group. It's a great pleasure to exchange views with all of you and also to share with you our interim results for the first half of this year and also listen to your advice and suggestion regarding our development.
Given the COVID-nineteen situation, we're going to conduct this results announcement online, and we use Mandarin for the meeting and together and also provide English simultaneous interpretation. As per regulatory requirements to protect the interest of small and medium sized investors, we used a lot of measures, for example, IR hotline and dedicated e mail accounts, etcetera, and all other online measures. We have announced the date of this event on the 21st August and also solicit questions from our small and medium sized investors. In order to make this an interactive session, we are conducting this session in the afternoon of China Shanghai, China. And of course, all investors can actually participate via video live video broadcast and other online platforms.
And you can also watch the playback of this video of this event on our official website. Next, let me introduce the executives for this event. Mr. Kong Qingwei, Group Chairman and Mr. Fu Fan, CPIC Group President and Mr.
Gu Yue, Chairman of CPIC P&C and Ms. Fan Yan Hong, Chairman of CPIC Life and Mr. Ma Xin, Vice President of CPIC Group Mr. Yue Min, Chairman of CPIC AMC and Mr. Zhang Yun Han, Q3 Factory of CPIC Group and Mr.
Cai Chang, General Manager of CPIC Life. First, we'll have a presentation from Mr. Fu Fan about our first half results. And then we'll have a Q and A session. Now let's give the floor to Mr.
Fu Fan. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Fu Fan. Welcome to this event. It's our great pleasure to have this opportunity to communicate to all of you in an online manner.
Well, as we know, COVID is still raging and we are facing uncertainties on a macro level. So given this kind of uncertainty and the complications, we are actually met meeting challenges head on and delivered steady growth of business results. Our group operating income amounted to JPY 252,000,000,000, up 7.2%. Our group net profit attributable to parent was JPY 17,300,000,000 up 21.5 percent. Our group EV reached JPY 474,430,000,000 up 3.3% from the end of 2020.
What's important? We actually added over 10,000,000 new customers for the first half of this year. And as of now, our actually our comprehensive solvency margin ratio reached at 2 79% under CROS. Our OPAT stripped out short term investment movement, changes to evaluation assumption and impact of material once off factors. And our report, we reported KRW 18.2 billion in OPAT, up 4.9 percent, of which that of life insurance business was KRW 14.29 billion, up 6.7%.
We are also making efforts to foster growth engine for the future. For example, we cooperate with Reijin Hospital to establish the Guangxi CPIC Internet Hospital with the 1st CPIC family doctor product launched. And we are also working on new channels, new products and new technologies for our life business. And we are establishing the first health related fund with our partners. In big data strategy, we are establishing the CPIC Fintech and signed shared service agreements with other subsidiaries.
And we are actually delivering initial success in Shanghai, Chengdu and Wuhan. And we have recruited 7 leading experts and put in place task forces in 6 areas such as big data, AI, cybersecurity, Internet operation, cloud computing and blockchain. In regional development, we intensified efforts in integrated development of key areas, formulated work programs for the 5 new cities in Jiajing, Jinpu, Songjiang, etcetera, And also draw up and implemented the 3 year action plan of Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. And also signed agreement to jointly promote construction of the Greater Bay Area and a dedicated R and D center in that area. Also, we continue to deepen CPIC's services so that our labor will be responsible, intelligent and caring.
We have actually set up service officers in 5,800 branch offices across China. We continue to improve service supply and standards. For example, we launched a retirement community project in Wuhan with 8 projects in 7 cities under constructions. And with CPIC Home, we actually saw results in terms of retention of mid- to high level customers. We have issued actually a lot of admission certificates in the first half of this year, exceeding the total level of last year.
And in Shanghai, we participated in the HUHUI Bao or the Safety Specific Commercial Health Insurance Program covering a total of 7,390,000 people. We also built the dark factory, which centralized 102 automation scenarios and responded to 727,000 service requests. And the CPIC Life launched the YANG YANG customer service by your side to cover 5 scenarios such as reminder of renewal payment and the benefit payment collection. So our intelligent response ratio reached 97.35%. Next, let's take a look at the numbers.
