Ping An Insurance net profit up 6.5% in H1

BEIJING - Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China Ltd Thursday announced that its net profit rose 6.5 percent year on year to 43.4 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) in the first half of the year.

Business revenue for the group came in at 503.1 billion yuan during the period, up 23.4 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement the insurer filed with Shanghai Stock Exchange. Income from insurance business amounted to 341.4 billion yuan, rising 32.9 percent from the same period last year.

With the global economy recovering and China's growth improving, Ping An Insurance has seen progress in areas ranging from its core financial business, healthcare to technology innovation during the January-June period, said the statement.

"In the near future, we hope to transform Ping An from a capital-driven enterprise into a technology-driven one," the chairman's statement said.

In terms of its core finance business, Ping An had a customer base of 143 million, up 9.3 percent from the start of the year.

By the end of June, Ping An has filed 1,458 patent applications, and the accuracy of its face recognition technology has reached 99.8 percent, among the top of the world.

The company's share price went down 0.21 percent to end at 51.1 yuan on Thursday.