Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by for Waterdrop Inc.'s 3rd quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Xiaojiao Cui. Please proceed, Ms. Cui.
Thank you for joining Waterdrop's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Please note 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. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those of our current filings. We assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required under applicable law. Also, this call includes discussion of certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Shen Peng, our Founder, Chairman, and CEO. Mr. Yang Guang, Co-founder, Director, and VP. Mr. Hu Yao, Co-founder, Director, and VP.
Ran Wei, Partner and General Manager of Insurance Marketplace. Mr. Zhu Zetao, Partner and General Manager of Medical Crowdfunding and Patient Services. Mr. Richard Chen, Board Secretary and VP. They will be available for a Q&A session following the remarks. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Shen Peng. Please go ahead.
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Hello, everyone. Thank thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During the third quarter, we have seen increasing downside risks in the global economy, as well as uncertainty regarding the domestic economic recovery. Nonetheless, the recovery in domestic demand has recently gained momentum. We believe that the fine-tuning of COVID control measures will unleash a rebound in private consumption, providing solid support to revive the domestic economy. This trend will enable the insurance industry to return to a value growth cycle and improve the business outlook for the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Against this backdrop, Waterdrop continued to exhibit strong resilience and adaptability and maintain good business momentum in the third quarter, with revenues increasing by 10.1% on a quarter-over-quarter basis.
Following our turnaround in the final quarter of last year, we have managed to achieve a healthy level of profitability in every quarter of this year. In the third quarter, our GAAP net profit reached RMB 170 million, confirming that our business has entered into a phase of steady profitability. As of the end of September, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments increased to RMB 3.6 billion. Even taking into account our share repurchases, we were able to generate a positive cash inflow of RMB 300 million in the third quarter. Our ample cash reserves and our ability to generate positive cash flow put us in a strong position to withstand the changing external environment.
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Our remarkable operating results and evolving business trends over the past three quarters demonstrate that we have entered into a phase of healthier and more sustainable business growth, establishing a solid foundation for future business development. Our operating efficiency and business quality have also improved steadily. As such, we have delivered on our commitment to achieve healthy and sustainable profitability ahead of schedule based on the timeline we set at the beginning of this year. This reflects management's determined strategic planning and efficient execution.
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Looking into the fourth quarter and beyond, we will continue to pursue steady progress in our business development efforts, deepen reform of our business, and make appropriate investments in new businesses while proactively exploring new business models to achieve healthy growth. Through these efforts, we aim to achieve top-notch and sustainable long-term business growth.
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As a leader in the medical crowdfunding industry, our subsidiary, Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding, is committed to maintaining disciplined operations and driving the healthy development of the ecosystem. In this quarter, we continue to collaborate with the judiciary, hospitals, and industry partners to crack down unauthorized fundraising activities. At the end of August, Waterdrop once again worked closely with the police in Shandong province to crack down on a case of fundraising fraud perpetrated by malicious intermediaries. Through our stringent review process, together with the big data algorithms and AI technologies developed by our risk management team, we have developed a system that can identify unauthorized fundraising activities instantly and effectively. After several months of investigations and on-site visits, we collected a large volume of evidence which successfully helped the police to solve the case and take legal action.
Following various effective crackdown measures, there has been no malicious unauthorized fundraising activity detected on our platform for several consecutive months.
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In the third quarter, we deepened our efforts to reform the business strategy for our Waterdrop Insurance Marketplace. We improved our business quality and continued to upgrade our product and service offerings while further accelerating our pace of technological innovation. This strategy adjustment enabled us to achieve higher quality operating results.
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We are also proactively pursuing broader innovation opportunities in the medical and healthcare industry. We continue to expand our outreach by leveraging the strength of existing businesses, including our high-performing Patient Recruitment business and our Nascent CRO business, which we continue to explore and develop. Through these efforts, we aim to provide our users with lifetime product and service coverage to enrich our ecosystem.
