CDF Voice｜Oliver Bäte：Embrace the tremendous opportunities brought by China's Opening up

The “CDF Voice” column aims to bring together business leaders and convey the voices of the forum delegates.

Since its launch in 2000, CDF have upheld its mandate of “Engaging with the world for common prosperity”.

At present, the economic recovery is still fragile, and the impact of the COVID-19 and geopolitical crisis is continuing. Although China’s economic recovery is improving, lackluster demand, slow recovery in labor market and global supply chain adjustments and other pressures are still present.

The world is experiencing unprecedented change, how do foreign enterprises in China view China's development? How can foreign enterprises grasp the opportunities and challenges in the Chinese market? What insights do they have about China's future economic recovery and social development?

As the 2023 annual meeting of the China Development Forum is about to be held, the "CDF Voice" column invites representatives of global enterprises to discuss the above topics.

The guest of CDF Voice today is Oliver Bäte, CEO of Allian.

For 2022, we are grateful for the trust and confidence that our stakeholders placed again in Allianz. We demonstrated great resilience amid uncertainties and challenges in the macro environment.

In particular, our customer and employee satisfaction achieved all-time highs again. And our financial performance has been remarkably robust across all business segments despite these turbulences.

Leveraging our full spectrum of licenses in China –for which I would like to thank again the Chinese government and our regulators for the strong support and trust as always – we are proud to continue to serve best-in-class insurance and financial products in China, and to carry on our growth momentum.

When asking about China’s modernization and the one thing that matters, in my opinion, first it is our honor to benefit from China’s opening-up measures in the past years.

Together with our fellow international companies, we have embraced great opportunities to develop our business in the world’s most fast growing economy.

This leads to my keyword for China’s modernization: Sustainability.

With various positive policies introduced across sectors, and the relaxation of Covid restrictions, innovation and digitalization are further unleashing China’s economic growth. In the past decades, China’s economic prosperity fueled the exponential surge in its household wealth, which has translated to more than $20 trillion of inflows for example, to the wealth management market. This multi-trillion-dollar asset and wealth management industry has opened a new chapter, as China further accelerates its market opening to international companies. We applaud and appreciate the tailwind facilitated by the recent row of business friendly regulatory changes and the ease of restrictions. And we are excited to fully embrace these opportunities to serve our Chinese clients in both the public and the private markets.

Meanwhile, with post-pandemic economic and societal normalization, we now face the starting point for a new and really sustainable normal. For example, we commend the launch of the China Green Bond Principles by China’s NDRC last year. This is a very significant commitment to push for a greater development of the green securities market, and aligns very well with global standards. It is the concerted and continuous global teamwork that we all need, in order to combat climate change.

And I’m proud to introduce the achievement of the UN-convened Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance– an alliance of large institutional investors co-founded by Allianz under the headline of UN in 2019, that commits to making their own portfolios carbon-neutral by 2050, but we are not waiting.Today, we have 84 members with more than 11 trillion USD assets under management, and the Asset Owner Alliance continues to grow and enhance climate protection standards in the industry globally.

As a multinational with more than 20 years of experience in sustainable investing, we are looking forward to further sharing our ESG best practice with our Chinese peers, and our clients.In terms of my expectations for China Development Forum for this year, I would like to use the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, we have a strategic responsibility to “recover better”.

Our macro and micro recovery measures must make the global economy resilient. We need to drive structural changes towards climate neutrality, and we need to facilitate an inclusive and sustainable growth model. Not just for our benefit, but particularly for the benefit of our children.
We are excited to see China’s contribution and commitment to support the global agenda, and I look very much forward to meeting and discussing with our friends at the upcoming China Development Forum 2023.

Thank you very much.