US-listed Waterdrop Inc. is looking at a secondary listing in Hong Kong as it seeks to expand its insurance business in the financial hub, according to Chief Executive Officer Shen Peng.
The online insurance broker, which has overhauled its business model after regulatory changes in China, is looking at opportunities to do the listing in the city as soon as two years from now, Shen said in an interview with Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the Hong Kong FinTech Week conference.
A secondary listing in Hong Kong would help the Beijing-based company tap investors closer to home as geopolitical tensions between the US and China bring more volatility to capital markets. The company, which is projecting double-digit revenue growth this year, has also been investing in artificial intelligence to boost the sales of insurance policies and handle customer service, Shen said.
Waterdrop has expanded its team in Hong Kong to about 100 people, Shen said. It has more than 1,000 staff globally, mostly in China.
Founded in 2016, the company started out as a crowdsourcing platform that enabled people to chip in small amounts of money to help others diagnosed with critical illness and receive payouts when needed.
China’s regulatory crackdown in 2021 toppled that model and Waterdrop has since had to pivot to focus on selling insurance policies. Shen said the mutual aid business is now nonprofit and the company has replicated such endeavors in Singapore and Thailand.
Waterdrop recorded second-quarter profit of 88 million yuan ($12 million), over four times higher than a year earlier, even as revenue dropped slightly to 676 million yuan.
In January, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a shareholder lawsuit accusing the company of misleading investors ahead of its initial public offering in 2021. The company’s registration statement went into detail about the regulatory environment in China and the risks it presented to the fintech startup, the court said at the time.
China continues to keep a tight rein on the online insurance industry, clamping down further on sales of products by unauthorized parties including bloggers selling policies on social media platforms, local media Shanghai Securities News reported in August.
Photograph: Flags outside the Exchange Square Complex, which houses the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. Photo credit: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
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