Huize Holding - Q4 2023
March 20, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Huize Holding Limited's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, we will have a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded, and a webcast replay will be available. Please visit Huize's IR website at ir.huize.com under the Events and Webcast section. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Harriet Hu, Huize's Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead, Harriet.
Harriet Hu (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Sarah. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our earnings conference call for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. Our financial and operating results were released earlier today and are currently available on both our IR website and the newswire before we continue, I would like to refer you to the safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call, as we will be making forward-looking statements. Please also note that we will discuss non-GAAP measures today, which are more thoroughly explained in our earnings press release and filing with the SEC. Joining us today are our founder and CEO, Mr. Cunjun Ma, COO, Mr. Li Jiang, CFO, Mr. Minghan Xiao, and co-CFO, Mr. Ron Tam. Mr.Ma will start the call by providing an overview of the company's performance and operational highlights for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. Mr. Tam will then provide details on the financial results for the period before we open up the call for questions. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Ma.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
Foreign language]
Speaker 5
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining Huize's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. In 2023, China's insurance industry continued a positive growth trajectory, marking the second consecutive year of growth following the industry's significant reform. In particular, the demand for savings insurance products remained robust, driving a 12.75% growth in total premiums for China's life insurance industry, amidst the declining RMB interest rate. The China Insurance Consumer Confidence Index also reflected a resurgence in consumer confidence towards the macroeconomic environment and the insurance industry. Notably, the intention to increase insurance coverage has rebounded for three consecutive quarters, surpassing levels seen in the same period of both 2021 and 2022. Navigating through this evolving market trend, Huize has successfully seized the market opportunities in long-term savings products.
By leveraging our strategic focus on long-term insurance products, diversified operational tactics, product innovation, and customer acquisition capabilities, we have once again delivered satisfactory results. In 2023, total gross written premiums, or GWP, facilitated on our platform reached CNY 5.8 billion, up 18.2% year-over-year. Our total revenue increased by 3.3% year-over-year to CNY 12 billion, and we achieved a non-GAAP net profit of CNY 72.3 million, exceeding our guidance of CNY 60 million.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
Total first year premium or FYP facilitated on our platform reached CNY 2.6 billion, up significantly by 42% year-over-year, and renewal premiums increased by 4% year-over-year, reaching CNY 3.2 billion. In terms of product mix, the GWP contribution from long-term insurance products in 2023 was 92.3%, representing the fourth consecutive year exceeding 90%. During the year, we witnessed a rise in demand for savings products and leveraged our diversified product offerings and omni-channel distribution capabilities to capitalize on the market opportunity. In light of that, FYP from our long-term savings products increased by 54.6% year-over-year to CNY 1.7 billion, and FYP from our long-term health products increased by 19% year-over-year to CNY 510 million.
While we maintained high-quality growth in our long-term insurance business, we also provided customized products and risk management solutions to our corporate clients, which led to a 74% surge in the FYP of our P&C insurance products, reaching CNY 390 million in 2023.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
As of the end of the fourth quarter, our cumulative number of insurance customers exceeded 9.3 million. Among the long-term insurance customers from the fourth quarter, 65.8% were from higher tier cities, and their average age was 34.1 years old. 41.8% were repeat purchase from existing customers, which has increased by 8 percentage points year-over-year. We also witnessed a substantial increase in the fourth quarter in the average ticket size of savings products in terms of FYP, which was approximately CNY 59,000, representing a 30% increase year-over-year. This was primarily driven by our focus on acquiring high-quality customers and upselling existing customers with high LTV potential, as well as the success of our Hong Kong business expansion, contributing premium international product sales in the fourth quarter.
As of the end of December, our cumulative persistence ratios for the long-term insurance in the 13th and 25th month remained at industry high levels of more than 95%.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
As of the end of the fourth quarter, we have cooperated with 123 insurer partners. Throughout the year, we maintained solid collaboration with leading insurance companies, further enrich our diversified product matrix in order to meet the differentiated protection needs from customers, whether they are in search of premium brands or cost-effective products. For example, in November, we partnered with Dajia Annuity Insurance to launch Dajia Huixuan, a customized retirement annuity insurance product, addressing the unique needs of the post 1980s and 1990s customers by offering elderly care services and various types of protection options. In December, we partnered with PICC Life Insurance to launch the Darwin Critical Care number eight Advanced.