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In the third quarter, we carry out our share repurchase program firmly. We repurchased approximately 1.09 million ADSs in total. We are continuing to execute the program prudently. As of the end of September 2022, we had cumulatively repurchased approximately 5.88 million ADSs from the open market for a total consideration of approximately $8.5 million.
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We will continue to focus on the interests of our shareholders. In this September, we announced the one-year extension of our repurchase program with the maximum repurchase amount increased to $80 million. This demonstrates our strong confidence in our corporate value and our long-term sustainable development. To conclude, we will continue to maintain ample cash liquidity regardless of the industry environment. We continue to have a confident and patient outlook on the industry and our own development. We will remain committed to our mission, stay focused on user value, solidify our business fundamentals, and pursue continuous advancement, thereby building up our strength to enter a new phase of development. I will pass to Ran Wei to discuss the development of the Waterdrop insurance business for Q3.
Thank you, Shen Peng. Hello, everyone. Let me give you an update on our insurance business development. In the 3rd quarter, the market for life and insurance, health insurance in China remained challenged. With no significant improvement in premium growth, the continuing resurgence of COVID-19 has hampered business passion and policy reform in the life and health insurance industry. At the same time, the demand for protection-type products remain soft, which implies that both the demand and supply sides of the market are somewhat subdued. Meanwhile, due to volatility in equity markets and interest rates and the ever-growing operating pressures, the overall earnings of the insurance industry declined in the first 3 quarters of 2022. Against this backdrop, we continued to improve our operational efficiency, boost the quality of our business, and optimize the risk offering.
We have proactively explored new customer acquisition channels and persistently engaged in product innovation to achieve long-term sustainable business growth in spite of the industry downturn. We achieved an industry-high GAAP net profit of RMB 170 million in quarter three, and our key operating metrics continued to reflect the high quality of our business relative to the industry. I will walk you through the performance of our insurance business on the forefront. First, steady progress on our business model upgrade. In quarter three, the quality and profitability of our insurance business continued to improve thanks to our persistent optimization of products and user experiences. Our first year premiums increased by 8.4% from quarter two. We revamped transaction processes and data analysis, resulting in improved user perception of our service quality.
The number of long-term insurance policyholders has reviewed their policies, and the LTV contribution of our products has both increased steadily. In terms of existing user management, we further refined our marketplace platform operational model and co-modulated the sales conversion shape across all channels. To satisfy the lifetime protection needs of users, we have enhanced the overall synergistic efficiency. As such, the user retention rate remained above 60% and further increased in quarter three. At the same time, to identify user leads more accurately and efficiently, we continued to optimize the algorithm model based on hundreds of millions of user profiles. The number of user conversions from short-term insurance products to long-term products increased by 14% from quarter two, and the sales productivity per in-house LP from internet and affiliate marketing was 2.5 x the industry average.
Our new customer acquisition model has achieved an initial breakthrough in quarter three. The number of followers of our video accounts increased by 110% QoQ, and the total insurance premiums originated from this account increased by 290% sequentially. Leveraging our video content and the sales conversion capabilities across the supply chain, we have acquired a large volume of direct traffic and reduced our reliance on traffic from paid channels. This helped increase our ROAS by 180% QoQ. In addition, with improvements of our capabilities in both in long-term insurance planning and our long-established sales experience, we have cooperated with more external traffic providers to acquire greater number of high-quality leads, which have helped to drive sales conversion for our long-term insurance products in quarter three.
The sales productivity per lead under this partnership increased by 177% sequentially. Second, exploring new customer acquisition channels to drive sustainable business growth. In quarter two, we set up a dedicated second level business unit, which adopts the insurance planner model to promote the online brokerage business. In quarter three, we mainly focused on building up the standards and their capability in the retail, targeting the characteristics of customer needs under the insurance planner model. We developed operational standards for our private domain user management system. We also launched our major leading training and short video platform and our in-depth video content to facilitate the customer acquisition and explore a one-on-one customer service model. These efforts have helped to diversify our channels to become both user reach and user experience.
