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Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Introducing 'Howl': How wolf reintroduction into Yellowstone and Idaho changed the West forever
On four separate occasions, Wolf 907F seized power as the alpha female leader of the Junction Butte Pack in Yellowstone National Park. Readers will learn 907's life story in part three of Howl, a new longform written series and podcast from the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom, Boise State Public Radio and NPR. (File photo courtesy of Jeremy SundeRaj/Yellowstone National Park) Whenever a reporter comes to me with the phrase 'I have an idea for a longer series,' I admittedly take a breath and start to mentally prepare to make my case as their editor to say no. Usually it's a request for things, as a small but mighty staff of four journalists, that we just don't have the flexibility to provide. Reporting time, for one. With three to four months out of the beginning year tied up with covering the Idaho Legislature – a core mission for us here at the Idaho Capital Sun – as well as election seasons that can take a month out of our planning calendar before the primary election in May and another month before the general election in November, we very rarely have the luxury of time for truly long-term projects. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Financial support, for two. We're a nonprofit here at the Capital Sun, which means we rely solely on donations large and small from readers like you to keep our lights on. Any written series worth doing and worth doing well requires not just investment in reporting time, but also travel costs like mileage and hotel stays to meet sources where they are. To do deep stories real justice, we need to experience and observe these Idaho spaces for ourselves. In this case, I would soon learn, we'd also need several hundred dollars worth of audio recording equipment. And three? Institutional knowledge of the topic and experience with controversial issues. And for this series in particular, Idaho Capital Sun senior reporter Clark Corbin was sure going to need a lot of that. That's because his story series idea – dubbed 'Howl' – centers around the 30th anniversary of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park and Idaho, which might quite possibly be the most controversial topic the West has ever had to offer. 'Howl,' a five-part print series and five-part podcast by the Idaho Capital Sun and Boise State Public Radio/NPR will launch Wednesday, June 4. Story installments will be released weekly each Wednesday morning at Like all of our work, it will be available to any local news outlet to pick up for free with proper attribution. Podcast episodes will air on and are available on all the major podcast distributors, including the NPR app, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We'll also co-host a live event that includes a panel discussion of three of our sources for this project: Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wolf Recovery Coordinator Carter Niemeyer, Wood River Wolf Project Co-Founder Suzanne Asha Stone, and Nez Perce Tribe Watershed Coordinator Marcie Carter. We'll host the free event the evening of June 17 at Boise State University's Special Event Center. Stay tuned for more details on this special opportunity to hear directly from the people who first brought wolves back to the West 30 years ago. We can't wait to start sharing this epic story – our most intensive reporting project to date –with all of you this summer. Here's a bit more on how this massive project came to be. 'Howl' is the largest investment in time and resources we've put toward one project at the Idaho Capital Sun. If you find value in what we do, you can support work like this with a one-time or recurring donation at To read the weekly installments of 'Howl,' released every Wednesday morning, sign up for our free email newsletter, The second Clark said the word 'wolves,' I knew we'd have our hands full. As a fifth-generation Idahoan with farmers on both sides of my family lines, and after being an Idaho reporter for the vast majority of my career, I immediately recognized just how sticky a subject they can be. Wolves were extremely controversial in 1995 – when a team of biologists traveled to Canada to capture and bring the animals back to Yellowstone National Park and to the Lower 48 – and in 2025, 30 years later, they remain just as controversial still. Clark pitched to me a series of written stories and a multi-episode podcast by teaming up with Heath Druzin, an experienced audio reporter who has previously freelanced for us here at the Idaho Capital Sun. He's a former war correspondent who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the creator and host of the award-winning 'Extremely American' podcast. They wanted to spend weeks hiking through more than 20 miles of wilderness and drove more than 1,000 miles crisscrossing Idaho to interview sources directly in Yellowstone, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Nez Perce Reservation in North Idaho, and dang near everywhere in between. And they wanted to take even more time reviewing and researching all of the past articles, books and memoirs – as well as old film of the wolf captures – that dealt with the dozens of wolf-and-livestock related