Thank you for holding. Thank you for standing by for Fanhua Inc. first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the management prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please follow the instructions given at the time if you'd like to ask a question. For your information, this conference is now being broadcast live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within three hours after the conference is finished. Please visit Fanhua Inc. IR website at ir.fanhuaholdings.com under 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 the host for today's conference, Miss Oasis Qiu, Fanhua Inc. Investor Relations Manager.
Good morning. Welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The earnings results were released earlier today and are available on our IR website as well as on Newswire. Before we continue, 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. The accuracy of these statements 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 filing with the SEC, including our registration statements and Form 20-F. We do not undertake any obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required under applicable law.
Joining us today are our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Yinan Hu, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Peng Ge, and Board Secretary Li Bili. Mr. Hu will provide a review of our financial and operational highlights in the first quarter of 2021. There will be a Q&A session after the prepared remarks. Now I will turn the call over to Mr. Hu. Welcome.
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For the first quarter of 2021, we once again beat estimates with solid results. For the first quarter of 2021, we facilitated RMB 3.1 billion of total gross premium, up 27.9% year-over-year, of which the first year premium grew by 57% year-over-year to RMB 892.7 million. Business quality remains strong, with 13-month persistency ratio at over 91%. As a result of the steady growth in life insurance business, our net revenues reached RMB 1.1 billion, representing a growth of 51.5% year-over-year and operating income reached RMB 144.4 million, up 133.8% from a year ago. Net income attributable to shareholders were RMB 138.4 million, up 222% year-over-year.
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Secondly, according to our analysis, 's life insurance industry remains gloomy as it undergoes deep reform and transformation, which pose both challenges and opportunities. There has been a fundamental change in customer demand. In the past six years since the life insurance pricing liberation, with rapid growth in the number of sales agents in China and the emergence of the internet channel, the penetration rate of health insurance products in China has been relatively high. The popularity of government-backed medical insurance in recent years has also absorbed a large portion of demand for health insurance products and eroded the upside potential for commercial long-term health insurance in China.
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On the other hand, there still is huge potential in the market segment of investment and savings-type insurance products. China's middle-class population now stands at 400 million. As investment and savings insurance products constitute an indispensable component in middle-class family asset allocation, with the continued expansion of the middle-class population, there will be explosive demand for this type of insurance product. The biggest opportunity lies in how one can stimulate and meet this implicit demand.
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Secondly, there has been a fundamental change in insurance agent organization. The traditional organization and pyramid structure can no longer meet customers' evolving demands, which leads to sharp contraction in traditional insurance sales organization and shortage of qualified talent in recent years. The professionalization of insurance sales organization has become an imperative.
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Digital capability is now a prerequisite to compete and thrive in the long term. Digital transformation reaches every aspect of business operation, from customer demand insights to targeted marketing, customer experience optimization, operating efficiency improvement, and operating cost savings.
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Thirdly, with Fanhua's professionalization, digitalization, and open platform strategy, we are well positioned to capture market opportunities. We make steady progress in rolling out our various strategic initiatives as scheduled.
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Firstly, professionalization strategy. As of date, we have approved the establishment of nine Yuntong branches. Yuntong, which is literally translated as cloud industry, is the high-end brand that we established specifically for our professional elite branches. We expect two of these branches to be ready for operation by July.
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Digitalization strategy. Our digital marketing center has so far recruited around 100 service representatives, which will be dedicated to providing intelligent services to our customers and facilitating the telemarketing transactions. In addition, we started to roll out Fanhua Enterprise WeChat application and launched Banyan Tree digital assistant application on a trial basis in Hebei province, which we believe will provide a more efficient way for our agents to engage with their prospective customers.
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Thirdly, our open platform strategy. Leveraging on our well-proven advantages in technology and bargaining power with insurance companies, we will continue to open our platform to all qualified market participants. As of date, we have established partnership for 16 channel partners. As we are in the process of facilitating system connection and testing business process, approximately RMB 1.5 million was facilitated through these channel partners in the first quarter.
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Fourthly, for the outlook in the second quarter in 2021. For the second quarter of 2021, amid persistent headwinds and a difficult year-on-year comparison due to 2020 Q2 post-COVID-19 boost, China's life insurance industry is widely expected to experience negative growth in new business. Against this backdrop, we expect our total GWP facilitated to be approximately RMB 2.6 billion, representing a year-over-year growth of 6.7%. After considering incremental expenditures required for implementing the new strategy, we expect our operating income will be no less than RMB 30 million. For the second half of 2021, we will continue to step up investment in executing on our new strategy while ensuring the achievement of no less than RMB 300 million operating income for the full year of 2021.
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This concludes my presentation. Now the floor will open for your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question today, please press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. Your first question today comes on the line of Qingqing Mao from CICC. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] Thanks for management. First of all, congrats for the exciting results. We have seen some negative effects caused by the switch of critical illness definition among peers. How about Fanhua? When do you think this effect would fade away?
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The transition from the old critical illness definition framework, from the old one to the new one, is a big event for the industry overall and also has caused a huge impact. Before the suspension of the old critical illness product in February first, there has been strong sales in critical illness products in January.
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There has been a particular characteristic in the Chinese life insurance market, which is that every time before the suspension of a product, there will be a strong sales followed by a slowdown for a period of time. This time has no exception. In addition to that, we believe that the penetration rate for critical illness products is relatively high in China. As of date, there has been 300 million outstanding critical illness policies in China. Apart from that, recently the government has rolled out some short-term national insurance products, which is more affordable, and this type of product has also become quite popular among consumers, which in certain ways also absorb some of the demands for critical illness products.
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In order for the critical illness product to fully recover, I think it will require a lot of innovation and customization of products in order to boost customer demand and create opportunities for upselling. We believe that critical illness may not be the main driver for the growth of the life insurance industry for the longer term.
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We believe that product innovation and customization will be the main trend in the future. In April, actually, we cooperated with Bainian to custom design a critical illness product, which is called Huabai Yihao. As of today, we have sold RMB 20 million in terms of the new first year premium, which is much higher than the total premium sold by Sinatay in the same period, according to our visit to Sinatay recently.
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For the longer term, no matter for Fanhua or the overall insurance industry market, in order to attain rapid growth, it's important to focus on savings and investment type of products. This is also the key product that we will focus on in terms of building up our offline sales capability and digital capability.
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Right now, there are 400 million middle-class population in China, and this population has strong potential demand for savings type of product. It's our job to stimulate this intrinsic demand.
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Thank you.
Operator, if you want to ask a question today, hit star one on your telephone. As you can see that we have no further questions on the line today. I'll now return the call back to management for closing remarks.
Thank you for participating in today's call. If there's any further questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. We thank you for all your participation. You may now disconnect.