Thank you for standing by for Fanhua's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please follow the instructions given at that time if you would like to ask a question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the internet. Webcast replay will be available within three hours after the conference is finished. Please visit Fanhua's IR website at ir.fanhua.com under the Events and Webcast section. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's conference, Miss Oasis Qiu, Fanhua's Investor Relations Manager.
Thank you, Andrew. Good morning and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Fanhua's fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 earnings call. A replay will be available on our IR website after today's call. Please know that the discussion today will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are made based on management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events impacting the company, and therefore may be impacted by a number of business risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include, but not limited to, those outlined in our filings with SEC, including our registration statement on Form 20-F. We do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information, except as required under applicable laws.
Joining us today are our Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Yinan Hu, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Peng Ge, Chief Strategy Officer, Mr. Ben Lin, and Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Lichong Liu. Mr. Hu will start the call by sharing his view on recent market trends and our strategy, strategy development, followed by Mr. Ben Lin, who will provide a review of financial and operational highlights and discuss our business outlook going forward. There will be a Q&A session after the prepared remarks. Please know that you can find our presentation material relevant to this call from our official website. With that, I will turn the call over to Mr. Hu. Mr. Hu,[Foreign Language] . You may begin.
[Foreign language].
I will translate for Mr. Hu. Good morning and good evening. Thank you for joining us on our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call.
[Foreign Language]
Reflecting on the past year, 2023 proved to be a year of challenges and transformations for the entire life insurance industry in China. The profound changes in regulatory policies, particularly the downward adjustment of the pricing rate and implementation of reporting and actual fee consistency requirement in the bancassurance channel, presented unprecedented tests for the industry. Fanhua was no exception. However, it was precisely within this challenging landscape that we showcased resilience and achieved stable growth.
In 2023, Fanhua's total gross written premium reached CNY 16.44 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of 28.7%, continuing to outperform the overall industry. Total first-year premium amounted to CNY 3.81 billion, a year-over-year increase of 30.3%. The efficiency improvement brought by digitalization, together with effective cost control measures, enabled Fanhua to achieve operating profit of CNY 195 million, a year-over-year increase of 16.1%. Net profit attributable to shareholders reached CNY 280 million, a year-over-year increase of 179...
179.7% [Foreign language].
In the full year of 2023, we achieved a total life insurance premium of CNY 16.4 billion, representing a 28.7% year-on-year growth, continuing to outpace the overall industry growth. First year premium reached CNY 3.8 billion, marking a 31.3% year-on-year growth. Leveraging the efficiency gains from digitalization and robust cost control measures, we realized an operating income of CNY 195.8 million, up 16.1% year-on-year. Net income attributable to shareholders reached CNY 280.4 million, reflecting a growth of 179.7% year-on-year. This solid performance demonstrates the successful execution of our strategy.
[Foreign Language].
Over the past year, we have continually strengthened our strategy of driving growth through professionalization, specialization, digitalization, and open platform, yielding a series of pivotal achievements. For instance, we have consistently bolster our pool of top-tier agents, enhancing their professional capabilities with the contribution from top performing agents and increased productivity of our sales team at all levels, serving as the pivotal drivers of our growth. Our digital platforms have continued to deliver efficiency gains, empowering our insurance advisors, while also providing our customers with superior service experiences. The diversified service ecosystem that we have built has established a solid foundation for our company's differentiation and long-term development. Furthermore, our open platform and M&A model have also emerged as the key drivers of our company's growth.
[Foreign Language].
The forthcoming consistency requirement and the commission cap, although may inevitably pose significant challenges to the industry, will also present enormous opportunities. We believe that amidst this phase of deregulation from accelerating industry transformation, scale-driven leading players, companies able to offer diversified services, and digitally intelligent platform companies will find themselves in a more advantageous position. Leveraging our strategic achievements in specialization, digitalization, open platforms, and service-oriented initiatives over the past two years, we are confident that Fanhua will emerge as the biggest beneficiary.
[Foreign Language].