Since its launch in 2018, the Darwin Critical Care series products have provided over 310,000 customers with enhanced protection through higher limits, broader coverage, and better service quality. In 2023, the GWP contribution from our customized insurance product was 61.6%.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
In 2023, IFA facilitated by our independent financial advisors or IFA platform, reached CNY 350 million, representing a significant increase of 73% from the previous year. The number of high-performing IFA studios increased by 106%. In our direct-to-consumer segment, we launched a series of promotions and marketing initiatives to engage potential and high-value customers, which effectively reduced customer acquisition costs and boosted conversion rate. As we expand our customer base, we continue to remain highly committed to deepening our engagement with existing customers. In 2023, we served more than 1 million families with over 11 million insurance policies, and assisted with 92,000 insurance claims, amounting to a total claim settlement of CNY 570 million.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
Recognizing the growing demand for premium insurance and overseas asset allocation, we took actions rapidly and seized the opportunities in the Hong Kong insurance market, which has allowed us to diversify our revenue streams, bolster our operational resilience, and enhance our risk management abilities. During the year, we partnered with China Pacific Life Insurance Hong Kong to co-develop the Jinman Yizu multi-currency product. With the extension of our product portfolio, we have also extended our Hong Kong insurance brokerage business, creating a comprehensive suite of high-end insurance services tailored for high-value customers. With the resumption of cross-border travel, we saw a substantial surge in the scale of our MCV business. The revenue contribution from our Hong Kong brokerage business already reached 6% of our total revenue in the fourth quarter. Beyond Hong Kong, we are actively exploring insurance business opportunities in Southeast Asia.
Market statistics show that the average insurance penetration rate of Asian emerging market was 3.6% in 2022, while that for life insurance was only 2.1%. In particular, the insurance penetration rate in Vietnam and Indonesia was at a low level, ranging from 1%-2%. We believe that the proven success of our business model can be replicated overseas, especially as useful emerging markets, where the per capita disposable income continues to rise. We see that the potential in the insurance market in this region is massive, and we believe we are in a good position to capture these opportunities.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
Finally, I'm excited to share some of our advancements in the development of AI large language models for insurance application. Huize has cumulatively served over 60 million insurance customers to date, amassing a wealth of data that encompasses not only our user profiles and claim statistics, but also product details and sales information. Leveraging the strength of our dual data pools, coupled with our industry-leading technology and innovation capabilities, we have launched a suite of tools powered by our AI marketing assistant. These tools includes the annuity calculator, an extensive insurance product knowledge bank, and an intelligent chatbot, all of which are widely adopted by our consultants and agents.
To provide more color, where annuity calculator is designed to instantly and automatically display annuity payouts upon calculation and clearly illustrate product features, reducing the time it takes for consultants to prepare product proposals and enabling them to quickly address users' inquiries. These AI-driven tools not only increase consultant efficiency, capacity, and conversion rates, but also improve the overall user experience by precisely pinpointing user needs and reducing wait time.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
Looking ahead, Huize is committed to capitalizing on the long-term growth opportunities of the insurance industry in China and Asia. We will enhance our ability to customize differentiated products and integrate online and offline product distribution and services in our home market. We will continue to invest in our market expansion in Hong Kong and actively pursue opportunities in the emerging markets of Southeast Asia. Our goal is to identify addressable growth markets with supportive demographics and replicate our proven business model, further diversify our revenue streams to more markets, and elevate our brand awareness and recognition on the international stage. We are targeting a double-digit percentage revenue contribution from international markets in 2024.
At the same time, we have been investing in our own proprietary AI large language model, and we'll strive to integrate our AI products throughout the entire insurance service chain to empower our business operations and ecosystem partners, which includes insurance carriers, independent agents, and distribution channels from the initial insurance product consultation to user engagement, marketing, risk management, customer service, and claim service.
Cunjun Ma (CEO)
[Foreign language]
Speaker 5
This concludes my prepared remarks for today. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Mr. Ron Tam, and he will provide an overview of our key financial highlights for the fourth quarter.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Thank you, Mr. Ma and Harriet. Good evening, everyone in the Asia time zone, and good morning to everyone in New York. As the macroeconomy and industry conditions gradually recover, we are very pleased to report that the total GWP facilitated on our platform for the year increased by 18.2% to CNY 5.8 billion in 2023. We think that this growth is largely driven by our omni-channel distribution platform capabilities, our high-quality customer base, our diverse range of product offerings, as well as our maiden contribution of international revenues from our expansion into the Hong Kong market in the second half of 2023. Our efforts to acquire new customers have also become increasingly efficient. With more than 212,000 new customers added to our ecosystem in the fourth quarter.