For CPIC Life, we see well, you see we see some kind of a bottleneck coupled with the challenges brought by COVID-nineteen. Specifically, in the first half of this year, CPIC reported JPY 10,230,000,000 in NBV, down 8.9 percent and annualized new premium of NBV calculation amounted to JPY 40,290,000,000, a growth of 32.9 percent and NBV margin decreased by 11 basis points to 25.4%. We also launched various new products and we see our new business sales of our agency channel amounted to RMB22.58 billion, growth of 18.5 percent. And our CPIC reported RMB 141,400,000,000 in GWP, a growth of 2.1%. Meanwhile, we also see steady increase in residual margin, which grew by 1.9% amounting to KRW357.7 billion.
We continued with our quality development to boost high performance of our agents and also via and the sales teams via amendments to rules on compensation and the training and coaching and by launching good products and launching good training systems. In the first half of this year, the monthly average number of agents was 641,000, down by 16.3%. But our monthly average FYP and FYC per agent reached RMB 5,918 and RMB 986 respectively, up by 41% and 15%, respectively. Going forward, CPIC Life will take a lot of measures to accelerate and restrict our agency force, diversify our channels, step up capability in digitalization and building our health retirement system. And for CPIC P and C, we are stepping up transformation to promote the shift of growth drivers and deliver steady premium growth.
To be specific, our GWP reached KRW81.56 billion, up 6.4 percent, of which auto business reported RMB44,600,000,000 in GWP, down by 6.9 percent and the non auto business recorded RMB36,900,000,000, a growth of 28.6%. Our combined ratio actually increased by 1 basis points to 99.3%, of which loss ratio was up by 10.4 BPTs and the expense ratio was down by 9.4 BPTs to 29.2%. The deepening reform of auto insurance posed a high requirement for business management. So we are adapting to the changes and the challenges. We continue to enhance customer acquisition and retention, set up the center for individual customers to facilitate the building of customer operation system.
We are also increasing online application of our customers and promoting online and offline integration so that our risk control capability continue to rise. And our auto insurance actually saw a rise of 1.2pts for combined ratio and our expense ratio fell by 11.9pts to 26.3 percent, but loss ratio rose by 30.1pts to 72.7%. And for our health insurance, we see diversified supply of our products and rapid development of innovative government sponsored health insurance. For the first half of this year, we recorded KRW 8,200,000,000 in GWP for health insurance, a growth of 70%. And our agricultural insurance also took upon the opportunity of national initiatives and followed a new path of development focusing on model innovation and the service improvement.
We saw a RMB6.7 billion in GWP, up by 17.5%. And for liability insurance, we focus on the improvement of people's well-being and the supporting of a real economy. We saw we delivered a RMB6.71 billion in GWP, up 38.7%. For our asset management business, our group AUM maintained steady growth, reaching RMB2.56 billion RMB2.56 trillion, up 5.3% from the end of 2020. And the group in house AUM was RMB 1,750,000,000,000, a growth of 6.3%.
And third party AUM also increased 3.2%. And our we persisted in asset liability management. Now given the downward trend of interest rate, we face quite a lot of pressure in terms of reinvestment. So we continue with our down bell strategy to increase allocation into long term T bonds and focusing on also moderately increasing investment in equity assets, including private equity. The share of fixed income assets stood at 77.7 percent, down by 0.6pt.
And investment of equity assets was up by 0.4pt to 19.2%. And stocks and equity funds took up 9.9%, decrease of 0.3%. Looking at the numbers, actually our comprehensive annualized comprehensive investment yield fell by 0.5pt to 4.8%. That's mainly because of the decrease in net of fair value movement of AFS assets booked as other comprehensive income. Total investment income was up by 28.4 percent and our annualized total investment yield was 5.0%, up by 0.2pt.
And our net investment income totaled JPY 35,300,000,000, up by 8.3%. That's mainly because of the increased interest income on fixed income investments. In the first half of this year, defaults were rising. So we maintained our prudence in credit risk exposure and also while enhancing our credit risk management. So actually, you see 99.7 percent of enterprise bonds and financial bonds issued by non government sponsored banks had an issuer debt rating of AA or A minus 1 or above.
