ZhongAn Online Property and Casualty Insurance, China’s first online-only insurer, is planning to add life insurance and other healthcare products to the range of policies it offers in order to drive growth, after going public in Hong Kong, reported Reuters.
The company also plans to offer its technology to insurers inside and outside of China.
ZhongAn was founded by Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma, Tencent Chairman Pony Ma and Ping An Insurance Group Chairman Ma Mingzhe. Bloomberg citing sources have reported that the company aimed to begin taking investor orders this week.
As it pursues the city’s first major FinTech listing, the company's Hong Kong Initial Public Offering (IPO) could raise as much as USD$1.5bn, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Japan's SoftBank Vision Fund, a giant technology investor, has been discussing buying $400mn to $500mn of ZhongAn stock as a cornerstone investor in the IPO, the people said.
ZhongAn is offering 199.3 million new shares in an indicative range of HKD$53.70 (USD$6.87) to HKD$59.70 each. The issue is seen as expensive as the $11bn valuation for the insurer implies an adjusted price-to-book level of 4.3 times, more than triple the 1.3 times for the largest Chinese general insurer, PICC Property & Casualty, which had revenue of CNY301bn last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
ZhongAn, on the other hand, reported net written premiums of CNY3.4bn (USD$519mn) last year, or 0.5 percent of China’s insurance industry.
