Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 2024 Q3 Results Announcement of CPIC Group. I'm Su Sh aojun, Group Board Secretary. We have with us Mr. Zhao Yonggang, Group President, and Mr. Su Gang, Group Vice President and CIO, and also Mr. Zhang Yuanhan, Group Chief Actuary. First of all, Mr. Zhao will give you a presentation on our results in the first three quarters, and then we'll have a Q&A. I'll give the floor to Mr. Zhao.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Zhao Yonggang, President of CPIC Group. Next, I'm going to give you a brief introduction of our first three quarters results. Since Q3 2024, guided by the New Ten Articles for insurance industry issued by the State Council, and to build a first-class insurance group with international influence, we adhered to high-quality development and healthy progress.
We played up our role as a shock absorber and a stabilizer to contribute to five key areas of finance, improved the quality and efficiency of insurance services, and also strengthened our core competitiveness while delivering steady progress on business performance. We mainly focused on insurance business and saw rising premium income and profits. In the first three quarters, our insurance revenue amounted to CNY 209.4 billion, up 2.3% year-on-year. Among them, CPIC Life achieved CNY 62.3 billion, down 2.5% year-on-year, while CPIC P&C delivered CNY 145.2 billion, up 4.1% year-on-year. The group realized a net profit of CNY 38.3 billion, up 65.5% year-on-year. Our key strategies include the big health, big region, and big data strategies. Through them, we strive to strengthen our strategic control and synergy and enhance customer management.
To meet health and retirement needs, we accelerated the construction of the pension management plus pension insurance plus elderly care system. We opened a CPIC care home in Wuhan and speeded up innovation and synergy in key areas and maintained healthy premium growth and quality of business. In terms of digital workforce, on top of AI audit, we added AI coaching for our life agents, AI review of health insurance claims, and online claims assistant for P&C business. We take very seriously the protection of investors and consumer rights and interests and have been awarded A rating for insurance disclosure of listed companies on the SSE for 11 consecutive years. Both CPIC Life and CPIC P&C have been rated number one in the industry for their consumer rights protection assessment results in 2023.
In terms of key performances of our business line, committed to Changhang Action Plan and transformation, CPIC Life continues to focus on customer value creation. Our CPIC Life GWP was CNY 230.5 billion, up 3.3%. New business value was CNY 14.2 billion, up 37.9%, and the new business margin was 20.0%, up 6.2 percentage points. Our agency continues to improve its professionalism and KPIs. For example, our first three quarters GWP grew 4.1%, and our new business GWP grew 16.3%. Secondly, our number of core agents stabilized with improving quality. The monthly number of core agents was up 2.4% year-on-year. And thirdly, the number of our new agents was 15.5% up year-on-year, and the FYP was 35% increase. The 13th persistency ratio of our individual customers increased by 2 percentage points year-on-year to 97.5%, while 25 months' persistency grew 8.2 percentage points to 92.3%.
The bank channel adhered to value approach to focus on key regions and strategic channels. Its GWP in the first three quarters increased by 6.2%, of which individual long-term insurance regular pay new premiums increased by 23% year-on-year. Group channel upgraded its worksite BD and improved the mix of its short-term business. The GWP decreased by 12.8% year-on-year, but the worksite business grew by 18.3% year-on-year. Our product mix continues to improve. Starting from September, our product mix has improved significantly. The share of health protection and participating products doubled, and the CPIC Care Home keeps to empower our business. Its average number of monthly residents rose steadily, and the number of entry qualifications and first-year new premium and total premium payable grew by 20% year-on-year. CPIC P&C maintained a focus on sustainable high-quality growth.
In the first three quarters, its GWP was CNY 159.8 billion, up 7.7% year-on-year, of which auto premiums were up 3.3% year-on-year, while non-auto grew by 12.2% year-on-year. The combined ratio was 98.7%, unchanged from the same period last year. For auto insurance, we complied with regulatory requirements by effectively controlling expenses and further optimized costs with innovative new energy vehicle business model. For non-auto insurance, we served the real economy and people's well-being, developed emerging new areas, strengthened innovation, enriched the supply of products and services, and better served our customers with integrated risk solutions. For the asset management side, we maintained a prudent SAA while flexibly adjusting TAA. That is to say, we allocate long-term flexible income assets to extend duration and strengthen active management of equity. We buy equity with low duration, high dividend, and long-term profitability.