Of this, the share of AAA reached 93.3 percent and the share of AAA of the non public financing instruments with extra credit rating for AA plus was above 99.0%. As of now, actually, our in terms of sector allocation, the main our assets are mainly concentrated in infrastructure, real estate, non bank financial institutions, communication, transportation. Going forward, we're going to maintain our strategy, committed to close the gap in business operation and intensive efforts in quality improvement of our life insurance so as to fulfill our annual budget. Also, we will move towards strategic direction and targets of best in customer experience, business quality and risk control and also reach breakthroughs in terms of professional capacity building of investment management, platform based development of health service, marketization of technology. And then before you ask questions, please identify yourself and your employer and please ask no more than 2 questions.
Thank you for your cooperation. To ensure the quality of the transmission of the voice, Please make sure that you are in acquired place and make sure that you do not use the speakerphone on your cell phone. And First, I would like to congratulate. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation.
I'm Sun Ting from Haitong Securities. First of all, congratulations to the company for your quite solid performance given this kind of a challenging environment. Two questions from me. Number 1 is for Mr. Chairman Kong.
Now you see for the CPIC Group and actually for all listed insurance companies, this year is a very challenging one. And for investors' perspective, we see a lot of new uncertainties. So for Chevron, going forward, what's your view on the big environment for the industry development? And CPIC wise, what's your long term strategy? 2nd focus of life question.
Now well, life sector is even more challenging this year. We see a lot of pressure for the business. So I'd like to ask CPSC Life, what's your view on the difficulties in the current environment? And for mid to long term, what's the next driving force for the market for life insurance market? Thank you for your question.
Now this results announcement, we see you see 9 of us, 9 executives on the stage to answer your questions. And most of our senior executives for Life and P&C are here. So that means we are we stand ready to share with you. Now actually as far as I can remember, since 2017, I actually been I have been to all the results announcements, all of them. I have attended all of them.
Now this is a particular difficult year this year. But actually, this kind of difficulty actually caused for wisdom and resolution and confidence from the managers, from top executives. Now I would like to say that if we look back on the first half of this year for CPIC, I would say change is the word, keyword, given COVID-nineteen and other kind of challenges. So it's not end. It's still ongoing.
So for CPIC, I believe the keyword for CPIC is steadiness or stableness. Now steadiness does not mean we do not change at all. Now I would say we would like to have a stable steady growth, steady improvement. What do I mean by steady improvement? I will I mean, despite all the challenges, well, externally, we should have we should move upwards.
You see, we have just celebrated our 30th year 30th anniversary. Now if we look back, actually, it's not been plain sailing all the way. We actually we cross the different macroeconomic cycles. So we persist in long termism going for the long run. So actually, we keep pursuing being customized, being customer oriented.
We always focus on sharing, share with our customer, return to our shareholders. We always focus on the value of our business. So this is even more so this year. We focus on the value of life business and also the value of the quality of our P and C and the life business and also the stable performance of our investment. So as Mr.
Fu actually shared with you a lot of numbers of CPIC, now I believe all those numbers actually is a reflection of the hard work of CPIC employees. As far as I can remember, I can recall several phenomenons. For example, actually in the first half of this year, CPIC, a new business actually met our target, new business growth. MDRT actually exceeded 1,000 people. And we also stood the test of auto insurance reform.
And we also see good results for non auto business. And also for agricultural insurance, this year, the annual premium income is likely to exceed 10,000,000,000 yen. For the investment side, we also saw stable returns. I admit, we are entering a new cycle of sector or industry development. So we will see changes.
So we will utilize the change to develop a new growth engine. As Mr. Fu Fan mentioned, for example, we are developing or making progress in health related sectors with accelerated progress. For example, in Beijing, Qingdao, we are going to see projects under construction, starting construction. And for Chengdu and Dalian, we are going to finish 2 projects.
And our collaboration with Reijin Hospital, that is the Guangxi Internet Hospital, have launched the first product that is called Taiyi Guan Jia. That is like a CPIC home family doctor. We would provide customer with pharmacy service, diagnosis service online. And also, we are test doing test drives for our CPIC FinTech company. We are actually accelerating the process of getting approvals from the regulators.
And supported by the Board, we are developing the 5 year plan, the business plan. So we are going to step up efforts in terms of products, investment, liabilities, etcetera, and to develop green economy, green business development. We also know that there will always be uncertainties. And insurance in itself is to actually prepare for the uncertain future by certain contribution today. So we are doing all the solid things, the right things.
