China's Ping An to launch $1b global fintech, healthcare fund
China’s Ping An Insurance is launching a $1 billion fund that will make financial technology and healthcare investments globally as the company looks to establish a footprint beyond its home market.
The Ping An Global Voyager Fund will be led by Jonathan Larsen, who has also been appointed chief innovation officer of the broader Ping An group. He previously spent 18 years at Citigroup, serving as global head of retail banking and head of the Asia Pacific consumer business, among other roles.
The fund, which will be managed from Hong Kong, is intended to bring new technologies, platforms and business models to Ping An's businesses in China and internationally. Investee companies will have access to Ping An’s 138 million customers, 1.2 million agents, 6,000 branches and digital distribution channels in mainland China.
The insurance giant already has a tech-oriented investment unit, having established Ping An Ventures in 2012 with a view to replicating the Google Ventures model and identifying innovations that could benefit the group. It has also invested heavily in its own digital service ecosystems across financial services, real estate finance, healthcare, and automobile sales and servicing.
Two of these businesses – peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and wealth management platform Lufax and healthcare-focused mobile app Ping An Good Doctor – have both gone on to raise third-party funding.
Lufax was established in 2011 and operates a financial assets trading platform focused on corporates and financial institutions in addition to a standard P2P business that provides financing solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individuals. It had 30.13 million users as of March, while retail trading volume reached RMB559 billion ($81 billion) in the first quarter of 2017.
The company raised a $483 million round in March 2015 led by Hong Kong-based investment firm BlackPine and China International Capital Corp. (CICC) and then a $1.22 billion round featuring a number of local financial institutions in early 2016. As of the end of last year, Lufax was valued at $18.5 billion.
Ping An Good Doctor launched in April 2015 and now caters to 140 million users, who use the service to book medical appointments and consult with doctors through text, images and video. Doctors can also use the app to manage patient records and follow up on cases. It closed a $500 million Series A round in May of last year at a valuation of $3 billion.
"Ping An is the most innovative financial group in China, and a leader in China's fintech and healthtech sectors. I look forward to helping Ping An access global innovations in finance and technology and build a global presence in fintech and healthtech,” Larsen said in a statement.
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