Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. announced that the Group’s subsidiary, Ping An Bank Co., Ltd. has been named World’s Best Digital Bank at the prestigious Euromoney Global Awards for Excellence 2020, the first Chinese bank do so.

“Shenzhen-based Ping An Bank didn’t tweak the rulebook when it set out in pursuit of a better digital strategy. Instead, it tore it up and began again. The Chinese bank’s plans have worked beyond all expectations,” said Euromoney, the financial publication that established the awards in 1992.

Xie Yonglin, President and Co-CEO of Ping An Group and Chairman of Ping An Bank, said: “Technology is a major factor of global financial competitiveness. Ping An Group has invested more than RMB100 billion in technology in the past 10 years and will invest RMB100 billion in the next five years. Under the Group’s “finance + technology” and “finance + ecosystem” strategies, Ping An Bank has been driving technological innovation to provide convenient, smart and comprehensive financial services to customers, strengthen its digital and online operations capabilities, and advance its digital transformation. Ping An Bank will continue to innovate to set an example for China and for the world’s banking industry.”

In the first half of 2020, Ping An Bank’s revenue increased by 15.5% year-on-year to RMB78,328 million. As of June 30, 2020, retail assets under management (AUM) exceeded RMB2.3 trillion and retail customers exceeded 100 million. The provision coverage ratio rose by 31.81 percentage points (pps) to 214.93% from the end of 2019.

Technology has played a critical role in Ping An Bank’s strong performance. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the bank resumed business quickly through online digital operations. As of June 2020, more than 30,000 employees had worked remotely, supported by nearly 7,500 technicians who were able to continue with technology development and operations and maintenance management and monitoring through various remote working tools.

Innovations have also transformed the customer experience. In the first half of 2020, unmanned customer services accounted for 88.5% of Ping An Bank’s artificial intelligence (AI)-processed customer service workloads, up 2.4 pps from the end of 2019. AI evaluation also enabled Ping An Bank to shorten credit card issuance time to two minutes from two days for manual processing. Applications for its unsecured loans and other credit products are now fully managed online, shortening loan approval process to 10 seconds. The digital risk management model has reduced credit losses by 60% compared to the manual system. As of the end of June 2020, registered users of the Ping An Pocket Bank mobile banking app exceeded 100 million.