Of course, the solid things, the hard things is well, it's difficult. I mean, it's difficult to do that. But we remain confident that what we are doing is to actually preparing for uncertain future. We need to focus on the small and the specific solid things so that we can continue with our steady and prudent development for the company so that we can return or give a good result to our shareholders, our employees and more importantly our customers. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Now as Chairman Kong mentioned just a moment ago, CPSC Live faced a lot of challenges. I mean, that's for the whole sector. But I'm still very pleased to say that the annualized new premium income actually went up by nearly by over 30% for CPIC Life. So that means, I mean, there's not only challenges, but also opportunities for our company.
I believe the challenges or the difficulties are both internal and external. Now for external difficulties, COVID-nineteen and the economic slowness, dojem and also more regulations for life insurance. I mean, all these are posing pressures in the short term. But internally, I believe that's it's a business model thing. I mean, there's a huge challenge to the traditional model.
I mean, the requirement and the need demand for life insurance is not going down because, well, China has just surpassed the so called mid income trap, that's USD 10000, USD 10000 per capita income. And according to international experience, I mean, the $5,000 to $10,000 per capita income is going to support faster growth of life insurance sector. So I would say, given this kind of a low penetration level or rate in China and also given the low per capita premium in China, the industry as a whole is still having great potential. And Chinese people are normally family focused people. And we actually we like to save money.
We like to deposit money. So actually, if you see Japan and South Korea, this kind of a Northeast, Southeastern nations, we actually have a lot of requirement for saving for protection in the future. So I would say the life industry in China is like a writing song at 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock in the morning. Although in the short term, especially this year, we see big challenges, but in the long term, the future is still very promising. For the challenges for this year, I believe on one hand, there is a big demand as a whole.
But on the other hand, our consumers, their preferences, their behaviors are changing rapidly. It's not like before. It's not like, well, face to face referral. It's not like they are fully believing in whatever you sell in the advertisement, in your talk script, in your pitching because customers are demanding more professional service, more professional service and products and more customized solutions. So they are having more requirements on supply side reform.
So the old model, traditional model is getting harder and harder. So going forward, we should we must become needs based, needs oriented. We must be able to serve whatever the customer needs. So where is the new growth engine? Personally, I believe there are 3 things.
Number 1 is the in force sales force, I mean, agent team, agency sales team. No, actually, we have a lot of good quality agents and also top notch agent leaders. We need to help them transform themselves to become more professional, more digital and more adaptive. I believe that is a key driving force for future growth. Secondly is that we actually have more than 160,000,000 customers.
And as Mr. Fu mentioned, we just added another 10,000,000 this half of first half of this year. So, 100 and 60,000,000, that's more than 10% of the Chinese population. They have a very big need for insurance. So we need to think about how we can best serve these 160,000,000 people, customers, maybe through more cross selling, upselling, etcetera, etcetera.
So I believe this is a huge potential pool of untapped business. So we should not focus just on actually securing new customers, acquiring new customers. Actually, as we known in the sector, in the industry, an average customer would need 7 to 9 policies throughout his or her life. But currently, our customer, on average, only has less than fewer than 2 policies. So as long as we can serve them to their satisfaction, there will be more referrals and half selling.
And what's more, we see products are becoming more and more similar across different companies. So we need to differentiate ourselves, health service and retirement service would become even more and more important because we see we don't see a lot of innovation in terms of life insurance products. But the potential for service innovation is without limit, is infinite. So I believe this could also be another driving force. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kong and Mr. Cai. Now let's welcome the second question. Good afternoon.
I'm Zhou Chen from Credit Suisse. Now number 1 is still for first question for Mr. Cai. So I'd like to know as a manager general manager of the CPSC Live, what's your specific ideas about second half of this year or next year? 2nd question.
As I noticed on Page 5 of this slide, there are 3 big directions. So my first second question is for Mr. Ma Xin about the health related strategy health related strategy for CPIC Group. Thank you, Charles. As I just mentioned, well, the 3 driving forces we are going to focus, I mean, our agency agency sales force and our products and also our services.
Now actually starting from this year, we launched the Changhang action plan with specific targets and measures. So actually we are we actually have launched the roadmap for Phase 1 of the Chang Yang action plan. So among them, we will see a workplace marketing for our agency channel. Now you see, for a long time, many of the agents are part time. But part time agents will be very hard it will be very hard for them to sell complicated products.