Compared to the last quarter, the premium and the revenue generation from this unit increased by 42% and 54% respectively. Going forward, we will continue to expand our online broker team and strengthen our content creation capability. We will gradually expand the commercial footprint on a larger scale based on the proven model. Since the beginning of this year, we have stepped up our efforts to develop our offline broker business. In Q3, we launched the Family Find, our Waterdrop family insurance lead diagnosis, which is a sophisticated system that can help brokers diagnose customer needs and provide appropriate insurance plans.
The customer-centric Family Find system empowers brokers to identify the protection needs of each family based on family size, household income, and the expenditure and save plans, and then guide them to offer a more professional, holistic, and objective customized insurance solution that can satisfy each family's protection needs. At the end of September, our offline broker team expanded to more than 900 staff and reaching total insurance premium of more than RMB 100 million, all up by 52% QoQ. We have expanded our offline broker business to 9 cities across China, including Beijing and Shanghai. Going forward, we will optimize the unit economics of our established network and steadily expand our offline brokerage business to other regions across the country. The third, product innovation.
To meet the protection needs of customers with pre-existing conditions, in Q2, we launched Waterdrop Blue Ocean, a series of critical illness products with a waiver of health declaration, further expanding the user group of our CI insurance products by removing a major obstacle for the elderly and the patients with chronic disease. The product series has won wide recognition in the market and generated sizable sales. Similarly, in Q3, we launched a series of RMB 1 million coverage medical insurance products with our healthcare declaration. These innovative products showcase our commitment to expanding our offerings to customers with pre-existing conditions while keeping our underwriting risk under control. To satisfy the protection needs of different age groups, in Q3, we worked with our insurer partners to co-develop a customized critical illness insurance product for children, which offers additional medical services and benefits for leukemia.
We also rolled out various low premium critical illness insurance products designed to meet the protection needs of the younger generation. In the third quarter, the insurance premium originated from customers under the age of 14 increased 20% QoQ. Meanwhile, to meet customers' needs for asset allocation in a low interest rate environment, we continued to enrich our savings product matrix and improve the professional capability of our sales team. In quarter three, total premiums on savings products originated from our self-operated channels increased by 23% QoQ. The fourth, the export of insurance technology. In addition to launch the Family Find tool, we also upgraded the whole process of insurance claim assistance services to optimize user experience.
Based on our analysis of a large number of claim cases, we have integrated the best practices into the whole process of our online claim assistance services. Empowered by our digital capabilities, we upgraded 8 claim assistance services and launch all new claim settlement tools within our one-stop solution, which helps either handle various issues during the claim settlement process. For example, our intelligent document management system leverages our OCR-based extraction technologies to effectively improve the accuracy of documents upload. Our product customization assistant uses our claim settlement insights to generate innovative insurance products recommendations for users demanding more customized by protection. In the future, we will continue to invest our claim service system and strive to deliver a better claim experiences for our users. This concludes my briefing on our business, on our insurance business.
Now let me hand over to for an update for our Medical Crowdfunding and patient recruitment business.
Thank you. I would like to share some updates on our Medical Crowdfunding business. At the end of Q3, a cumulative total of 420 million donors helped exceeding 2.69 million patients raised over RMB 55.3 billion from our platform. Our user number and fundraising amount has remained stable even after we implemented a service fee. In the third quarter, the operational transparency committee continued to enhance our operational control related to the testing and transparency on our Medical Crowdfunding platform, and launched new initiatives to increase the transparency of fund flow for each donation. For example, we have enhanced fund flow disclosure by adding bank statements and more refined visual on the platform's fundraising pages. When a patient withdraws money, the bank will issue payment fees for both platform and the patient.
The fundraising page will also disclose other information, such as how much cash has been withdrawn by the patient, the service fee charged, the third-party payment channel fee, and the amount of funds available for withdrawal. The fund flows related to each donation are thus easily traceable. Meanwhile, after several months of efforts, we worked closely with the police in Shandong to crack down on the case of fundraising fraud perpetrated by malicious individuals, resulting in the arrest of 17 suspects. Leveraging various expressive measures, the platform realized zero malicious fundraising activities for several consecutive months. It's notable that our Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding platform was successfully selected into the classic case of jointly building a community of shared future in cyberspace, in which initiative inside of World Internet Conference.
