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經濟學人:平安--變形計(3)Ping An is also becoming better at the lucrative business of "cross-selling", or selling customers more products from other parts of the group, which increases income without incurring the cost of acquiring new clients. The share of retail customers that have contracts with more than one subsidiary rose from around 19% in 2015 to about 37% in June. That puts Ping An about 20 percentage points above the average cross-selling rate for insurers in Asia, according to Bain, a consulting firm.
平安保險在利潤豐厚的「交叉銷售」業務方面也做得越來越好，即向客戶銷售集團其它部門的更多產品，從而在不增加獲取新客戶成本的情況下增加收入。與一家以上子公司籤訂合同的零售客戶份額從2015年的19%左右上升到6月份的37%左右。據諮詢公司貝恩稱，這使得平安保險的交叉銷售比率比亞洲保險公司的平均水平高出約20個百分點。
None of this would be possible without Ping An's technological prowess—the third and by far most important ingredient of its success. AI allows cross-selling pitches to customers to be made when they are most useful, for instance. "The final sale is done by an agent but the system develops the recommendation," says Henrik Naujoks of Bain. "And it's done at the right time."
如果沒有平安的技術實力，這一切都不可能實現。技術實力是其成功的第三個因素，也是迄今為止最重要的因素。例如，人工智慧能夠在最有用的時候向客戶進行交叉銷售。貝恩公司的亨裡克·諾約克斯表示：「最終的銷售會由中介完成，但系統會發展推薦，而且會在最合適的時候。」
Large banks and insurers often sponsor "fintech incubators" that develop new technologies, or buy in applications that can be patched on to their core operations. HSBC, for instance, hired Identitii, an Australian fintech, this year to build a digital-payments tool. But for regulatory reasons such experiments tend to be ring-fenced from the financial institution.
大型銀行和保險公司經常贊助開發新技術的「金融科技孵化器」，或者購買可以修補到其核心業務上的應用程式。例如，滙豐今年聘請了澳大利亞金融科技公司Identitii打造一個數字支付工具。但出於監管方面的原因，此類實驗往往會受金融機構的限制。
Ping An, by contrast, has fully internalised these operations, apparently unafraid of regulatory blowback. The group has a 110,000-strong technology development team—larger than the commercial-banking divisions of all but the biggest banks—including 3,000 scientists. It submitted 4,625 technology patents in the first half of the year alone. The tools developed within the group's technology unit are often used across the company. These include creditrisk models that use vast stores of data to make quick lending decisions at Ping An's consumer-finance division, Puhui. Similar data crunching can track a customer's driving habits through movements detected on a mobile-phone sensor and price car insurance accordingly. More accurate pricing on both fronts saves the company money.
相比之下，平安已將這些業務完全內部化，顯然它並不懼怕監管方面的反彈。該集團擁有11萬人的技術開發團隊，其中包括3000名科學家，這個團隊比除最大的銀行外的所有商業銀行部門都要大。僅在今年上半年平安就提交了4625項技術專利。該集團技術部門開發的工具通常會在整個公司內使用，其中包括信用風險模型，該模型利用大量數據存儲，在平安旗下的消費金融部門「普惠」快速做出放貸決定。類似的數據處理可以通過手機傳感器檢測到的移動情況跟蹤客戶的駕駛習慣，並相應地為汽車保險定價。更準確的定價在這兩個方面節省了公司的資金。
1.ring-fence 限制（資金、贈款、基金等的）用途
The Treasury has now agreed to ring-fence the money to ensure that it goes directly towards helping elderly people.
財政部現在已經同意限制這筆錢的用途，以保證其直接用於幫助老年人。
2.prowess n.非凡的技能；高超的技藝；造詣
Anxiety is also rising over China's emerging technological prowess and rapidly growing supply of skilled workers.
同時，隨著中國科技實力的不斷顯現，以及熟練工人供應量的迅速增長，憂慮也在相應地加劇。