So with more and more products and with products getting more and more complex and with customers getting more and more sophisticated, given all these changes, the agent cannot serve the customer's needs. So as a first step, our existing agency sales force shall become more professionalized. So this is what we are going to do, a priority for us for the second half of this year and next year. Secondly, the service based marketing. As I mentioned, we have 160,000,000 customers.
We need to serve them well, serve them to their satisfaction. We need to change our processes and procedures. So we should first serve them and then sell insurance to them. So it's not like we are pushing too hard. We are selling and well, then there's nothing else.
Well, all we do is just to sell them stuff or insurance. So we need to improve our service first. We need to improve the capability of our service team to improve the experience of our customers so that it's easier for us to achieve cross selling, upselling on our existing customers. And at the same time, we are also improving our products from a health side, protection side and also retirement side and also to the wealth heritage or inheritance side so that we offer that could become more competitive. So we are becoming more and more customer needs based.
So that's the 3 main initiatives we are focusing now. Well, thank you, Mr. Zhou, for your second question about the health related strategy. To answer your question, just well, two things. Number 1 is that the CPIC Group, well, in terms of the health business, you see, actually, combined on a combined basis, health insurance of CPIC Group achieved double digit growth.
That's very fast. I mean, the growth pace actually doubled the industry average. And our medical insurance actually grew the fastest. And that's the most sticky part of the business. Currently, our health insurance mainly focused on critical illness business and well, medical insurance.
We are focusing on enhancing the SA of CI Insurance, CI Products and also to improve customers the penetration rate of medical insurance for the customers. Secondly, on the CPIC strategy for health related sectors, well, Chairman Kong and Mr. Fu have all mentioned about both mentioned about the health related sector strategy. I will just mention or add 2 points. You see, for health insurance, we know 2 things for sure.
Number 1, the long term inflation of medical bills. Now for China, actually, well, I would say China's medical CPI or inflation is growing the fastest among major economies. And the second certainty is that there is a well, rigid demand for medical services from our customers. So we should set base our strategy on these two certainties. So we should starting from 0 to 1, which is starting from scratch.
How can we start from scratch? We need to be market oriented and professional. That is to say, we need to employ market strategies. For example, our Internet medical team actually now consists of 400 doctors and doctor assistants plus more than 200 IT professionals. In all that took us only half a year.
And we launched the Tai Yi Guan Jia, the CPIC family doctor brand. So this is, I would say, market based initiative or project. And of course, we are this team is still working very hard to improve, to iterate. And I welcome your suggestions and ideas on that initiative. And actually, secondly, we it took us very short very short period of time to set up a health related industry fund.
Now we have actually getting involved in 24 sub projects covering medical equipment, digital medical services, biological pharmacy, etcetera, etcetera. And the second factor is being professionalized. We are now offering this family doctor service. We're collaborating with Reijin Hospital, a top notch hospital in China. So they are training our GPs, our doctors.
And we also joined the stock for the Guangxi Qinyan Hospital, Guangxi Commemoration Hospital so that we can become more professional and win the trust from customers. And after the share improvement share structure improvement of our specialized health insurance company, we are now focusing on new channels, new products and the new technology and push ahead with key projects. So we are going to we aim to turn a traditional health insurance company into an agile professional health insurance company. And on top of that, to build our health related strategy for CPIC Group. Thank you.
Let's welcome the next question. Geoyu Xiang from Shenmeng Hongyuan Securities. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Gei Yu Shiang from Shenmue and Hongyuan Securities. Now I have some question on investment and P and C.
Now you see investment wise quite good performance, But EV assumption actually, we saw poor performance. ASF, there is an unrealized loss of KRW 1,800,000,000. So how come? Why is this unrealized loss? 2nd question on the P&C Business.
Now we see some volatility for the P&C profit. How are you going to improve your underwriting profitability going forward? Now I'll answer your first question. Thank you for your question. Now you see for the first half of this year, our annualized net investment yield decreased by 0.3pts.