From a global perspective, most average families are at high risk of financial crisis caused by critical illnesses, especially the people in remote areas who lack social security. When they unfortunately encounter critical illness or accidental injuries, they often have to choose without the necessary medical treatment or even their lives because of the heavy financial burden. Well, Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding utilizes Internet to bring the act of mutual health to social media networks, which will facilitate the efficiency of helping humankind. Waterdrop has built a life protection network for millions of people in thousands of countries and regions, and thereby gained a wide-ranging recognition.
For the patient recruitment business in the third quarter, our E-Find patient platform sustains its high growth momentum, recruiting more than 900 patients for clinical trials with Q on Q growth rate of 36%, and bringing our total number of clinical trial programs to more than 400. We have collaborated with more than 100 innovative pharmaceutical companies and CROs in China and worldwide. The number of patients and the number of partners continued to increase this quarter. In particular, our E-Find platform has established collaboration with a number of leading global CROs. This has allowed us to work on several international multi-center clinical trials initiated by multinational pharmaceutical companies.
In a lung cancer clinical trial project initiated by a leading domestic pharmaceutical company, our E-Find patient platform demonstrated its unique strength in digital patient recruitment and successfully recruited 42 patients for the clinical trial within only 9 months, despite the ongoing COVID lockdown in China. The pharmaceutical company subsequently honored us with the best recruitment
In the world, we are set to become the exclusive patient recruitment partner in the project to launch next year. Our unique digital patient recruitment ability has helped us to build up an excellent reputation and an influential position in the industry. This concludes my part, let me turn over to the Hu Yao to discuss our technical innovation updates.
Thank you Zetao . Hi, everyone. I'm going to talk about our third quarter technology innovation updates across five important platforms. Our chatbot not only serves as the ears and voice of our virtual employee, but also features as a human-like mindset developed for the insurance marketing scenario.
Regarding the years of the chatbot, in the third quarter, we launched a set of optimization called algorithms that enhance the accuracy of our ASR, automatic speech recognition technology to improve our chatbot's ability to accurately recognize users intentions. We deployed two algorithms, one which provides background noise identification and filtration, and another which is specially adapt for analyzing multi-sentence user responses, therefore enabling our chatbot to understand users just like humans. As for the voice of our chatbots, we have equipped it with a voice cloning technology that enables it to speak to our users while emulating the tone of our best sales staff, thereby enhancing the smoothness of the dialogue and improving and improving the overall user experience significantly.
Meanwhile, on top of our proprietary intelligent risk control model, we have also developed additional chatbot functionalities which enable the estimation of our sales conversion rates. The selection of optimal outcome, calling times and the generation of complaint alerts. These models help the chatbot communicate with users at the most appropriate time with advanced dialogue skills and with a more human-like mindset, thereby maximizing our sales conversion rates and minimizing the potential disturbance to our users. Second, I will address our efforts to refine our intelligent marketing operations through AI technologies. Our AI-powered matching system performs a number of functions, including the first time allocation of leads, scheduling follow-up calls, and the reassignment of leads. The system is one of the most important components of our intelligent marketing operation.
In the third quarter, we upgraded the module, which performs first-time allocation of leads to version 4.0, which enables more flexibility in AI-based decision-making, including lead sorting and matching. As a result, our API, our ATL efficiency improved by 12% compared with version 3.0. We use AI to select the most appropriate callback time, has significantly improved our user experience and sales conversion rates. Finally, we have also applied AI to determine the reassignment of leads, which help enhance our ATL efficiency by around 16%. In summary, version 4.0 of our AI-powered matching system is highly stable and efficient in lead matching and has reached our industry leading position. The system continues to play an important role in enhancing our sales conversion rates for long-term insurance products. Next, I will discuss our medical algorithms platform.
