20 November, 2017 Shenzhen-Yao Bo, CFO and Chief Actuary of Ping An Insurance Group, disclosed on the Investor Day of Pingan Group that the Company has been gaining stable growth through its “finance + technology” in the past 7 years. In the future 5 core technologies will become key players on the development roadmap of Piangan, among which blockchain technology stands out. Pingan Group has joined R3, the consortium blockchain association, in April 2016.

Yao Bo, CFO and Chief Actuary of Ping An Insurance Group

Pingan’s vision on future growth will be guided by being the world’s leading financial technology company that produces a light capital income by exporting modular services to financial institutions.

Yao Bo explained the “finance plus technology” strategy with 2 major focus and 5 major technologies. 2 focus, that is, focusing on financial technology, focusing on medical technology; 5 major technologies, namely cloud platform, artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, biometrics.

On October 31, Pingan Group announced establishment of the global financial and economic development research center in cooperation with Tsinghua University, to create a global think tank in the field of finance to promote the country’s modern financial industry system set up.

In the field of blockchain technology, Qiu Han, Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of Ping An Finance, said:

“Pingan has conducted in-depth research and development of blockchain technology with many relevant application scenarios. The essence of blockchain is a kind of data storage, or in simple words it is a immutable and shared “transparent ledger”. Features like decentralization, transparency and distributed storage make blockchain-based transaction irrevocable and highly transparent. Through the construction of SME credit platform, the use of blockchain technology can enable banks to provide SMEs with more confidence in the data to solve the problem of SME financing difficulties.”

Qiu Han said that the fundamental problem of inclusive finance is to solve the problem of excessively high cost of financial services. By using blockchain technology, banks can save a lot of manpower. The risk control personnel can obtain comprehensive information of every transaction remotely and quickly at a low cost. In the future, Pingan will deploy blockchain, AI and other cloud computing technology into more real-time scenarios.

Shanghai-Ping An Group（601318.SH，02318.HK）, the second-largest insurance company in China, offered an open blockchain platform this June. The platform is specifically designed for small and medium-sized bank, offering technology solutions including blockchain with the first “zero-knowledge proof” blockchain implemented in working environment.