Meanwhile, our internationalization strategy is steadily advancing. Hong Kong, serving as the cornerstone of our international expansion efforts, has sustained the official launch of two subsidiaries with Asia Insurance for business operations, providing a solid foundation for our global business layout.
[Foreign Language].
[Foreign language].
Recently, we signed a strategic framework agreement with Singapore White Group, marking a significant milestone in our development journey. The potential collaboration represents a strategic upgrade towards artificial intelligence development and internet internationalization. Through means such as mergers and acquisitions, we will invest in high quality overseas assets, deepening our presence in family services, including insurance, wealth management, education, healthcare, and family governance. This move aims to achieve horizontal and vertical integration, allowing us to offer comprehensive and efficient family asset allocation services to our clients. Moreover, it will accelerate our expansion in international markets, paving the way for broader development opportunities and propelling the company to greater heights.
[Foreign Language].
Looking ahead, we firmly believe that the industry will gradually move towards consolidation, forming an oligopolistic landscape dominated by a few major players, with services and technology driving the way forward. We are poised to emerge as the one of the biggest beneficiary of this transformation. Embracing the insurance plus services, plus technology model, we will provide comprehensive products and diversified services to our customers, while leveraging technology to enhance service efficiency. Our focus will be on serving the high-net-worth customers and MDRTs, which are also our core assets. The year 2024 will be pivotal for our development. We'll further expand our scale through industry-leading technology platforms, comprehensive service capabilities, and strong capital to acquire high-quality assets.
We believe that in the journey ahead, we'll continue to maintain our leading position, create more value for our customers, and achieve the long-term development goals of the company.
[Foreign Language].
Now, I would like to invite Mr. Ben Lin, our Chief Strategy Officer, to discuss our business highlights in the fourth quarter in 2023.
Thank you, Mr. Hu, and thank you, Oasis. Let me just walk you through our results for 2023. Some of the numbers that I'm gonna quote, you can find them in our results release, as well as our online presentation. Impacted by two significant regulatory policy changes in 2023, specifically, the pricing rate change and commission cap at the bancassurance channel. The life insurance industry in China witnessed a rollercoaster ride in terms of premium growth. Starting with single-digit growth in the first quarter, it soared to double-digit growth in the second quarter due to the pull-forward demand prior to the pricing rate adjustment. What we saw was then a reversion to single-digit growth in the third quarter, and ultimately a negative growth in the fourth quarter.
Overall, we saw a 10% year-on-year increase for the entire year of 2023 at the industry level. Amidst the dual pressures of sluggish performance on both the liability and investment side, major insurers are expected to experience significant decline in profitability, as indicated by the 15% negative growth in average profit of the listed companies in the first nine months of 2023. Against this backdrop, Fanhua continues to outperform the industry with stellar performance. In 2023, we achieved CNY 16.1 billion in total life insurance premium, which is a 30% increase year-on-year.
Net income to shareholders reached CNY 280 million, up almost 180% year-on-year... Overall, we are very pleased with our financial results, given the backdrop of a challenging macro and insurance industry environment in 2023. More importantly, we are particularly proud of the strategic executions we have carried out to achieve these results. Throughout 2023, we successfully executed each strategic initiative as we had planned. We firmly believe that these strategic achievements will set us on a higher quality and sustainable growth path. I would like to highlight four key strategic achievements that we saw in 2023. Firstly, our strategic focus on improving our agent quality and productivity produced significant results, and is the major driver of our success in 2023. Our MDRT and 100K premium agents have emerged as major contributors to our growth.
These agents saw productivity increasing by 15% and 10% respectively, and they accounted for 65% of our total first-year premium, up by 9% points from 2022. These achievements help offset the significant decline in overall agent number, a metric that we're no longer focused on, and is also an industry-wide trend. Secondly, we saw significant achievement in our digital technology empowerment. Based on the digital infrastructure built on big data intelligent algorithm, Fanhua has built an industry-leading digital empowerment system, covering five major systems, including operational support and management empowerment, professional growth and IT promotion system, customer management system, customer service system, and transaction support system. Among the many important tools in our digital system, in 2023, Fanhua focused on strengthening digital marketing empowerment through functions such as Digital Avatar, intelligent recommendation systems, Insurance AI Assistant, and intelligent customer marketing.