Our proprietary extraction algorithm for medical records, makes filing our medical records forms more efficient and speeds up our patient recruitment process. The classification algorithm implemented in our medical data center has significantly improved our data governance efficiency with an accuracy rate of about 95%. In addition, our intelligent verification algorithm, which is capable of answering more than 20 types of questions automatically, has significantly improved the efficiency of insurance claims. In this quarter, we officially rolled out the AI video production function in our Waterdrop Insurer app. That means our brokers can now access customized AI-powered video production services within minutes, helping them build their personal brands. Through this exclusive video generation tools, we have enhanced our brokers customer acquisition capabilities by empowering them to easily create original marketing content.
Finally, I will give you an update on our intelligent risk control platform. We upgraded all of our risk control products and integrated them into a unified algorithmic risk control platform. The platform's integrated algorithmic capabilities not only provide strong risk control support to all of our businesses, but also greatly mitigate potential PR risks. I will give you 2 examples of its application. First, in compliance with users' right to know requirements, we have developed models which can recognize unauthorized fundraising activity and identify the malicious intermediaries with a high degree of accuracy. This helps us better safeguard the interests of fund raisers, maintain the reputation of Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding platform, and stamp out malicious fundraising activity from the very beginning.
Second, in order to protect user pro-privacy, we have gone above and beyond the conventional methods to provide additional protections. For public facing information uploaded by our fundraising users, we use a sensitive information masking model to automatically identify and mask personal information contained in uploaded image to avoid exposure of sensitive information and fulfill our duty to protect users' privacy. Thank you. I will now hand over to Yang Guang to discuss our third quarter financial performance.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. I will now walk you through our financial highlights for the third quarter of 2022. Before I go into details on the financial performance, please be reminded that our numbers quoted here will be in RMB. Please refer to our earnings release for detailed information on our comparative, year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis.
Despite the challenging external environment brought by the pandemic and the slow economic growth, we have pressed forward in the profit making phase with four consecutive quarters of profitability, further sustaining the momentum as we have methodically pursued a high-quality operational strategy since the third quarter of 2021. The net operating revenue increased by a 10% QoQ and decreased by a 0.9% YoY to RMB 772 million, which was primarily due to the decrease in interest related income. For Q3, operating costs and expenses decreased by a 15% YoY to RMB 639 million due to the effective cost control measures taken since the first quarter of 2021. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, operating costs and expenses increased by 17%.
To break it down, operating costs were RMB 341 million, up by a 15% YoY, mainly due to the decrease in professional and outsourced customer service fee for RMB 22 million. The recording of certain crowdfunding-related service fee direct cost of RMB 63 million from sales and marketing expenses to operating costs as we started to charge crowdfunding service fees since April 2022. An RMB 19 million increase in the estimated cost of one year health insurance coverage related to the termination of mutual aid plan last year based on the final settlement information, partially offset by the RMB 85 million decrease in personnel costs.
On a quarter-over-quarter basis, operating costs increased by 14%, primarily due to professional and outsourced customer service fee increased by RMB 64 million as compared to the second quarter of 2022. Sales and marketing expenses decreased materially by 82% YoY to RMB 137 million for the third quarter of 2022. The decrease was primarily due to a RMB 500 million decrease in marketing expenses to third-party traffic channels and a RMB 122 million decrease in outsourced sales and marketing service fee to third parties. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, sales and marketing expenses remained stable compared with RMB 144 million for the second quarter of 2022.
G&A expenses decreased by 26% in Q3 to RMB 82 million YoY due to the combined impact of a decrease of RMB 8.7 million in share-based compensation expenses, a decrease of RMB 9.9 million in personnel costs, and a decrease of RMB 5.4 million in rental expenses. On a quarterly basis, the G&A expenses remained stable compared with RMB 86.1 million for the second quarter of 2022. R&D expenses decreased by 23% to RMB 78 million YoY. The decrease was primarily due to RMB 19 million decrease in research and development personnel costs and share-based compensation expenses.
An increase 11% QoQ, which is primarily due to RMB 7.7 million increase in research and development personnel costs and share-based compensation expenses. In Q3, we reported a non-GAAP profit of RMB 215 million and a U.S. GAAP net profit of RMB 159 million, compared with an Adjusted Net Loss of RMB 453 million for the same period of 2021. The profits we have generated over the last four fiscal quarters illustrate the achievement of cost discipline and profit enhancement.
