The nation's largest non-life insurer expects 2010 profit to double

BEIJING - PICC Property & Casualty Co Ltd, the country's largest non-life insurer, expects its profit to more than double in 2010 to the highest since its Hong Kong listing in 2003, the insurer's top management said on Wednesday.

"Such a performance is mainly attributed to the company's improved underwriting capacity, profitability, and tighter controls on claims and costs," said Zhou Shurui, supervisory chairman of the parent PICC Group, without giving the full-year profit figure.

The company's premium income reached 153.9 billion yuan ($23.3 billion) last year, of which auto insurance contributed more than 100 billion yuan. In terms of premium income, PICC has become the largest non-life insurer in Asia.

According to its semi-annual report, the insurer's profit from underwriting operations was 1.9 billion yuan in the first half of last year.

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"The company still maintained sound growth momentum in the second half of last year after net income grew more than 30 times during the first half of 2010, " said Jiang Caishi, vice-president of the non-life unit.

According to Zhou, PICC Group's profit last year will be double that of 2009, and its profit for 2011 will be close to 10 billion yuan, as all of its subsidiaries have been profitable.

Profit at the unlisted unit PICC Life Insurance Co rose to 1.53 billion yuan last year, and net profit for its health insurance arm also reached a record high of 69 million yuan.

The investment return of its asset management company also beat the industry average and the average of three major listed firms, said Zhang Shuzhong, vice-president of PICC Asset Management Company.

"We are now in the final stages of pulling in strategic investors, thus paving the way for our capital operation in the next stage. The listing depends on the market time-window, but we are sure that it can be done during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015)," said Zhou. He mentioned earlier that the strategic investor should be a domestic company.

When PICC stepped up its listing process, other Chinese insurers including Taikang Life Insurance Co, New China Life Insurance Co and China Reinsurance Corp, also redoubled their efforts to launch their IPOs, industry sources said.