It helps our salespeople achieve intelligent management across these areas. The cost reduction and efficiency improvement brought by the digital empowerment that we have built. Our efficiency increased significantly over 2023. If you look at our operating expense ratio, it decreased from 29.4%- 25.7%. Agents who frequently use our system have productivity that is 1.6 times higher than those who do not use the system. Thirdly, our open platform strategy accounted for over 30% of our total new business. By the end of 2023, we have signed contracts with 854 channels, and an increase of 63 from the third quarter of 2023.
These partnerships contributed to a total first-year premium of over CNY 1.1 billion, accounting for over 32% of our total new business. There are also insurance companies, human resource consultancy agencies, and numerous other To B channels expressing their interest in further co-collaboration with us, to use our open platform system and digital tools to sell life insurance in their main business. Fourthly, our service-oriented ecosystem continues to take shape with evident results. We have developed a robust ecosystem beyond just life insurance. Covering trust service, family office, healthcare and wellness, overseas asset allocation, education, tax consulting, family affairs processing, et cetera, providing customers with a rich experience scenarios and substantial support to our sales agents in insurance marketing.
During 2023, we held 256 family office consultants training sessions and salons, certifying more than 1,200 family office advisors, who have since served a total of 500 families in assisting them to set up a total of 450 trusts, with total asset value exceeding CNY 5.6 billion, and facilitating approximately CNY 100 million in first-year premium. By the end of 2023, more than 20,000 FRP, or Fanhua Retirement Planners, have been trained and certified. During 2023, nearly 300 visits to our continuing care retirement community were organized, helping nearly 1,000 customers locking rates for long-term stays in these retirement communities. More than 4,000 customers obtained rates for these retirement communities across the nation, helping to achieve over CNY 600 million in first-year premium.
At the end of 2023, Fanhua has trained and certified more than 20,000 policy trusteeship experts, serving more than 130,000 policy trustee families, with 630,000 policies under trusteeship, generating cross-sale and upsales to 30,000 customers, facilitating about CNY 550 million in first-year premium. Lastly, we have made significant progress in our global expansion strategy. Since the establishment of our two joint ventures with Asia Insurance in Hong Kong in October, the insurance brokerage company has completed the formation of its core business team and signed contracts with about 10 major insurance companies in Hong Kong, ensuring the ability to meet diverse customer needs. Operations officially commenced in early February for our insurance broker business.
On the technology side, we are actively engaging with a number of insurers, and we're confident that our technology business will have its own milestones in 2024. Looking ahead for 2024, the insurance industry, especially the independent intermediary channel, will face a series of challenges and opportunities. Due to the significant uncertainties surrounding the specific timing and extent of the implementation of the requirement for consistency in reported and actual fees in the independent intermediary channel, we are unable to make precise predictions regarding our annual performance targets. However, what can be anticipated is that while the regulatory change may lead to short-term pains, it will also bring important opportunities for the development of our open platform. Our strategic focus in 2024 will include: one, continue to build a professional and specialized sales team.
We aim to increase our market share by growing the number of high-quality agents, particularly MDRTs, taking advantage of the market consolidation opportunity that is likely to arise as a result of the commission cap to be implemented. Number two, enhance our capabilities to serve high-net-worth individual clients. We will continue to build out our service ecosystem, supplementing our offerings in financial services to education, elderly care, and overseas travel. Number three, bringing high-quality assets while going global, accelerating our internationalization and digitalization process. We have been invited by a number of insurers to set up operations in Macau and Singapore. And lastly, we will pursue M&A opportunities to achieve horizontal and vertical integration.