As of September 13, 2022, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investment balance increased to RMB 3,588 million, an increase of RMB 300 million, or 9% from the end of the prior quarter, as we continue to generate positive operating cash flow, partially offset by the investing and financing cash outflow. So far, we have once again reinforced our financial guideline of achieving a non-GAAP profit in the year of 2022. Going forward, we will continue our efforts in cultivating our business, enhancing our revenue quality, and in speeding cost optimization. Thank you, that's all. Now let's turn to Q&A.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit to two questions at a time so others can get their questions in as well. In addition, for those who speak Chinese, would you please ask your questions in Chinese first, followed by the English translation by yourself. Thank you. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Qingqing with CICC. Please go ahead.
Thanks operator. This is Qingqing from CICC. First of all, congrats on the results. We noticed that you have a sufficient cash reserve. My question is, what's your plan for utilizing it? In the company.
This is Yang Guang speaking. I'm gonna answer the question. Thank you for that question, Qingqin g. I think as mentioned earlier, as of the end of September, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments totaled RMB 3.6 billion. Even taking into account our share repurchase, we were able to generate a positive cash inflow of RMB 300 million in the third quarter. Our ample cash reserve and our ability to generate positive cash flow put us in a very strong position to deliver our strategic goal and withstand the evolving external environment. I think we'll continue to maintain a reasonable and sufficient cash reserve. Meanwhile, we provided that we have ample working capital needed for our daily operations.
We will use an appropriate amount of funds to build our medium and long-term competitive edge to achieve healthy and sustainable development. I think firstly, we will use our funds to implement our share repurchase program. Since our IPO, we have used our own funds and cumulatively bought back 5.8 million ADSs from the open market for a total consideration of approximately $8.5 million. Based on our strong confidence in our corporate value and our long-term sustainable development, in September, we announced the one-year extension of our repurchase program with the maximum repurchase amount increased to $80 million. We plan to reserve the repurchase share for share incentive plan, which will align the interest our employees with the growth of our company.
I think secondly, we will consider strategic investment at the right time. We will use a portion of the funds to pursue suitable strategic investment and acquisition opportunities. The focus will be centering around the solid framework formed by our product innovation capability, technological innovation, and the synergies created among various unique business segments all to penetrate deeper into the industry and expanding our ecosystem of insurance, healthcare, technology, and thereby further expanding our presence in the industry. I think, thirdly, we will invest in new directions in the healthcare sector, relying on our established advantage in doctor-patient relationship and intelligent big data analytics.
We will have made breakthroughs in the medical innovation space as mentioned by the call earlier, our patient recruitment business is gradually becoming an industry leader, and our CRO business has also made remarkable progress. Going forward, we will continue to allocate an appropriate amount of funds to pursue innovation opportunities in the medical and healthcare industry. Although the new business initiatives may not generate significant revenue and profit in the short term, but we believe that it will help the company create a new competitive edge in the long run and inject new momentum into the long-term growth of the company. I think that's all for the question.
The next question comes from Edwin Liu with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two questions here. First one is regarding the crowdfunding platform. Since we just finished the first full quarter of this crowdfunding, where it started to charge the service fee, can you provide a breakdown of the revenue and profit for this segment and any color on the trend? My second question is regarding the guidance. Appreciate it if management can provide guidance in terms of operating revenue and net profit for this year and next year. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. To answer the first question, I think our Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding platform has ceased to fully subsidize its service fee and started to charge a service fee of 3% in April of this year and up to a maximum amount of RMB 5,000 for a single campaign. This is to cover part of the operational cost and then help more patients with critical illness to raise capital. Also the user number and fund-raising amount on our platform have remained stable after the charge of the service fee. We also regularly and transparently disclose our service fee revenue in our financial reports and through our other communication channels.
