Six appointments from crop pricing to the executive committee

Mandate

Move a savings-led insurer towards protection, participating products and elderly care before falling interest rates made the old model unaffordable.

Outcomes

• Withdrew the 3.5 per cent savings product in April 2023, three months early; the average pricing rate of in-force traditional reserves fell from 3.62 to 3.21 per cent by the end of 2025.
• Reduced bank partners from 36 to 13; bank-channel new business value rose from RMB 210 million in 2023 to RMB 560 million in 2025.
• Opened Songhe Court in October 2022 and capped its residence-right letters at 6,200; occupancy reached 91 per cent by June 2026.
• Raised protection and care products from 14 to 33 per cent of new business value between 2020 and 2025.
• Prepared the RMB 4.5 billion shareholder capital increase completed in 2024; comprehensive solvency ratio of 192 per cent at the end of 2025.

Decisions in context

I became chief strategy officer in November 2019, with a seat on the executive committee and a mandate from the president to prepare Jiangheng for the end of high-rate savings. The first two years went mainly on elderly care: completing Songhe Court, which opened in October 2022, and then building the residence-right register after our letter sales had run ahead of our modelling. From 2023 the work turned to the liability side. We withdrew our 3.5 per cent product three months before the industry withdrawal date, ended twenty-three bank partnerships in 2024 and moved savings sales towards participating products and retirement annuities. I prepared the RMB 4.5 billion shareholder capital increase completed in 2024 and the capital plan behind it. Premium in 2025 was RMB 38.6 billion, and protection and care produced a third of new business value, up from a seventh in 2020.

Reason for the move

Current role. I intend to stay through the second community decision; an outside board seat would need Jiangheng's approval first.

Mandate

Build a planning process measured by value rather than premium, and prepare a strategy for the end of high-rate savings.

Outcomes

• Ended short-duration high-crediting savings products, which fell from 34 per cent of premium in 2015 to none by 2017.
• Introduced new business value and capital consumption into the annual plan and branch scorecards from 2017.
• Prepared the 2018 board proposal to buy land in Wuhan for Songhe Court for RMB 1.1 billion.
• Planned the branch openings that took Jiangheng into two further provinces in 2017 and 2018.

Decisions in context

I joined Jiangheng Life in June 2015 as general manager of the strategic planning department, after four years advising insurers from outside. The company then wrote most of its premium through an agency force of more than 50,000 and through bank branches selling short-duration savings products with high crediting rates. My first recommendation was to stop selling those products; the regulator's restrictions on short-duration business overtook us within a year, and they were gone from our sales by 2017. I then rebuilt the annual plan around new business value and the capital each branch's business consumed, which changed how branch leaders were judged. In 2018 I prepared the board proposal to buy land in Wuhan for a retirement community, opening with the scenario in which it failed. The board approved it with construction in two phases. By 2019 the company wrote RMB 24.7 billion of premium in nine provinces.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief strategy officer with a seat on the executive committee.

Mandate

Lead strategy engagements for life and property insurers in mainland China.

Outcomes

• Led or co-led fourteen engagements for nine insurers, eight of them life insurers.
• Built the practice's partner-level bank-channel economics model, used on five engagements.
• Advised two property insurers on growth outside motor and one on a review of its agricultural business.
• Promoted to principal in January 2014.

Decisions in context

I joined the Shanghai office of Holloway Brandt & Co. in March 2011 as an engagement manager in its financial institutions practice and became a principal in January 2014. I led or co-led fourteen engagements for nine insurers, eight of them life insurers and most of them mid-size. The commonest request was for faster growth through bank branches, and the commonest deliverable was a plan that assumed interest rates would stay where they were. I built the practice's bank-channel model, which judged each partner by value after commission and by persistency rather than by premium, and I began adding a falling-rate scenario to every life insurance engagement, requested or not. I also advised two property insurers on growth outside motor and one on its agricultural business. Consulting let me see many insurers at once. It also showed me that the consultant leaves before the consequences arrive.

Reason for the move

Wanted to be accountable for a strategy's results inside one insurer, not only for its recommendation.

Mandate

Write the company's first multi-year plan and reduce its dependence on city motor business.

Outcomes

• Bought aggregate stop-loss cover for the crop book, which recovered RMB 611 million after the 2010 floods.
• Declined seventeen drought-prone counties priced below their loss history, giving up RMB 160 million of annual premium.
• Grew non-motor business from 31 to 42 per cent of premium between 2006 and 2010.
• Drafted the written catastrophe appetite and river-basin accumulation review the board adopted in 2010.

Decisions in context

I moved to Lanbei's head office in Harbin in September 2006 as deputy general manager of planning and strategy, and ran the department from January 2009. Motor insurance then made up more than two-thirds of premium, and every planning round began with the question of whether to chase motor volume in the large cities, where rivals were cutting prices. I argued for growing crop and small commercial property business across the north-east instead, provided we bought reinsurance that could carry a bad season. In 2009 the president accepted my proposal for an aggregate stop-loss on the crop book and, more reluctantly, my recommendation to decline seventeen western counties. The 2010 floods tested both decisions. I also wrote the company's first three-year plan and the catastrophe appetite statement that the board adopted in 2010. Non-motor business grew from 31 to 42 per cent of premium over my time in the role.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work across many insurers, and to learn life insurance, before taking a larger role.

Mandate

Price crop cover on evidence rather than on the previous year's rates.

Outcomes

• Built a yield and loss database for 64 counties from township records.
• Prepared the company's first proportional reinsurance treaty for crop business, placed in 2004.
• Introduced township-level loss sampling after hail, cutting the time to settle claims from six weeks to three.

Decisions in context

From April 2001 I priced Lanbei's crop insurance, first as a manager in the actuarial department and from 2004 as head of agricultural and catastrophe pricing. Crop rates at the time were often set by repeating the previous year's figures. I built a yield and loss database for sixty-four counties in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Inner Mongolia from township records, many of them handwritten, and used it to price by county rather than by province. After hailstorms I introduced loss sampling by township, which halved the time farmers waited for payment. In 2004 I prepared the submissions for the company's first proportional reinsurance treaty for crop business. The work was technical, and it gave me a principle I still apply at a life insurer: correlation matters more than volume. Policies spread across a whole river basin offer no diversification when the river rises.

Reason for the move

Asked to move to head office planning as deputy general manager.

Mandate

Compile premium and loss statistics and prepare regulatory returns.

Outcomes

• Reconciled flood claims with sown-area records in 23 counties after the 1998 floods.
• Built the company's first monthly loss-ratio report by line and branch.
• Prepared the quarterly statistical returns for the regulator.

Decisions in context

I joined Lanbei in August 1997, straight from university, as a statistician in the actuarial and statistics office at head office in Harbin. The company was two years old and wrote mostly motor and property business in Heilongjiang and Jilin, with a small crop book for state farms. My work was compiling premium and loss statistics and preparing returns for the regulator. In the summer of 1998 the Nen and Songhua rivers flooded, and I spent the autumn in county offices reconciling claims against sown-area records in twenty-three counties. It was my first sight of how a book that looks diversified across many policies behaves as one exposure when the same water reaches all of them. Back at head office I built the company's first monthly loss-ratio report by line and branch, which management was still using when I left. In 2001 I was asked to take over crop pricing.

Reason for the move

Promoted to price the company's crop insurance.