That's mainly because of the downward trend of the interest rate. Now our newly allocated assets actually offering lower returns and also the share of fixed income assets also went down because the denominator is mainly the interest rate income or fixed income assets and also dividend payment from equity assets. So since our dividend actually so that's why there is a slight drop. Now regarding the ours actually we deployed disciplined investment tactics. At the beginning of this year, actually we had some prediction and analysis of the macroeconomic situation.
We believe there will only be structural opportunities for the equity market. So for the first half of this year, you can see on the books' face value, you see investment actually given better than expected results. So and relieved released some reduced some of the pressures for the second half of this year and also better prepared us for the long term investment. Going forward, we will continue with our study of the market to make sure we can meet the investment target for the whole year. As you mentioned, a provision of potential unrealized loss, that's mainly because of the treatment accounting treatment for equity assets, that is for any equity assets whose cap market value is lower than cost for longer than 1 year.
So we would take a loss provision for those stocks to the tune of around KRW 1,200,000,000. So that's I mean these stocks were all high dividend paying stocks. Thank you. Now let me answer your P and C question. Now the auto reform starting from September last year, so I believe we have been it's been a year since the reform.
We look at you can see the results for our 1st year first half results. I believe, first of all, premium per vehicle dropped clearly or up significantly. Now you see for compulsory auto insurance, I mean the upper limit actually increased for a lot. So only for the compulsory auto insurance, our claims or our claims payout increased by more than 10%. And the COVID-nineteen, of course, stabilized in China.
So we see more people traveling, driving around. So therefore the more claims from the auto insurance. So claims ratio increased by more than 1% in the first half of this year. And another factor and there are other uncertain factors, But despite all these uncertainties, we need to focus on what we can control. Therefore, we actually made a provision where we increased our reserves.
So the share of our unsettled reserve increased also. So I believe that's mainly why the pressure for the overall business for P&C. Now despite these pressures brought by auto insurance reform, we are still confident because this pressure would only force us to refine our management, refine our business development and improve our customer operation. Now actually, you see, after quite, well, years of our hard work, we are seeing good results. In the first half of this year, the number of our individual customers increased by 11%.
And also in terms of cross selling between auto and non auto business, there is an increase of 89% That is and the penetration rate increased by more than 20 percentage points to reaching around 40%. So I mean these active involvements offset partially the challenges brought by auto insurance reform. Of course, the pressure will continue in the second half of this year, and we are also seeing new measures to be launched for new energy vehicles. I believe in China, new energy vehicle I mean total number of new energy vehicle is likely to reach 2,000,000 in China this year. And for CPIC, well, our share of new energy vehicle is quite high, higher than our peers by 1 to 2 PTs.
And in terms of the growth of new energy vehicles, EV, hybrid, EV plug in, I mean, actually the fastest growing section is the family vehicles, growing very fast, actually at growing by more than 80% per year. And actually, the claims ratio of new energy vehicle is not good. So how can we cope with this new evolvement is likely to be, well, a hard question. We need to work on that. Now we feel that after the we need to focus more on operation of customers, improving our internal capabilities, enhancing our business development capability through customer operation.
And we predict with implementation of our reform and transformation measures, we are going to see good results for our P and C business. Thank you for the question and answer. Now let's welcome the next question. Jenny Zhang from Morgan Stanley. Next question comes from Liu Xinqi of Guotai Zhunan Securities.
Thank you. Two questions from here about life and business quality of our life business. You see persistency ratio dropped quite a lot. What's the reason? And what are we going to do about it?
And second about the EV. We see group EV grew quite slowly. So apart from persistency factor, what are the other reasons for the slowdown of growth of EV? Well, thank you. The first question about the quality of business of life insurance.
Well, for CPIC Life, I believe we are not alone in facing this business quality issue. Now I believe there are three reasons. Number 1, I believe that's a legacy issue. We have a lot we had a lot of agents recruited a lot of agents. So some of the business is poor in terms of quality.
And secondly, the COVID-nineteen and economic slowdown means actually affordability or some of our customers can no longer afford the product. And thirdly, reputation issue. For example, there is some kind of illegal surrender practices on the market and some other coverage media coverage negative reporting of life insurance. So I mean these three reasons are actually what are exactly the reason why we launched the Chang Kong Action Plan to improve our agent team, to focus on business quality, to focus on quality recruitment, quality agents. I believe this action plan will produce good results.
