Ping An Insurance, China’s largest insurer by market value, has used its platform at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 in Davos to advocate for the alleviation of poverty using insurance.
The theme of this year’s Davos Forum is ‘Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World,’ with poverty alleviation as one of the key topics.
Representatives for Ping An used the meeting to explain how re/insurance could be utilised to help impoverished regions, and pointed to some of its own successes in this area.
For example, Ping An’s ‘Poverty Alleviation Insurance Scheme’ leverages insurance innovation to drive industrial development in impoverished areas and connect households.
By implementing a model of credit guarantee insurance in combination with interest subsidy, risk can be shared with the government and banks.
This lowers the financing threshold for the development of local specific industries and encourages poor households to increase production and income.
To date, Ping An’s model has already supported 70 projects in 13 provinces in China, providing poverty alleviation funds of RMB490 million (US $71 million) in total, which has increased the annual per capita income of 46,000 low-income people by more than RMB2,000 ($289).
Similarly, by collaborating with multiple hydropower companies under the dual model of poverty alleviation loans and corporate bonds, Ping An has built an ecosystem that turns dormant hydropower resources in rural areas into an advantage for regional development.
And in terms of financial inclusion, the company continues to provide loans to entrepreneurs and female leaders of cooperatives in rural areas, as well as loans for agricultural projects such as crop farming, husbandry and forestry.
Currently, Ping An’s ‘Rural Communities Support’ programs have been implemented in 21 provinces or autonomous regions across China, and have provided an accumulated poverty alleviation fund of RMB15.8 billion ($2.3 billion).
Chen Yao, Executive Deputy Director of Ping An’s Poverty Alleviation Office commented: “Ping An continues to push the poverty eradication strategy, and has developed an innovative poverty alleviation model which includes ‘education and training, industry cultivation, one product per village, production and sales empowerment’, to further boost smart poverty alleviation in three directions: industry, health care and education in impoverished areas.
Yao added: “Ping An will continue to promote smart poverty alleviation, fulfill corporate social responsibilities, foster social harmony and progression, and ensure the long-term sustainable development of the Group.”
Ping An recently became the first Chinese asset owner to join Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative that aims to engage the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters and help them take action on climate change.
