It takes ten years for a tree to grow to its full height, but a hundred for qualified personnel to mature. On May 26 2006, Ping An School of Financial Services was founded to greet the 18th anniversary of the establishment of Ping An. In the early stage of its founding, Peter Ma, Ping An Group’s Chairman and CEO and Ping An Financial College’s President, pointed out only those enterprises transforming knowledge into development momentum can keep ahead in the market. In the past decade, Ping An School has embraced the philosophy of “transforming knowledge into value” in an effort to grow into the best corporate university.  

From Sept.6 to 7 2016, Ping An School of Financial Services held a ceremony to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding and the Teachers’ Day. Peter Ma granted awards to the teachers for their long-term contributions and made a major speech, reiterating the connotation of “transforming knowledge into value” from three levels of strategy, company and individuals, advocating continued implementation of learning by doing, and encouraging Ping An School to become “the best corporate university”.     

Keep up with the times to transform knowledge into value
 - Speech delivered by Chairman Peter Ma on the 10th anniversary of the founding of Ping An School of Financial Services

Dear all,

Good afternoon!

Today, we would like to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Ping An School of Financial Services as well as the coming Teachers’ Day with a simple yet solemn ceremony. Best wishes to all of our teachers!

While holding the celebration, we have two questions to consider. Firstly, how to make further improvements on the basis of achievements made in training in the past decade? Secondly, what’s the strategy and objective of our training system for the next decade? I have made discussions with the Group’s HR Center and colleagues of Ping An Schools lately and would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with all of you.

In the past decade, Ping An has seen rapid, healthy and valuable development. Ping An Group’s total asset size increased 15 times with an average CAGR of nearly 30%; operating revenue increased nearly 10 times, with an average CAGR of 22%; net profit increased 13 times, with an average CAGR of 28%; Ping An’s staff members and sales agents increased from 240,000 in 2006 to 1,330,000 today. Ping An entered the “Fortune Global 500” in 2008 and ranked 41st in 2015; Ping An’s market capitalization ranked 11th among global listed financial institutions and 1st among global listed insurers. At the same time, our training has kept pace with the Company’s growth and also made significant progress, providing strong talent support for Ping An’s development and playing an important role, of which we are justifiably proud!
What was Ping An School like at its opening remains fresh in my memory. At that time I had two expectations about the School. One is to ensure Ping An’s training can keep pace with the Company’s development and realize “the best training is in Ping An”; the other is to take value as the core criterion to test training and enable “transformation of knowledge into value”.

“The best training is in Ping An” has always been Ping An’s pursuit. In the past decade, in order to achieve this goal, we have poured a lot of money and effort into resources, teachers, infrastructure and technical platforms.

Firstly, we ensured there were adequate resources. In order to establish a first-class training system, Ping An injected a total of more than MRB10 billion for supporting the training to office employees and sales agents.

Secondly, we ensured we had qualified teachers. On one hand, we encouraged and organized many front-office colleagues to join the team of teachers, share their experience, pass on their skills and set an example by their deeds; in addition, we introduced excellent courses from world-renowned colleges, and engaged top scholars and industry experts at home and abroad to give lectures and offer most advanced and most practical training.

Thirdly, we provided adequate infrastructure facilities. In addition to the headquarters in Shenzhen, we have also set a branch school in Zhangjiang Shanghai, with training centers in each province or city, in order to meet training needs of our colleagues across the country.

Fourthly, we built a leading technical application platform. We made full use of modern internet technologies, explored innovative models and tools of training, and launched online learning platform “Zhiniao” in 2014. Within a short time of two years, “Zhiniao” flew from Ping An to the market, cooperating with more than 800 enterprises and institutions at home and abroad, offering over 90,000 courses and 120,000 training classes, covering more than 78,000,000 person times, gaining great popularity from clients, and preliminarily building the reputation as “the best online on-the-job education tool”.  Many top enterprises came to seek cooperation for the fame of “Zhiniao”, and it has become a means for Ping An to develop its customers.

“Transforming knowledge into value” is the goal of Ping An for its training. From the day of founding, Ping An School’s positioning is very clear. We don’t aim at academic education, we refrain from formalism, and what we pursue is effective and resultful on-the-job education, with the core being “transforming knowledge into value”. How to understand “value” here? There are three levels:

1. From the perspective of strategy, training is our core competitive edge. Through training, we can enhance the staff’s quality, and improve the Company’s overall differentiation advantages and capabilities.
2. From the perspective of business, whether knowledge can be transformed into value depends on whether it promotes operation, development, management and economic benefits. We do care whether our colleagues will play a better role than before in their business unit within 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or a longer time after receiving training.
3. From the perspective of individuals, training can enhance an individual’s way of thinking, skills, quality and performances, and identify a better path in their career.

For the coming decade, we will strive to make bigger progress and make a new start. Then, what’s strategic goal of Ping An School in the coming ten years?

Ping An’s strategic goal is to become a world-leading retail integrated financial services provider. To be world-leading, we need first-class strategy, talent and training. The next goal of Ping An School is to meet the Group’s strategic development need, and bolster the Group’s healthy and rapid development in the coming ten years. There’s no doubt that Ping An is bound to become the most respectable enterprise in the world. We hope the respect is not only for Ping An’s performances, but also for Ping An’s talent and training effort.

In the coming ten years, our philosophy remains unchanged, we will continue to “transform knowledge into value” and continue to pursue “the best training is in Ping An”. We will continue to improve the strategy, system, policy, management and quality of teachers for training, and inject more into training resources. At the same time, Ping An School of Financial Services needs to “keep up with the times” in the following two aspects.

The first is to keep up with the in-depth development of integrated finance. The core of integrated finance is “one customer, multiple products and one-stop services”. Our training is to help our colleagues to improve their learning capability for “crossing industries” and “crossing departments” so as to enrich our knowledge system and develop our expertise, thus providing better products and services for our customers. What does “crossing industries” mean? Our colleagues in banking, insurance, investment, internet, etc. should not only become experts in their own industries, but also learn products and services of other businesses through training in order to promote cross-selling. What does “crossing departments” mean? Our colleagues in front, middle and back offices, on the basis of doing their own job, also need to gain cross-leaning to understand and master knowledge and skills in other areas in order to promote more effective and seamless internal cooperation.

The second is to keep up with the rapid development of modern technologies. Our society is characterized by explosive growth in knowledge and information and rapid technological iteration, while Ping An’s business areas have included finance, internet and fintech, which requires lots of excellent talent keeping up with the times. Ping An School needs to not only transform new knowledge and new skills into new value, but also make full use of big data and mobile internet technologies. In the future, we will launch new training means and tools to make training more interesting and effective. 
It takes long years to cultivate people. Ping An’s success in strategy lies in talent, success in talent lies in quality, and excellent quality lies in training. Ping An’s training determines competiveness of Ping An’s talent, while competitiveness of the talent determines how far Ping An can go. Coupled with a set of three-dimensional map for talent evaluation developed by us over the past years, we will cultivate a large batch of professional and devoted all-rounders in the process of our rapid business development. They will be able to show their capabilities in fields of integrated finance and finance plus. The challenge is great and the road ahead is far. Let’s standard firm, keep up with the times, continue to “transform knowledge into value”, and make new achievements!

Lastly, I wish all teachers of Ping An a happy holiday!