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* Q3 net profit up year on year
* Retail customers up 7% at end-Sept vs Jan
* Warns demand still weaker than before pandemic
(Adds detail, background)
By Engen Tham and Cheng Leng
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Ping An Insurance Group
Co of China Ltd on Tuesday reported a
7.74% rise in net profit, its first quarterly profit increase in
a year, as the country's largest insurer by market value
attracted more retail customers.
Net profit rose to 34.4 billion yuan ($5.12 billion) in the
three months to September 30 from 31.9 billion yuan a year
earlier, Ping An said in a stock market filing in Hong Kong on
Tuesday.
It reported 214 million retail customers as of the end of
September, up 7% from January.
And in the first nine months of 2020, Ping An's life and
health insurance business, its main profit driver, generated
75.45 million yuan in operating profit, up 9.2% year on year.
However, its nine-month net profit fell 20.9% as COVID-19
adversely affecting its long-term protection business.
"Domestic consumption demand was still recovering,
large-scale offline events were still restricted in China, and
offline face-to-face meetings had not increased to pre-epidemic
levels yet," Ping An said.
In the short-term demand for insurance will "still be weaker
than before the epidemic", it said.
Ping An Insurance Group is the controlling shareholder of
Ping An Bank, which reported a 6.1% rise in
third-quarter net profit.
In September it said it had become British bank HSBC
Holdings' biggest shareholder, with an 8%
stake.
The company's lending arm Lufax Holding Ltd, one of
China's largest online wealth management platforms, this month
filed to list in the United States, aiming to raise about $3
billion, Reuters reported.
Shanghai shares of Ping An have fallen 5.1% this year versus
a 2.5% drop in the blue-chip China financials index.
The group has a market value of $212.3 billion as of
Tuesday.
($1 = 6.7029 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Cheng Leng and Zhang Yan in Beijing, Engen Tham
in Shanghai; editing by Jason Neely)
