Exclusive | Ping An adds property assets to investment portfolio, steers clear of developers after painful China Fortune Land experience

Of the insurer’s 4.37 trillion yuan (US$633.9 billion) investment portfolio, real estate now accounts for 4.7 per cent, or 205.4 billion yuan, with 60 per cent invested in physical buildings, an increase of 10 percentage points from two years ago. The rest is in equities or bonds issued by developers or other property assets.

Ping An has been investing in warehouses, commercial buildings and data centres among other assets.

“Since 2021, we have modified our approach a bit to real estate, with an emphasis on investing more in physical assets,” said co-CEO Jessica Tan Sin-yin in an exclusive phone interview with the Post on Thursday, a day after the insurer reported a 17.6 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit to to 83.77 billion yuan last year. “This is because what we want is not really the developers themselves, but the assets. As long as the economy does well, they are going to give me stable rental income. That is very important to our investment strategy.”

“We have reduced our exposure to equity and fixed income investments in developers, [but] I want specific assets and projects,” she added.