SHANGHAI/BEIJING: Ping An Insurance (Group) Co of China Ltd posted a 19.6 per cent annual drop in third-quarter net profit, the insurance giant reported on Friday.

The group posted a net profit of 17.73 billion yuan ($2.42 billion) according to a Reuters calculation, versus 22.06 billion yuan a year earlier.

For the nine months ended September, Ping An reported a 5.6 per cent decline in its net profit from a year earlier.

“China’s economic recovery still faced challenges in the third quarter of 2023,” the group said in a filing. “Financial markets were significantly volatile.”

The group’s number of retail customers rose 1.5 per cent from a year earlier to 229.93 million at the end of September, the filing showed.

The insurer reported 86.76 billion yuan in operating profits of its life and health insurance business in the first nine months, down 1.3 per cent year-on-year.

The group reported 4.34 billion yuan in operating losses of its asset management business in the first nine months of this year, compared to 5.58 billion yuan profit in the same period last year, the filing showed. Its banking unit, Ping An Bank, said its third-quarter net profit fell 2.2 per cent year-on-year, with a non-performing loan ratio of 1.04 per cent at the end of September.

($1 = 7.3176 Chinese yuan renminbi)