We actively respond to low interest rate market environment with above-market performance results. As of the end of Q3, our group's total AUM was CNY 2.58 trillion, 14.9% higher than the end of last year, and our net investment yield was 2.9%, down 0.1 percentage points year-on-year. Our gross investment return was 4.7%, up 2.3 percentage points year-on-year. The above net and gross investment yields are not annualized. Looking ahead, CPIC will strictly implement new regulatory rules and messages from the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee meeting and the Central Financial Working Conference and integrate itself into the construction of Chinese modernization and achieve high-quality growth while safeguarding people's well-being and serving the real economy. To be specific, we will continue to enrich the supply of products and services, improve the pricing mechanism to better meet people's need for insurance protection and wealth management.
Secondly, we will continue to focus on service, optimize service process, improve the quality, and the protection of consumer rights and interest. And thirdly, given the long-term nature of our insurance funds, we will focus on China's major strategies and key areas to better serve the real economy, technology innovation, and modern industries. Fourthly, we will accelerate digital transformation, strengthen data governance, and promote emerging technologies to better empower the company's operation and management. And number five, we will strengthen risk management and internal control, enhance asset liability management, and promote long-term healthy development. With that, I end my presentation and welcome your comments and questions. Thank you.
Well, thank Mr. Zhao for your presentation. Now we start the Q&A session. Now, please listen for queue to ask your questions. Now, please, if you want to ask a question, please press the star and the one to queue. Please identify yourself and your employer before asking questions. Please ask no more than two questions. First, Sun Ting from Haitong Securities.
Thank you, Mr. Zhao. I'm Sun Ting from Haitong Securities. I have two questions on life business. First of all, you mentioned that in September, can you share more numbers on the share of your products? And secondly, the grand opening for the next year, how are you going to plan it? What's the pace of the sales? And what kind of product mix are you going to have for 2025? Because you'll see for 2024, your starting point is quite high. So how can you achieve growth for the next year? And next question on agency. For 2024, the bank channel has new regulations on commissions reporting. So your margin improved a great deal. Now, what about the rules, similar rules for the agency channel? Are they going to have more or have what kind of impact on your business? How is it going to impact your margin?
Well, let's answer your first question in terms of the par business. For 2024, the first three quarters, our health products and individual life products. Well, the offerings, we offered more of these kind of products. Our product mix improved a lot in September. That's mainly because the pricing rate has not been changed in September. So in Q3, participating life sell much better than in the previous quarters. As Mr. Zhao mentioned, it more than doubled in September in terms of the sales of participating life insurance. And starting from October, new business from participating insurance also doubled in share in terms of the share.
Of course, in October, the absolute number was smaller. That's because of a seasonality issue, but our capability to sell participating insurance is improving, and we did more training to train our skills on selling participating insurance products. We trained more than 1,000 sales trainers, so we believe this laid a good foundation for next year, and for next year, you'll see on the whole, in terms of the preparation for the grand opening of 2025, we will continue to pursue diversified channels to focus on customer needs and also take into consideration the changes in macro environment. So we will be diversified. We'll focus on value while improving our product mix. We have a lot of mature experience in selling participating products to boost the business, so for the next year, we believe the NBV growth. We are quite confident about NBV growth.
To answer your second question about the rules on commissions reporting to regulators for the agency channel. Now, for the agency channel, we believe the overall trend is a good one. We will have a better team with better quality. We will closely follow the new regulatory development regarding commissions reporting to the regulator for the agency channel. We believe we'll go back to the fundamentals of insurance business. So these kinds of measures will actually benefit CPIC so that we can cross the cycles and boost high-quality growth of the agency channel. CPIC Life is doing the Changhang transformation. We are trying to build our agency help into a professional one, helping our agents to become more professional so that they can be more successful in the new era. And leading insurer in China, we're doing some benefits from advantages, if I may.