Given our strong financial position with over CNY 1.4 billion in net cash, and the backing of our potential strategic shareholder, Singapore's White Group, we are probably the most well-resourced intermediary in the region, with the capacity and capability to undertake attractive and accretive M&A opportunities both inside and outside of mainland China. This concludes my presentation, and I'll hand the session back to Oasis. Thank you.
Thank you. Now the floor open for Q&A session. Andrew?
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one one. Our first question comes from the line of Yuyu Zhang with CICC. Your line is open.
Thank you, Zhang, for giving me this opportunity to ask a question. I have two questions I would like to ask. The first question is still about this insurance link. We may have discussed this a lot before. This has a negative impact. I would like to ask the management to interpret it in more detail. From our observation, the possible impact of the insurance link on the reduction of commission income may be how much? Will there be some initial figures? The second question is still about the current development of our overseas business. What is the latest progress? And what are the plans for 2024? What role will the framework signed with the White Group play in this? To simplify my two questions, my first question is about insurance linking.
We've made a lot of discussions before about insurance linking, and can we be a little bit more precise on this beyond your observation to what extent made a commission revenue, because if there are any numbers you can share with us. My second question is for the overseas business. Could you share some more details on what you've done in 2023 and will do in 2024? And about White Group, how can Fanhua cooperate with it to achieve more market share in Asia? Thank you very much.
Um,[Foreign language]
So Mr. Hu, we'd like to invite our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Liu, to take your first question. And the second question actually consists two parts. So the first part, regarding our international initiative, especially the business in Hong Kong, this part will be answered by Mr. Ben, our Chief Strategy Officer. And the last part regarding our potential collaboration with White Group, Mr. Hu, he will answer the question.
Regarding this insurance linking issue, in fact, there has been half a year of voices saying that it needs to be adjusted. But as of now, there is still no very clear time from the regulators. But the approximate time will be around April. Regarding the commission linking and the proposed income, now it is just each company based on-...
[Foreign Language].
So, well, the requirement for fee and the reported and actual fee consistency in the independent brokerage channel is up and coming. Although the regulatory body has not yet given a specific timing as to when they will be implemented. But the rumors in the industry is that it will probably be implemented in April. And as for the extent of the commission cap, there is also no specific guidance from the regulatory body yet. But the consensus among a lot of insurance companies is that probably the commission rate will for the same type of product, the commission rate will probably be down by 30%-40%.
[Foreign language].
Well, it's for certain that the business for insurance, independent insurance brokers will be severely impacted. But right now, the insurance companies will have a different part of strategy to adapt to this market change. Diverting their focus from the whole life insurance products to participating insurance products to make up some of the loss on the commission income for independent brokers.
[Foreign Language].
Well, the requirements for commission cap and the, you know, reporting and actual fee consistency is an inevitable trend given the continued decline in interest rates. However, and it will probably bring short-term pain to industry as well for Fanhua. But we are fully prepared for this new changes. And we have also been expanding our platform model. We believe that this regulatory change will resulting in more medium-sized insurance intermediate companies to co-collaborate with Fanhua in terms of platform business. And it will help us to continue to drive our market share. Thank you.
Okay. I'll answer the first part of the second question with regard to our progress in the Hong Kong market. So we established the two joint ventures with our partner, Asia Insurance, back in late October. So it's been about five months. And I'm very pleased to say that we have made very, very significant progress with our two joint ventures. Firstly, in terms of our team setup and office, so we now basically have two offices in Hong Kong. One is our brokerage business and the other one is our technology business. In our brokerage business, we have now built a team of 13 members. They're basically, you know, in the administration in the technical representative areas to facilitate contract signing.
In the period of November to January, together with the management team from Asia Insurance, we met with all the major life insurers in Hong Kong to start the process of contract signing. So far, we have signed contract with 10 insurers. And over the last few weeks, we have received the commission schedule from some of the insurers. So I'm very, very pleased to say that, you know, we can officially commence business from this week. In terms of where we differentiate in Hong Kong and why we are confident that we can be successful in our first market of Hong Kong, I think it comes down to really two things. Firstly, we are the only broker-...