By the end of the year, our total customer count has exceeded 9.3 million. We are proud to announce that we recorded a non-GAAP net profit of CNY 72.3 million for the 2023 fiscal year, surpassing our previously given guidance of CNY 16 million. Our fourth quarter non-GAAP net profit of CNY 16.4 million also marked our fifth consecutive quarter of profitability. Our robust financial results are a testament to the effective execution of our key business strategies. To elaborate, first, we have consistently prioritized our strategic focus on long-term insurance products, which have contributed to over 90% of our gross written premiums for the 17th straight quarter. Secondly, we have continued to empower the capabilities of insurance agents through our superb distribution network, product innovation, and technological advancements.
This has resulted in a significant 73.4% year-over-year increase in premiums generated by our IFA platform, reaching CNY 354 million in 2023. Thirdly, we continue to pursue upselling opportunities across a high quality customer base. In 2023, the repeat purchase ratio for our long-term insurance products climbed by 6.9 percentage points year-over-year to 36.9%, reflecting the deepening loyalty and trust of our customers in our brand. And finally, we continue to optimize our operational efficiency and customer acquisition costs, as reflected in the further improvement in our growth margin and expense ratio. As we look at our operational results, I want to highlight several key achievements that drove our strong performance.
One, our first year premiums and renewal premiums increased by 42% and 4% year-over-year respectively, indicating our ability to attract new customers and also engage with existing ones. Second, our persistency rate, our persistency ratio for long-term life and health insurance remain at an industry high level. As of the end of the year, the 13th and 25th month persistency ratio stood about 95%. Third, the average ticket size for our long-term savings insurance products, which has become increasingly important as a category for our distribution, increased by 31% year-over-year to over CNY 54,000 in 2023, demonstrating our continued success in upselling our existing customers. These highlights are just a few examples of our high quality customer profile and our relentless efforts and successes in capitalizing on the lifetime value potential of our customers.
In 2023, we proudly sustained our market leading position in long-term insurance products in China. The FYP of our long-term health products increased by 19% year-over-year to approximately CNY 500 million, while the FYP of our long-term life and annuity products surged 55% year-over-year to CNY 1.7 billion. We'll continue to pursue a balanced product mix between long-term health and savings categories, to satisfy evolving customer needs and market environment. In parallel, we have actively diversified our product portfolio to include also customized P&C insurance products. This diversification has also paid off, as the FYP from this business grew by 74% to approximately CNY 400 million in 2023, providing us with new and promising revenue stream diversification.
In addition, our expansion into the Hong Kong market yielded encouraging results, with total international revenue contribution from Hong Kong reaching 6% in the fourth quarter. Throughout the year, we have diligently maintained tight control over our marketing expenses and continued to streamline our operations to improve our profit margins and efficiency. Our growth margin improved to 37.4% in 2023, from 36.6% in 2022. This improvement reflect the enhanced customer acquisition efficiencies and the increased repeat purchases by existing customers. In 2023, our total operating expenses continued to decrease, falling by 15% year-over-year. Our operating expense ratio further improved to 33% in 2023 from 40% a year earlier, decreasing by 7 percentage points. We also achieved non-GAAP net margin of 6% for the full year of 2023.
And as of the end of 2023, our financial position remained strong, as a combined balance of cash and cash equivalents stood at CNY 249 million, which is more than $30 million. In addition, with our commitment to drive shareholder value, we have continued to buy back shares from the open market under our existing mandate. And as of the end of 2023, we have repurchased an aggregate of approximately 1.5 million ADSs, which reiterates management's confidence in our long-term business model prospects. As we continue to solidify our market share in China, we are committed to capitalizing on the long-term digitalization opportunities of Asia's insurance industry.
Our key focus will be to increase our presence in the Hong Kong market, where we plan to expand the sales team and launch more customized products to capitalize on the robust MCV demand, and also local insurance demand from high-value customers. We also proactively identify addressable growth markets with supportive demographics in Southeast Asia, and lastly, untapped market potential to replicate our proven business model in China and further diversify our revenue stream to more markets, and elevate our brand awareness and recognition on the international markets. We have set a target to achieve a double-digit revenue contribution from international markets by 2024, and this goal reflects our confidence in the scalability and replicability of our business model itself.... Moving forward, we'll continue to leverage our deep customer insights and our own proprietary AI products to enhance our product innovation and upselling capabilities.
