China’s insurance giant Ping An is aggressively courting Southeast Asia

Ping An Insurance, China’s second-largest insurer by premium income, has been betting big on fintech.

Now, it’s setting its sights on Southeast Asia. Recognizing the potential of fintech solutions for banks and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region, Ping An’s Singapore-based subsidiary OneConnect Financial Technology was registered in March 2018. Since then, it’s been sprinting to woo customers.

Photo credit: 123RF

OneConnect will provide a variety of software services for businesses and financial institutions that will automate loan applications, credit assessment, customer service, marketing, and more.

Leading the charge in Southeast Asia is OneConnect CEO Tan Bin Ru, a veteran tech executive who served as regional sales director and held management roles at Microsoft as well as had a stint with Hewlett-Packard.

In an interview with Tech in Asia, Tan says that the first batch of team members – including Ping An executives – arrived in Singapore in June 2018. They spent the next six months preparing for launch by talking to potential customers about their needs.

The company is going on a hiring spree. It’s looking to potentially double its existing headcount in Southeast Asia, with the goal of hiring 188 employees across the region this year. Around 60 to 70 percent of these roles will be focused on engineering and research and development.

Tan Bin Ru, CEO of OneConnect

While a lot of fintech players target consumers or SMEs, OneConnect’s advantage is that its products have been tried-and-tested within Ping An, making it a natural partner for the biggest financial institutions. OneConnect’s offerings are essentially commercialized versions of the systems used by its parent firm.

“We don’t sell anything that the Ping An Group isn’t using. We are a startup, but we have a good parent company, so banks are willing to listen to us,” says Tan.

Right now, OneConnect is reaching out to more banks and insurance companies across Southeast Asia. With its Singapore headquarters already housing a team of close to 100 employees, the company has just launched its Indonesia office.

A team of 20 to 30 IT and sales employees are now on the ground in Indonesia, meeting with prospects discovered during their first-level assessment. Smaller teams composed of a dozen or so people each have also been deployed in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The key to OneConnect’s strategy was hiring a leadership team that specializes in Southeast Asian markets and then sending them to Ping An’s headquarters in China to identify which of the parent company’s products would suit customers in the region. Tan notes that some solutions were either too specific to the Chinese market or of little help to Southeast Asian users.

Consumer lending is hot

Blockchain for large enterprises