In Hong Kong, in fact, in the region, that's backed by two listed companies with abundant resources. This provides us with abundant opportunity and capability to offer comprehensive services to our customers. Secondly, on the technology front. As you know, I've highlighted in the past, the broker technology segment in Asia remains very, very underdeveloped, even in mature markets like Hong Kong, a lot of the contract signing is still very paper-based, compared to 100% digital or paperless in China. So we're the only broker with more than, you know, 200 in-house IT support staff, that, you know, can basically transfer a lot of the know-how that we've built in the Chinese market to Hong Kong.
In the discussions that we had with all the life insurers from the period of November to January, the focus was really on two topics. The first one is obviously contract signing, but more importantly, the second one is really on IT integration. And I'm very pleased to say that all insurers expressed a strong interest, not only to work with us, you know, in terms of doing the business of selling, but they're also very interested in our digital capability and how we can work together to improve the sales technology in the Hong Kong market.
And what's interesting is, you know, we are-- we're not only trying to work with these insurers to develop technology that would help, you know, them to work with brokers, but more importantly, we're now also convincing them that, you know, maybe, maybe they could also outsource their in-house sales technology to Fanhua. Because the reality is, you know, we have spent an enormous amount of resources over the last five, six years in our sales technology capability. And a lot of this know-how, I think, is probably 10 years ahead of the Hong Kong market, even compared to insurers. So, you know, we're very, very confident that our technology capability and differentiation is gonna be one of our strong competitive advantages in the Hong Kong market.
You know, although we just commenced our Hong Kong business, we're already invited by a number of insurers to basically start operations in Macau and also in Singapore. Because in these markets, you know, there is also a lack of presence in terms of a major broker, you know, that has strong shareholder backing as well as technology capability. So, you know, one step at a time, I wouldn't be too surprised that in 2024 we will expand beyond Hong Kong. Dear Guanti, Hu Zhong. So the second question, the second part of the second question, Mr. Hu will talk about our-
Hey.
Our progress with Singapore's White Group.
...[Foreign language]
So look, first and foremost, what we wanna reiterate is that our collaboration will not change the positioning of Fanhua and our strategic direction. Last year, you know, we basically issued our new mission statement for the company, and we made it very clear that our objective going forward is to become the regional service provider for family services, broadening our capability beyond insurance, but into education, retirement, et cetera. So what we're advocating is insurance, a insurance plus model beyond mainland China. And we think this-
Yeah.
This opportunity to have a reason, White Group, is very, very timely for us.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So the synergy that can bring about with our cooperation with White Group is really based on two upgrades in terms of our capability. The first one is that the White, Singapore's White Group, have much better capability in terms of capital raising, particularly in the international market, compared to Fanhua. Secondly is that their track record and capability in mergers and acquisitions is also very evident, you know, given their history and success. We think these two capabilities serves as important upgrades for Fanhua as we pursue our strategy of going global through organic and inorganic strategies.
[Foreign language]
M&A will be a core part of our strategy, because we think that the opportunity for consolidation in the market, not only in China, but across the region, is very, very significant. And really, we'll focus on 2 areas. Number 1 is all our mergers and acquisitions will focus on bringing capabilities to improve or help us execute on our strategy of developing a professional sales team across the region. And then secondly, is helping us to broaden our services to high net worth clients.
[Foreign Language].
So without a doubt, the biggest change to our industry from 2024 onwards is the Commission Cap. You know, we think, you know, if you look at the regulatory purpose of the Commission Cap is really to drive higher quality growth. Now, how do you achieve that? You know, we think, you know, at the end, it comes down to upgrading your capability. You know, that's gonna be very, very important. So we think, you know, the Commission Cap is the right thing for the industry. We fully embrace it, and our strategy is basically putting the resources on improving our capability, so that in this environment, we will become the biggest beneficiary.
[Foreign Language].
Thank you.
I'm showing no further questions at this time. So with that, I'll hand the call back over to Oasis Qiu for any closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us on today's conference call. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you.
Thank you for participating. This concludes today's program, and you may now disconnect.