So we can better offer integrated solutions to our customers so that we can comply better with regulations. We can better boost the income of our agents. As far as we can see, the long-term savings products, I mean, the margin is quite stable. I mean, be it participating or traditional saving products. I mean, after the shift to lower rates of pricing rates, I believe our margin actually improved.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Zhang, for your answer. Let's welcome the next caller. Well, next, we have Li Jian from Huatai Securities.
Thank you. I'm Li Jian from Huatai Securities. Two questions. One for investment, one for life. Now, for this quarter, I mean, Q3, new business premium increased a lot for life. Now, what's the reason for the increase? Is it because of the, well, sales boom because of product termination? Is it sustainable? I mean, especially for new business growth. Now, you mentioned you will have better new business value. Now, what about the new business premium for next year? Second question about investment. Now, you mentioned you are going to allocate more in terms of high-yielding stocks. But most of these allocations are booked as tradable. But what's the reason for that?
Well, thank you for the questions. Now, your first question, actually starting from this year, we pursued our Changhang transformation plan to focus on customer value. We actually wanted to increase economic value by focusing on improving customer value. As you mentioned, for Q3, our business further growth in Q3. In the first three quarters, NBV was CNY 14.2 billion, up 37.9%. Now, of course, if we look at the reasons, several reasons, pricing rates were cut down, NBV margin improved a little bit.
So number secondly, it's also a result of our diversified channel development. For example, agency improved its performance. Our banker channel also focused on value business. So we believe for the whole year, NBV will have a good trend of growth. But of course, lowering of pricing rates will present challenges in the short term. But in the long term, it is actually favorable for us because it would help us to better manage the interest rate spread risk. So we believe we need to seize on these opportunities to turn it into, well, business improvement. So far, we have finished the development of the participating life products to be used in the 2025 grand opening. We believe we need to have value, not only volume, but also business value. We have a mature model for that. For 2025, we are quite confident about continued growth of NBV in 2025.
Now, let me answer your second question. As you mentioned, CPIC always pays a lot of attention to the equities with high dividend return. Now, we have been doing this for the last two to three years with very good results, and not only us, other companies are also doing this. We believe it's a good strategy, especially under the new accounting rules. Actually, we have been improving the OCI class equity assets. Of course, this is an ongoing process. Now, the share is above 20%. But of course, you can look at the issue from different angles. We can take it offline. After the meeting, you'll have different approaches to this issue.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for the answers. Now, let's welcome the next call. Next from Liu Xinqi from Guotai Junan Securities.
Well, first of all, congratulations on your good performance.
I'm Liu Xinqi from Guotai Junan Securities. Two questions from me. Number one, new life strategy for you. As you mentioned, the Changhang transformation plan, phase one, phase two. Now, after all that, agency improved a lot with better core agents, better quality. So my question is, what's your focus for further or future reform? And the next question about the gap between net investment yield and the gross investment yield, 1.8 percentage points. So what's the reason for that? Now, going forward, how are you going to maintain kind of a stability of investment yield? How are you going to use asset allocation to maintain the stability of investment yields? Now, the number one question about the life strategy, right?
Yes.
Correct. I mean, after Changhang transformation, the quality of life business improved. So was your agency channel. But what about your future priorities for life transformation?
Now, in the long term, I mean, we remain unchanged for life agency. We need to be the best in terms of the service experience of our customers. But of course, there are macro environment changes and also demographic changes in China and also industry trends. So these changes and plus regulatory changes may affect our reform. So going forward for the CPIC Life, I mean, we need to recalibrate based on those changes. But we still will focus on customer value, our social and economic value. And based on all that, we will design our big strategies. So our customer, our channel strategy, our product strategy all need to be based on all those factors. It's still ongoing. It's early stages. After we have mature plans, we will share them with you. And as you mentioned, the New Ten Articles for life insurance sector has just been released.