We'll also further strengthen the integration of our online to offline ecosystem to enhance customer acquisition and engagement capabilities of our insurance agents, by providing them with the tools and support in an increasingly competitive landscape. As we recognize the importance of resource allocation across the businesses, we'll maintain a laser-sharp focus on driving further improvement in operating efficiency, with the aim to enhance the overall profitability. In summary, considering our robust AI-powered product innovation capabilities, our extensive online to offline distribution ecosystem, the empowerment of our insurance agents and IFA partners, and our proactive overseas expansion efforts, we have continued to be optimistic about the outlook for 2024. We are now targeting a non-GAAP net profit of CNY 16 million for 2024, with continued investments in new markets and AI.
We are confident that our strategies will solidify our position as a leading insurance technology platform in Asia, connecting consumers, insurance carriers, and distribution partners digitally and efficiently through our data-driven and AI-powered solutions. With that, we will now open up the call to questions. Thank you very much, and over to you, Operator.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. So once again, if you do have a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Thank you. We will now take our first question. This is from the line of Amy Chen from Citi. Please go ahead.
Speaker 5
Hi. First of all, I want to congratulate management on another profitable quarter. I have two questions. The first question is on the rationalization of compensation paid to the brokerage channel, which is called in Chinese. I'm wondering how would this impact our brokerage income in terms of, for example, for annuity products or, say, for CI products, how would this impact our first-year commissions and the renewal commissions? The second question would be on customer demand. Going into 2024, how has the product mix shift so far? What is our most mainstream or most popular products at the moment? Thank you.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Thank you, Amy. I got two questions from you. The first one on impact on the business. We note that this is a very important topic among investors' minds right now. And so far, I think that what we've seen, which has happened already for the bank assurance channels, is that commission rates have generally been reduced by around 30%-50% in that area. For the brokerage and agency channels, of course, the actual regulations have not come out officially or in effect yet. But we do expect that this will come probably in the next few months, maybe as early as April.
What we envisage is that probably there'll be a somewhat similar kind of impact on the brokerage and agency channels as we have seen in bank assurance channels in terms of commission rate impact, generally speaking. I think the impact on the offline so-called savings products will be more marked or way more adversely impacted and versus some of the online-only products. That's what we see as the potential market impact on that question. On your second question about customer demand and product mix shifts, I think we have also continued to see strong and sustained momentum in the long-term savings category or annuities.
This has still been the most popular or most in-demand product among Chinese consumers due to the declining rates environment and probably the lack of attractive alternative investment alternatives in the China market right now with what we've seen in the real estate market and also underperforming equities market. So the long-term savings products offered by insurance companies still represent a very viable and attractive investment product or wealth allocation product for general Chinese consumer. So we see that for the rest of this year, and at least for the first quarter, we are still seeing very strong demand for savings products. And in particular, we have been distributing participating long-term savings products.
And, we are proudly one of the leading online platforms to distribute hopefully the most popular participating products right now offered by the market, which is from Generali China. So we are probably the one of the leading platforms distributing this product in the China market. So I think this is probably gonna be the mainstream product for the rest of the year, and we will continue to work hard to co-develop customized products in this category with some of the larger brand names, which we hopefully will be able to launch as early as April next month.
So we will be looking to cooperate with one of the top brands in the China market for a customized, exclusive, long-term, you know, participating savings product. So those will be the answers to your questions, Amy.
Speaker 5
That is very clear. Thank you, Ron.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from the line of Coco Gong from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Speaker 5
Thank you very much. And, yeah, congratulations on the very good results. I only have one question that's a little bit specific.
Mm-hmm.
Ron, you talk a lot about, you know, like, about the savings products demand, and obviously, the protection is still on investors' mind, although the demand seems to be still kind of weak right now, especially in China. So I wanna understand, since we can see a lot of data on this, do we see marginal improvement on critical illness, like the long-term health insurance product? Specifically, are we seeing more customers, new customers, buying this insurance product, or are we just seeing more existing customers buying more coverage? And do we see any other potential signs of marginal improvement in a specific product type? Thank you.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Right. Thank you, Coco. So question on, you know, customers or consumers' demand on, you know, long-term health products, particularly in the critical illness type of products. I think we do see, you know, continued or at least from our internal data, I mean, obviously the savings category is what people want these days, and especially in the current macro environment. I think generally, Chinese consumers have a relatively stringent budget to allocate, you know, the money. So, long-term savings or long whole life products or particularly participating products these days have drawn a lot of the customers' focus and budget. And so I think that this is why we still continue to see a relatively lukewarm growth in the long-term health categories.