sources they've talked to for Howl. They'd also need some financial help to pull all this off, they told me, including help with applying for grants to support the reporting, as well as a chunk of our not-so-sizable annual travel budget and a chunk of our finite freelance budget to support hiring a skilled photographer in Pat Sutphin. And they'd need some new audio equipment (and a few bucks for non-negotiable bear spray) to ensure the podcast was as clear and engaging as the written series. So while I had my initial, with-good-reason reservations, I also recognized the history of the reintroduction of wolves to the American West – and the impact the lineage that those wolves have on the West and Idaho today – is always a story worth pursuing. After having spent the last 14 months organizing trips across Idaho, editing and re-editing drafts of the written stories, reading podcast scripts and listening to the first iterations of the podcast episodes, I know I can safely say all those investments were well worth it. In the written stories as well as the podcast episodes, we connect you with the sources who understand this issue better than anyone else: wildlife biologists, ranchers, Native American elders and tribal members, Idaho Fish and Game officials, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, and trappers. We take you right into the wilderness with us, with its sights, sounds and smells (and scat. They saw and tracked A LOT of scat.) We talked to wolf advocates who have spent decades of their lives following, documenting and trying to protect specific wolves in Yellowstone and across the West, and we've talked to people who have multi-generation ranches who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to wolf depredation. Importantly, we also talked to people like Suzanne Asha Stone of the Wood River Wolf Project, who has spent decades trying to bring all sides of the wolf debate to the table to find solutions – together. We look not only into the past of how the U.S. government essentially exterminated all wolves from the Lower 48 in the 1920s and '30s, but into the present day by detailing how controlling the wolf population continues to be one of the most controversial issues facing the American West – and its future. With all the time and resources we've put into this, I hope you like 'Howl,' certainly, but I also hope you come away with a better understanding of our Western history and how we've come to be and live in such a special place that must find space for us: all of us. We hope you'll check it out June 4. Enjoy. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ping An Reports Steady 2.4% Growth In Operating Profit Attributable to Shareholders of the Parent Company in Q1 2025, Life & Health NBV Jumps 34.9% YoY, Group Total Assets Rise above RMB13 Trillion
HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, April 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEX: 2318; SSE: 601318) today announced its first quarter financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2025. With macroeconomic policies continuing to exert their effects, China's economy achieved a steady start, maintaining an upward trend in the first three months of 2025. However, foundations for sustained economic recovery and growth still needed to be strengthened due to an increasingly complex and severe external environment, subdued domestic effective demand, and volatile capital markets. Ping An maintained steady performance with solid fundamentals in overall operations by focusing on its core financial businesses, driving innovation, and pursuing high-quality development. The Group's operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rose 2.4% year on year to RMB37,907 million in the first three months of 2025. Life and health insurance ("Life & Health") business's operating profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company rose 5.0% year on year to RMB26,864 million. The Group's total assets rose above RMB13 trillion to RMB13.18 trillion as of March 31, 2025. Life & Health business developed steadily with enhanced multi-channel capabilities and high quality. New business value ("NBV") rose strongly by 34.9% year on year to RMB12,891 million and NBV margin grew 10.4 pps year on year to 32.0% in the first three months of 2025. Notably, NBV from the bancassurance channel and community finance channel jumped 170.8% and 171.3% year on year respectively. Ping An further advanced its integrated finance model. Retail customers increased 1.0% from the beginning of the year to nearly 245 million as of March 31, 2025. The retention rate of retail customers holding four or more contracts within the Group was 98.0%. Ping An further advanced its health and senior care strategy. Nearly 63% of Ping An's nearly 245 million retail customers were entitled to service benefits in the health and senior care ecosystem as of March 31, 2025. Ping An's insurance funds achieved sound investment results. The investment portfolio achieved an unannualized comprehensive investment yield of 1.3% in the first three months of 2025, up 0.2 pps year on year. 1. Deepening Integrated Finance; Strengthening Multichannel Development in Life Insurance Ping An enhanced the development of retail customers under a customer needs-oriented philosophy. The Group's retail customers increased 1.0% from