Chinese Insurer Ping An Faces $96 Million in Claims from Typhoon Dolphin

Int’l Desk: Ping An has taken in more than 27,000 claims after Typhoon Dolphin tore through parts of China, with estimated payouts already past 650 million yuan or about 96 million dollars. Almost all of those claims landed with Ping An Property and Casualty, while the life arm logged just one and the health and annuity units reported none as of early afternoon on August 11, according to a report from Insurance Asia.

The company kicked its emergency response into gear as soon as the storm, the thirteenth of the season, brought red alerts for heavy rain across Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei. A dedicated task force went to work and fast-track claims handling opened across the group’s different insurance lines, backed by the usual 24-hour customer hotline.

Before the typhoon made landfall, Ping An’s property and casualty unit leaned on its Eagle Eye risk platform to keep tabs on the weather and push out guidance. By that same August 11 cutoff, it had sent nearly 49 million alerts to more than 22 million individual customers and another 1.16 million corporate clients. Teams checked 2,458 spots prone to flooding, helped move over 2,700 vehicles out of harm’s way and worked with traffic officials to shut more than 200 risky road sections.

Farmers got attention too. The insurer issued over 6.6 million disaster notices to about 534,000 of them, helped strengthen facilities in exposed farming areas and backed emergency harvesting of more than 88,000 mu of rice before the worst of the weather hit. On the ground, it put 1,866 specialists to work on flood losses and related hazards, including people who know flooded cars, new-energy vehicle batteries and glass repairs. Another 425 tow trucks and more than 4,000 pieces of gear, sandbags and barriers among them, rolled out as well.

Ping An says it will keep watching the weather and shifting resources as needed so claims keep moving and people can get help.