For example, critical illness, which has continued to be recovering slowly. We do see, you know, customers, existing customers and new customers, buying these products through our platform. It's not like the demand is not there, it's just that, with the relative attention more towards, you know, savings products generally in the market, and especially, it's a function of, intermediaries like ourselves, platforms like ourselves and our competitors, and also generally, insurance agents in the overall market, mainly pushing, the distribution and sales of savings products, which has resulted in such a market phenomenon. So, what we'll do is we'll continue to innovate on the health products.
So we mentioned that we have just launched Darwin number eight, which is a new version of our long-term successful brand IP in the critical illness category. And this time we're actually now working with PICC, which Mr. Ma mentioned earlier, in the call. You know, we are working now with large insurers on these customized products. So hopefully, you know, create more attention among our customer set and to drive more sales in these categories.
Speaker 5
Thank you very much. That's very clear. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from the line of Yuyu Zhang from CICC. Please go ahead.
Yuyu Zhang (Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks, management, and congrats on your good result. I'm Yuyu Zhang from CICC, and I have one question here, and my question is for the To-A segment. Could you give us some more color on how is it going so far? And we've noticed that recently, Insurance Association of China has asked for industry's advice about agent classification. So, if it's implemented, I think it may have some effect on the To-A business. So could you share some more views on that? Thank you.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Right. Thanks. So we touched on the To-A business earlier in the opening remarks. I think this business line has continued to be very strong at least in 2023. It's contributing, you know, almost 20% of our overall premium facilitated, and we continue to see strong growth in this business line. So specifically, I think there's a number that I can share here. So yeah, FYP facilitated by the IFA platform, which is the A- the To- A platform, was CNY 350 million last year, which is a year-over-year increase of 73%.
I think the most important thing is more and more independent agents or IFAs are now coming to our platform as partners because they find the three things that very much are competitive strengths. Firstly, we have a very extensive product matrix, you know, from simple P&C products to the extensive life and health products that we have. And in particular, the customized exclusive Kuaishou products that we co-developed with insurance carriers. So I think that's a big draw to these independent agents to become associated with us as a partner.
And secondly, I think, obviously, because of our scale advantage, we earn top commission rates with most of the insurance carriers, and thereby, these agents by, you know, plugging into our platform, will be able to enjoy the revenue, you know, pickup, you know, versus, maybe partnering with another platform or as an agent, inside an agency. So I guess these are the things that are helping us, you know, attract more and more agents to come. And I think finally, most importantly, we have a whole suite of the digital tools that we have been mentioning, across our opening remarks, which really helps digitalize the customer journey for these agents, and also help them, you know, manage customers very efficiently, you know, with our digital and AI tools.
This is something that I think is quite a unique proposition in the Chinese market, at least. So just to touch upon the IFA business model, I think what we are looking to launch is we want to replicate this into the rest of Asia. So I think we'll be starting with Hong Kong and also going to other parts of Southeast Asia. I think that's something that we think will be a very good value proposition to those local markets as well. So yeah, I think in short it's performing very well and it will continue to be increasingly important as a revenue stream and business line for us.And your second part of the question is about regarding the, I believe it's the Fen Ji classification, right? The Dailiren Fenji
Yuyu Zhang (Equity Research Analyst)
Yes.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
qualification, the exams and the differentiation of different gradings. So what we understand is right now there is four grades for agents, grade one to grade four. So for grade one, you can sell all the complicated products, life and health, savings, whatnot. In grade four, you can only sell very simple products like protection or P&C. What we think that is, for most of the agent partners that we have on our To-A business or our IFA platform, most of these are relatively experienced agents that has been, who have been working in the industry for over five years on average.
So, this regulatory impact will be minimal because I think most of these experienced agents have already qualified or can qualify for the higher tiers of the classification, and therefore it will not have a limiting impact on what they can sell or distribute to the customers. And I think the same can be applied to our in-house consultants and agents in the Huize platform. And most of our high-performing agents can qualify under these new regulations. And we think that the draft paper has been out, but then the effective date will likely to be next year.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. At this point, we have no further questions, so I would like to hand the conference back to Harriet for closing remarks.
Harriet Hu (Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you, operator. On behalf of Huize's management team, we would like to thank you for your participation in today's call, and if you require further information, please feel free to reach out to Huize's IR team. Thank you again for joining us today. This concludes the call.
Ron Tam (co-CFO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.