the beginning of the year to nearly 245 million and contracts per retail customer grew 0.3% from the beginning of the year to 2.93 as of March 31, 2025. High customer retention. The retention rate of customers holding four or more contracts within the Group was 98.0% as of March 31, 2025, 11.9 pps higher than that of those holding only one contract. Strong customer growth. There were 8.64 million new customers in the first three months of 2025, up 20.0% year on year. Deep product penetration. Penetration rates of life and health insurance products as well as property and casualty insurance products were relatively high and grew steadily to 45.8% (up 0.9 pps from the beginning of the year) and 30.7% (up 0.1 pps from the beginning of the year) respectively as of March 31, 2025. Life & Health NBV achieved robust growth. Ping An Life continued to enhance its channels and improve business quality under the "4 channels + 3 products" strategy in the first three months of 2025. By upgrading "insurance + service" solutions, Ping An Life continuously strengthened its presence in health and senior care sectors and provided customers with professional, heartwarming services, enabling high-quality development of the company. Life & Health NBV grew 34.9% year on year to RMB12,891 million with NBV margin based on annualized new premium rising 10.4 pps year on year to 32.0% in the first three months of 2025. Significantly enhanced multichannel capabilities. Through continuously deepening transformation and focusing on a team development framework that prioritized the cultivation, recruitment and fostering of high-quality agents, the agent channel NBV increased by 11.5% year on year, and NBV per agent increased by 14.0% year on year. Bancassurance channel NBV surged by 170.8% year on year, as Ping An Life adhered to a diversification strategy, standardized outlet operations, and developed high-performing teams. The community finance channel NBV soared by 171.3% year on year, as Ping An Life had set up 131 community finance outlets in 93 cities, and built elite teams of nearly 24,000 "high-competence, high-performing, and high-quality" agents as of March 31, 2025. The community finance channel's overall persistency ratio of "retained customers" improved by 0.5 pps year on year in the first three months of 2025, thanks to continuous breakthroughs in customer development. "Insurance + Service" solutions were upgraded. Ping An Life provided nearly 10 million customers with health management services in the first three months of 2025. Over 190,000 customers qualified for home-based senior care services, which covered 75 cities nationwide as of March 31, 2025. Ping An had unveiled a total of six premium health and senior care communities in five cities as of March 31, 2025, which are currently under construction. The communities in Shanghai and Shenzhen are scheduled to open for business in the second half of 2025. Ping An P&C maintained steady insurance business growth and good business quality. Ping An P&C's premium income grew 7.7% year on year to RMB85,138 million and insurance revenue rose 0.7% year on year to RMB81,153 million in the first three months of 2025. Overall combined ratio improved by 3.0 pps year on year to 96.6%. The company accelerated transformation by actively applying AI technologies represented by DeepSeek to its core business processes, optimizing operational and business models to forge a new driver of high-quality growth. Ping An's insurance funds investment achieved solid results. The investment portfolio achieved an unannualized comprehensive investment yield of 1.3%, up 0.2 pps year on year. The Group's insurance funds investment portfolio grew 3.3% from the beginning of the year to over RMB5.92 trillion as of March 31, 2025. Ping An Bank maintained steady business performance and stable asset quality. The bank's revenue and net profit totaled RMB33,709 million and RMB14,096 million respectively in the first three months of 2025 as a result of market changes and business mix optimization. Non-performing loan ratio and provision coverage ratio were 1.06% and 236.53% respectively as of March 31, 2025. Core tier 1 capital adequacy ratio rose 0.29 pps from the beginning of the year to 9.41% as of March 31, 2025. 2. Differentiation-Enabled Core Financial Businesses Under the Health and Senior Care Strategy Ping An's health and senior care ecosystem created both standalone direct value and huge indirect value by enabling its core financial businesses via differentiated "Product + Service" offerings. Nearly 63% of Ping An's nearly 245 million retail customers were entitled to service benefits in the health and senior care ecosystem as of March 31, 2025. They held approximately 3.37 contracts and RMB61,200 in assets under management per capita, 1.6 times and 4.0 times those held by retail customers not entitled to these service benefits respectively. Ping An made significant progress in customer development by effectively integrating insurance with health and senior care services. Ping An's health and senior care ecosystem enables its core financial businesses through customer acquisition and retention. Synergies between integrated finance and the health and senior care ecosystem give Ping An Health and PKU Healthcare Group access to corporate and retail customers of Ping An's financial businesses. They