And as the regulator focus more on protecting customer consumer rights, The whole industry is taking integrity, good service more seriously. So I believe the industry, the regulators and practitioners actually when we all work harder, the life insurance sector in China will win customers' trust with good solutions and good services. We're going to win their trust. So this short term setback is actually a good thing for long term growth of life insurance in China. Secondly, about EV.
Now embedded value, of course, is related to business quality. Now for us, for CPIC, first of all, we focus on new business value. We focus on the growth of new business value, on meeting customers' needs and focusing on business quality, focusing on improving efficiency and also improve productivity to drive up EV. Now if I may, I am Zhang Yuan Han, chief factory. On EV issue, you see in 2021, our EV growth slowed down.
That's because on the one hand, for 2020, we issued the GDRs. So that actually contributed 2.2 percentage points to the EV. So if we take that exclude that, then our EV growth would be 5.5%. But this year, our number is 3.3%. So there's a gap of 2%.
Now why the 2%? But that's mainly because of the new business value. Because you see for the whole year, our EV growth is 16%. So for last year's, we see for this year's growth, actually the basis is shrinking and the but the new business value is not there. Secondly, investment.
Investment is also quite a big factor and also there is a surrender that is the operational experience variance. That's also a big factor in the calculation of EV. Thank you. Let's welcome the next question. Next is Jenny Jiang from Morgan Stanley.
Thank you. I'm Jenny from Morgan Stanley. Two questions from me. Number 1, for Chairman Cole. Number 1, about dividend payment payout.
No. Net profit and OPAT are showing quite a difference. So what was your dividend strategy for this year? And secondly, for Mr. Cai, so what's your view?
What targets or KPIs are you focusing on? Would you care most about? Would it be I mean, what is it productivity or income of agents, etcetera? Thank you. Now of course, investors should care about dividend payout.
That's the most natural thing to do. So for CPIC, in terms of our dividend, I would say CPIC is quite generous. Our dividend payout ratio is close to 50%. That is to say for a long time since especially since the 8th or 9th Board of Directors, we care very much about payment or dividend payout to shareholders. So actually, well, we have been called generous in terms of dividend payout.
Of course, dividend shall be based on healthy growth. We shall return to shareholders as much as possible based on healthy growth of our business. Of course, we should, of course, work hard to do that if more conditions allow. Now I believe CPIC Group will maintain continuity of our dividend strategy. But of course, we should also take into consideration about our business operation, our business requirement and also considering regulatory requirements so as to set a proper level of dividend payout.
Well, I would like to pay you more payout more, but we need to focus also on long term sustainable development of the company. For example, a lot of innovation initiatives and also becoming more customer oriented. So well, I'm not sure if you're satisfied with my answer. Thank you for the second question. You see for the next 6 to 12 months, what I care most about in terms of KPIs?
That would be about the not the headcount, but the heading or the productivity. Now in the past, we also say about we only talk about the number of agents, 8,000,000 agents, etcetera, etcetera. But I would say active agents or high performing agents, they are the key, I mean, not the total number of agents. So we should focus on active agents and high performing agents. And secondly, I would also focus on productivity.
I'm very happy to see that in the first half of this year, per capita, 1st year income increased by more than 40%. And the monthly average FYC, 1st year commission, also increased by 15%. So now these two indicators are very good, are pointing to the right direction. So we need to improve, keep improving our agent income and our agent productivity. And thirdly, I would also care very much about our customers.
That is to say in the short term, we would use NPS as a KPI. But actually for the long run, I would say in 2 to 3 years' time, we should measure the customers' repeat the rate of repeat buy, repeat purchase. So because they not only vote with their foot, but also vote with their hand, vote with their money. So if the average customer only has one policy from 3QIC, then that's this is just a purchaser of your policy of insurance. We would want our customers to become repeat customers.
We'd like to increase the number of policies hold by each customer. Well, given the interest of time, we can only have time for one last question for telephone questions. Your next question from Xu Xiaoliang of Dahua Securities. Thank you for the opportunity. Now my first question about Mr.
Cai, that's the agency channel of CPIC Life. Now I know you have a lot of experience in life sector and you have strong track record. Now what do you say about the challenges today compared to the difficulties of 10 years ago? So is there I mean, are they comparable? Are they the same?