So we need to better study the document, well, do more study and research before finalizing our plans. Well, I'm the Chief Investment Officer, Su Gang. Now, thank you for your question. Now, of course, you see, we need to look at our net and growth and comprehensive investment yields. We need to look at all these indicators. But objectively speaking, the net investment yield has been under pressure for the entire industry because we know the interest rate is going down in China. So previously, some of our high-yielding fixed income assets matured, and we need to reinvest. But the reinvestment yield was lower than before. But we have took some measures to offset that effect. Compared to peers, our net investment yields declined was actually smaller than a lot of our peers. But of course, admittedly, capital market changes also influenced us, especially after September.
At the end of September, the stock market spike in China also had a huge effect, especially the fair value change, well, fluctuated a lot. So this kind of spike will invariably change our or impact our gross investment yield and comprehensive investment yield. So the gap between the net and the gross investment yield becomes wider. But of course, if we look at the reasons for those kinds of yields, I mean, attributable factors in terms of debt and fixed assets. Debt and equity, I believe the share is 50/50. But in Q3, equity, of course, made a bigger contribution in Q3. Our fair value change impact was very favorable in Q3, much better than the TPL assets.
Thank you.
Let's welcome the next caller from Citigroup.
Thank you. Good evening. Now, thank you for the opportunity. I'm Ma Yuqing from Citibank. Two questions from me. Number one, P&C in the first half of this year. Actually, you improved in terms of, well, in terms of profitability. But if we look at the first nine months, we believe combined ratio, well, remains the same as last year. For Q3, there's a lot of disasters happening in China. So in Q3, I mean, what about the Q3's profitability? Maybe also share a little bit on the auto and non-auto side. Second question. Participating life sales is growing, is improving month by month. So far, how many of your agents have received the qualification to sell participating life products or have already sold participating life products?
Well, let me answer your first question about combined ratio of P&C business. Of course, you'll see the numbers. This year, our combined ratio, I mean, maintained a stable growth. Overall growth need our listed peers. Our target remains unchanged.
We need to focus on sustainability of growth, focus on value. We need to have good control of our quality. But of course, we had more disasters in China this year. In Q3, we have a lot of typhoons. So, well, we are impacted. So far, if we look at the numbers, this kind of catastrophe loss was much higher than last year, than previous years even. So this negatively impacted combined ratio in Q3. In terms of line of business, our non-auto suffered most of the damages. Now, our agricultural insurance, our property insurance. So these catastrophe losses impact would be above 3 percentage points for Q3, which can be evened out across the whole year. So given this kind of impact, our combined ratio for the first three quarters remained stable. We believe with the extension of time, for the whole year, our profitability will be quite good.
To answer your second question, compared to last year, our par life regular pay was very low. In the first nine months of this year, we sold CNY 100 million. That's for last year. But for this year, in first six months, the volume was CNY 400 million. And for September, it doubled again. And in October, par life regular pay sales also grew fast. So if we look at September, par regular life, we believe in terms of share of the par life regular pay, we ranked in the middle of the industry.
Thank you.
Well, the next caller from Guangfa Securities.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I'm Liu Qi from Guangdong Development Securities. First question. For the whole year, profit growth was quite fast. What about dividend payment and the payment ratio? Are you going to actually maintain a ratio of more than 30%? Second question. In the first three quarters, in terms of claims payout, how much was from VFA?
To answer your questions, of course, we always take very seriously return to dividend to shareholders. Now, temporarily, because of the new accounting standards, given the capital market volatilities, we have not paid out a midterm dividend payout. We were going to do that later on, and we look at the OPAT and also look at our business performance and shareholder return. All these factors should decide on a dividend standard. So that's the first question. Sorry, I didn't. The second question, in terms of underwriting loss, our DBA is relatively stable, and our liability cost ratio was down a little bit. Now, most of it comes from VFA growth.
Thank you.
Now, next caller from CICC. Thank you for the opportunity. Good evening. I'm Ma Jingqing from CICC.
Now, I have one question from other comprehensive income. In Q3, it's -CNY 4.8 billion. Now, the TPL side and the impact was offset. The impact on traditional insurance. Now, in Q3, it's a negative number. What's the reason? And the OCI trend for the future, how do you look at it? Is it going to remain a gap?