also give companies including Ping An Life access to service benefits in the Group's health and senior care ecosystem. The Group's health and senior care ecosystem had over 42,000 paying corporate clients and generated over RMB38.5 billion in health insurance premium income in the first three months of 2025. Over 190,000 customers qualified for home-based senior care services, which covered 75 cities nationwide as of March 31, 2025. Ping An has unveiled premium health and senior care communities in 5 cities. The proprietary flagship business maintained an upward trend, while the integrated "online, in-store, in-home, and in-company" service network was further optimized. In respect of proprietary flagships, PKU Healthcare Group's revenue grew steadily to approximately RMB1,200 million in the first three months of 2025. Peking University International Hospital's revenue grew about 9% year on year to approximately RMB550 million, and the number of outpatient visits exceeded 302,000 in the first three months of 2025. In respect of partner networks, Ping An provided services via an "online, in-store, in-home and in-company" network by integrating domestic and overseas premium resources including medical services, health services, commodities and medicines. Ping An had about 50,000 in-house doctors and external doctors in China as of March 31, 2025. It also partnered with nearly 37,000 hospitals (including all top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals), approximately 105,000 health management institutions and nearly 239,000 pharmacies (up by over 3,500 from the beginning of the year) in China as of March 31, 2025. 3. Building a "9+5+3" Moat to Implement AI Technologies; Integrating Large Models with Business Application Scenarios The Group built a "9+5+3" moat to implement AI technologies. The nine databases process over 1 billion data entries per day on average, covering 240 million financial customers, providing deep insights into user needs and enabling user experience improvements. The five labs (Micro-Expression Lab, Computer Vision Lab, Speech & NLP Lab, Data Analytics Lab, and Silicon Valley Lab) continuously explore cutting-edge technologies. The three tech member companies (Ping An Technology, Ping An Health, and OneConnect) focus on expanding the breadth and depth of AI application scenarios. Ping An has accumulated vast amounts of data that can be used to train large models, and continuously develops vertical large models for domains including finance, health care and senior care. Trained with a domain data corpus containing over 3.2 trillion tokens, approximately 310 thousand hours of labeled speeches and over 7.5 billion images, Ping An's large speech models, large language models, and large vision models have achieved industry-leading accuracy rates in scenarios. The Group cumulatively won 45 championships in domestic and overseas AI competitions, and cumulatively filed 55,435 patent applications as of March 31, 2025, leading most international financial institutions. Technology enabled core financial businesses by reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and mitigating risks. The volume of services provided by Ping An's AI service representatives reached about 450 million times, accounting for 80% of Ping An's total customer service volume in the first three months of 2025. By efficiently addressing inquiries and resolving complaints, they significantly reduced human service costs. Via smart underwriting, smart claim settlement and smart policy renewal, 93% of life insurance policies were underwritten within seconds, 56% of life insurance claims were settled through Smart Quick Claim, and reinstatement of life insurance policies accelerated by 12%. Moreover, Ping An P&C's claims savings via smart fraud detection grew 14.0% year on year to RMB3.42 billion as Ping An continuously strengthened risk management. Ping An actively fulfilled its social responsibilities by supporting green development and rural vitalization. The Group's green insurance premium income amounted to RMB16,880 million and funds provided for rural industrial vitalization via "Rural Communities Support" totaled RMB15,653 million in the first three months of 2025. Looking ahead, the national strategies of innovation-driven development and the expansion of domestic demand will continue to provide strong momentum for domestic demand growth and economic recovery. Meanwhile, rising complexity, severity, and uncertainty in the external environment pose both opportunities and challenges. Ping An firmly believes that the industry's long-term fundamentals will remain positive. With stronger business resilience and enhanced management capabilities, Ping An is committed to deepening its core financial businesses and driving performance growth. The Group will continue to advance its technology-driven "integrated finance + health and senior care" strategy, implement digital transformation and "worry-free, time-saving, and money-saving" value proposition, bolster five key financial sectors (technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance). Ping An is dedicated to creating long-term, stable, and sustainable value for customers, employees, shareholders, and society. View original content: SOURCE Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. Sign in to access your portfolio