Since April, when we started to charge the crowdfunding service fee, we have generated around RMB 120 million in service fee cumulatively as of the end of September. For Q3, our revenues from service fee were RMB 59 million, accounting for around 2.8% of the funds raised during Q3. The rate is below 3% because we are still subsidizing campaigns for critically ill patients in some cases. The direct operating cost for our crowdfunding platform was RMB [64] million. In addition, there are also indirect costs formed by our company, including IT and middle office, risk control and other functions. The service fee was barely sufficient to cover most of the direct operating costs.
Overall, our full medical crowdfunding platform remains on a healthy and stable growth track. However, we did not intend to charge the service fee for profit purpose, but for our platform to maintain its daily operations sustainably and the benefit of our users. Our future plan will remain on track, unchanged, and that is to make the service fee cover the operational costs. We will keep our crowdfunding platform on a healthy and a steady development path and continuously upgrade the service and explore more monetization scenarios in an orderly and healthy manner. We will strive to provide premium fund-raising service for more patients in need and help establish a strong health protection system for the public.
To talk about the guidance for the full year profit, I think at the beginning of this year, we set a goal to achieve non-GAAP profit for our established business for the full year of 2022. So far we have achieved a good progress with our strategic transformation, and we have continued to see improvement in our operating and financial performance. Since earlier this year, our revenue has gradually stabilized and returned to be a growth track quarter-over-quarter. Since we first achieved an Adjusted Net Profit in Q4 last year, we have maintained a healthy level of profitability in each quarter of 2022. In Q3, our net profit on GAAP basis reached RMB 170 million.
Despite the external uncertainty, we have established the foundation for a more healthy and more solid and more resilient growth path against the various external factors. We have entered into a phase of healthier and more sustainable business growth with a more solid foundation for future business development. For our 2022 full year profit, we expect to maintain the profitable trend in Q4 and achieve a net profit of around RMB 500 million for the full year of 2022, outperforming the goal we set at the beginning of the year. I hope that answers your question.
Yes. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Thomas Wang with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. A quick question on the increase in operating costs in the third quarter. Just want to try to understand what's driving that increase.
I think the increase in the operating cost is due to the recording of certain crowdfunding related service direct costs of RMB 63 million switched from sales and marketing expenses to operating costs as we started to charge crowdfunding service fee since April this year.
Oh.
Yeah. Because we only started to charge starting from April this year. It didn't cover the whole quarter. Also Yeah, we increased costs on the professional and also the customer service fee. That's mainly related to the crowdfunding business.
Operator, do we have the last question?
Yes, we do. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star then one. The next question comes from Susie Liu with Bank of America. Go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Thanks for taking my question. This is Susie Liu from Bank of America Securities. My question is about future expansion strategy. We see that Waterdrop has already established competitive advantage in tier three cities or below. and but which is the area you've been focused on? Going forward, are there any strategy to expand business in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities? Could you share more details on your strategy, please? Thanks.
Okay, thanks. This is Hu Yao speaking. I'll talk something about interest rate, about the expanding our business to first and second tier cities. Right now, more than 80% of our current us-users are from tier three and below cities, which is consistent with China's population distribution. From the perspective of absolute number user of our users in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, we have an advantage in industry. To expand the users to the first and the second tier cities, we think we have four strategies. First, our online own product business mainly focused on Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. We provide by diversifying business models such as the organization-based model, the independent agent model, and the community store model according to the local conditions.
Launch sophisticated systems that help brokers diagnose customer needs and provide appropriate insurance plans. This way, we can serve the middle-class family in the first and second tier cities with a more professional and competitive insurance solution. Second, we will leverage our customer insights to continuously enrich our product offerings and develop product lines to better meet the diversified needs of users in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Third, we will use the insurance claim model, which features in deep concerns and community marketing to facilitate customer acquisition. This will enhance our user experience and expand our reach among users in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities who already have a deeper awareness of insurance.
Fourth, and we're going to working with [Xiaohongshu], which are popular among emerging white-collar workers, and invest in a promotion campaign with a higher recognition to deepen our brand awareness among customers in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. That's all. Thank you.
We are now approaching the end of the conference call. Thank you for your participation in today's conference.