Let me answer your question. In Q3, it's a unique case because on the liability side, OCI changes were based on the 50-day assessment rate curve, which was going down. But on the asset side, the interest rate curve is a real-time interest rate curve. So by the end of the quarter, it picked up again. So that's the change. We believe this kind of change can be tolerated, and it is a natural gap between the two rates. When this happened in Q1 last year, so we believe it's normal. Of course, for the long run, we believe our asset liability matching is relatively good. Going forward, we might, based on our AALM, do some research based on interest rate movements.
Thank you. Let's welcome the next caller. Next, a caller from Goldman Sachs.
Thank you. I have two questions. Number one, OPAT. You mentioned OPAT. Now, what about the growth for OPAT this year in Q3 or the first half of this year? Now, second question, maybe share a little bit more on, I mean, profit is good in Q3. Net profit in Q2, Q3, pretty much the same. In Q3, A-share in China performed very good. So why wasn't there a big increase in net profit in Q3?
Now, first of all, for the first three quarters, OPAT year-on-year growth was very small, mainly because of the Q3 catastrophe losses for our P&C business. So our underwriting profit went down month on month. So the growth narrowed compared to last year. So from the net profit perspective, in Q3, our net profit was benefited, well, from the capital market movements. In Q3 last year, our performance was quite stable. So that is why this year, Q3, we didn't see a huge increase in net profit. So we believe we had quite a stable growth mode, stable business mode. Thank you. Thank you. Let's welcome the next call. Next, Zhao Yao from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. Number one, on the number of agents for the P&C agency and life agency. Now, first of all, how do you define your core agents?
Actually, a slight decline in core agent numbers. NBV, the contribution from this kind of core agents in terms of NBV. In terms of number, are they going to remain unchanged at 60,000? Second question about your investment in high dividend paying stocks. What's your consideration? If such a stock is already in FVTPL and we want to move it to OCI, how are we going to do it? Thank you. Let me answer them. In the first three quarters, the agency, I believe, is improving. We believe the number and the quality of our core teams improved. For example, the number of core agents improved by 2.4%. For three consecutive quarters, we saw this kind of growth. For example, first-year premium for core agents also improved by more than 10%.
In Q3, single quarter, our recruitment and also total number of our agents were very good. If we look at more details, I believe the agency means the strategy for agency is also customer-centered. With Changhang transformation, we will continue to push our agents to be more professional, to focus on quality recruitment and training and agent development. For example, in key cities in China, we are trying to build this kind of retirement and pension-related advisors. We recruit high-quality new agents and train them. Secondly, we have a system to develop these new agents to protect them in the first six to 12 months, to train them, to turn them into high performance for the first year. So that these core agent teams can be stabilized. On the whole, I would say we focus on both the quality and volume.
For example, we boost our productivity, boost recruitment, and stabilize the volume or the size of our agents, especially core agents, so with stabilizing number of core agents and agent leaders, we can improve our agency business, well,
I'm Su Gang. Maybe I will add more on the high dividend stocks. In terms of selecting those stocks, it's also a systematic approach. For example, we look at the industries. We look at, first of all, the big industries. Is it a promising industry, so that's the basic consideration, and based on that, then we look at the specific subject matter. For example, the company, is it competitive in the industry? And we also look at the valuation of that particular company and the company's dividend payout ratio, etc., etc., so does it meet our definition of high-yield, high-dividend stock, and we look at also market factors.
So there is not a single simple criterion to say which stock is a high-dividend stock. So it's an ongoing fluid process. In terms of the strategy, this is a long-term strategy for CPIC investment. Starting from 2014, we have been utilizing this strategy and treating it as a fundamental strategy for our stock selection. On the whole, we will stick to SAA. And then with expanding AUM under SAA limits, our total volume of equity investment is improving. So that is why we say investment funds is a long-term fund, is long-term money, patient money. We have this kind of space to play up our advantages in allocation. So it is not saying that we must move out those high-dividend stocks from TPL. So currently, the share is 2%. We were actually looking to increase it further. We hope to better reflect the long-term nature of our insurance money.
