Anbang’s Sales Dry Up in New Challenge for Chinese Insurers -
By KEITH BRADSHERJUNE 15, 2017
HONG KONG — Anbang Insurance Group, whose chairman has been detained by the police, has seen its growth come to a screeching halt as Chinese
investors who helped fund its meteoric rise prove skittish about a politically connected company that is no longer in Beijing’s good graces.
Anbang’s sales of life insurance policies and investment products, an important source of cash, stopped almost completely
in April after tumbling sharply in March, according to Chinese government data released on Thursday.
“Now, we are betting whether the government will help Anbang or not.”
Investors’ worries — a major source of Anbang’s troubles — center on wealth management
products, a potentially explosive risk in the country’s financial system.
Including new kinds of policies and wealth management products, it took in only $218 million in April this
year, down from $5.92 billion in the same month last year, the government data on Thursday showed.
Anbang’s rise had been “just another example of the Wild West capitalism in Chinese finance, where people can go off
and do whatever, no matter what their sectors are supposed to be doing,” said David Zweig, the director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
