Credit: REUTERS/THOMAS PETERBy Engen Tham and Cheng Leng
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd 2318.HK601318.SS 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.
($1 = 6.7029 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Cheng Leng and Zhang Yan in Beijing, Engen Tham in Shanghai; editing by Jason Neely)
((cheng.leng@thomsonreuters.com; +8610-5669-2129;))
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