And also about the reform of agency channel, as you mentioned, we should become more professional, higher quality. So are you going to develop a premium agency team? Are you going to segregate between these? Are you going to have different teams to serve different segment of customers? My second question about the is to Mr.
Zhangyuan Han, Chief Actuary of the CPIC. About the OPAT, which grew by 7 around 7%, but of course, slower than last year. So what was the composition of it? Is it because of operation experience variance or spread or interest rate spread, etcetera? So what's the contributor?
Well, thank you for your first question. Now AIA I worked for AIA 10 years ago. Now there are similarities and differences. Now in terms of similarities, I would say it's because of the time and the people and place. So it's not a single event.
So there is no silver bullet to change at all. I believe at that time, that's the way we were still having the financial crisis and AIA actually were undergoing a big challenge, so they need to change, they need to transform. But today, environment is different. Of course, there are difficulties, there are challenges from the life sector as a whole. But the differences is, number 1, CPIC is a very big insurance company in China in terms of both volume and also in terms of our geographic coverage and also in terms of our products, product mix and our business scope.
So, where TTS is much bigger than AIA. And I've been with CPIC for 6 months and I visited a lot of branches and outlets. I talked to a lot of people in CPIC. I believe we have 3 unique strengths or treasure jobs. As I mentioned, we have a big team of agents.
And our agency channel has been doing a lot of the right things for many years. We have accumulated a lot of good people, good agents. Secondly, we have a huge number of customers. And thirdly, our employees, CPS employees are very hardworking and many of our managers are high quality people. So we need to utilize our good people.
And another difference is the resource. I mean CPIC have totally different resources from AIA because CPIC is a top player in China and also a state owned enterprise. So we can utilize a lot of resources. So I would say there are both similarities and differences between CPIC now and AIA then. But one thing is for sure, we should start from customer needs and become more professional, more specialized via transformation.
Now I'll answer your second question regarding OPAT. Last year, for the first half of last year, given the COVID-nineteen pandemic, claims medical claims were quite low. But this year, there was a research of claims. And you see last year's OPAT was quite high, so there's a high basis. And in terms of RM release of RM and operational experience variance, Well, these 2 were on the upside.
So OPAT saw well, gave us good results. And as you mentioned, the EV operation experienced variance for EV, now you see there's quite a lot of surrender cases this year. But the calculation is different because EV not only contain this period but also long term operational variance. But for OPAT, they only calculate the release or the increase of the release of RIM. But of course, other operation experience variants are improving.
Well, thank you. Actually, as I mentioned, we solicited questions from small and medium investors, and I we have collected quite a lot of questions. I mean, these are mainly focused on the dividend payout strategy. Secondly, life agency transformation and also P&C auto reform. I believe we have already covered most of them.
And we are seeing quite a lot of questions on the broadcasting platform. Now actually, we'd like Ms. Pan to answer one question. Now that's from this is a question about the Hui Min Bao or the city specific health insurance product. Now a lot of people are benefiting from this insurance, but will it negatively affect CPIC's commercial health insurance?
Well, thank you. This is really a popular question. Now actually starting from last year, we see in a lot of cities in China, there's this kind of affordable medical insurance for the public and the CPIC has been an active participant of the whole initiative. I mean, the Huiminbao is affordable health medical insurance for the general public. So you see premium is quite low.
It's for the mass market and the medical reimbursement is like a supplementary medical insurance to the social medical insurance of China. So that's its positioning. So of course, that will help improve the awareness of Chinese people for health insurance. And for the business side, since it's affordable medical insurance, so it's different from critical illness product from CPIC. So it's not a replacement of CI products, but a supplement to CI.
So they can choose to buy both of them, especially for high and mid end customers. So they have a very big demand for long term CI products. So this kind of a Puhui or city specific affordable healthcare health insurance is actually a very good opportunity for further developing commercial health insurance. And going forward, we're going to offer more differentiated solutions to different market segments in terms of health insurance. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Pan. And we have a second question from Ms. Li. The question asked is that CPIC actually is a very prudent investors.
But this year, you see your results for your investment return slower than your peers. Why? Which is very stable and prudent. Now since in the interest of time, actually, we will have no we need to end the Q and A session. And if you have more questions, you can take it offline after the event.
You can contact our IR team. This concludes our interim results announcement. Thank you for your attention.