Now, in terms of you mentioned about the facilities, monitoring facilities. Now, the new policies on these swap facilities. This is a further indication of the Chinese government's commitment to the capital market. So market liquidity will be improved. Market dynamism will be improved. The market confidence will be further improved. So for insurance companies, especially a state-owned insurance company, we will stick to the directions of the central government. And based on our investment strategies, we will must follow the policy to serve the real economy and to serve the national strategy. We will study the new policy and try to develop scenarios where we can utilize these policies. So we combine the long-term nature of our insurance money with short-term swap monetary facilities.
Thank you.
Thank you, and also thank all the questions. In the interest of time, we only have the time for the last question. Next, a caller from the CM Securities.
Thank you. CM Securities, Zheng Jishang. Now, two questions from me. In terms of liability, could you share more information on that? For example, we know the regulators are trying to lower the pricing rate to lower the liability cost. Do you have some numbers? I mean, comprehensive liability cost, including the channel expenses, operating expenses. I mean, comprehensive liability margin. How much is it lowered? What's the level of comprehensive liability cost? Could you maybe give us a cumulative number or a marginal number? That is on the side of the lowering of liability cost. What about next year? How will the liability cost change in next year? How low can we reach in next year? The second question on investment, on the fixed asset side.
Now, your strategy on fixed asset investment, could you elaborate a little bit? Your share of bonds and the share of your alternative investment? What's your specific strategy? Are you going to over-invest in the fixed asset investment assets?
Now, first question about liability cost. With the lowering of pricing rate for traditional products and also for universal life, of course, liability cost for the new business went down a great deal. And of course, we now offer lower guarantee rates. To put it simply, our liability cost, that is to say the comprehensive liability cost, that cost would be slightly lower than the pricing rate by 20-30 basis points. So overall, new business liability cost dropped quite fast. For example, at 2.0%, you can calculate the liability cost for us yourself.
Now, for the in-force business, with the lowering of interest rate in China, overall, par life and the universal life settlement rate will go down for the whole industry and significantly lower the risk of interest rate spread risk. Now, apart from guaranteed business, I'm talking about the variable parts, floating parts we offer to our customers. Now, as I mentioned before, our overall liability cost, including par, was lower than 2.5%. Under extreme cases, CPIC, of course, we don't want the extreme cases. CPIC's, if we do not pay out dividend yield, dividend payout, we believe the 2.5% liability cost can be further lowered. Now, second on our strategy on fixed asset investment, of course, fixed asset takes a lion's share in our SAA, maybe 80% something. Now, for a very long term, we have this kind of dumbbell strategy for SAA.
Now, the biggest one factor is we continue to enhance allocation in T-bond, government bond. We are doing this all the time. We believe this is favorable to our long-term asset liability matching. Given the current situation, we need to allocate very actively in long-term and ultra-long-term T-bond. Because going forward, we believe T-bond yields are very likely to go down. So at this time point, we believe it's wise to invest in long-term T-bond. We believe China is going to issue more T-bonds, and the equity market improvement will impact the bond market, either from primary or secondary market. So we believe it's a good time to invest in long-term and super long-term T-bond market, bond assets. Now, in terms of credit bonds, CPIC will focus on prudent strategy. That is to say, we believe credit bond spread is very small as of now.
So credit bond is also a good option. And maybe on a temporary basis, we might look at these kind of phase opportunities to look at maybe bank deposits to improve the yield. For alternative non-standard investment, we are prudent on the whole. Of course, we have an asset securitization license. We have our own mutual fund. So we will do some innovation, for example, for REITs investments. So we are trying to explore innovative fixed asset investments so as to achieve some risk premiums. For the next year, on the whole, we believe we are going to maintain interest rate bond and maintain stable maneuver or stable allocation in bonds so that in either bond and equity side, we will have this kind of balance.
Thank you.
Thank you all for the answers and the questions. And thank you for your attention to CPIC. If you have more questions, please reach out to our IR team. Thank you. That ends the meeting. Thank you all.
Thank you. That's the end of the meeting. Thank you. Goodbye.