The Ministry of Science and Technology has announced China's leading insurer Ping An Insurance Group Co received approval to build a national-level innovation platform.

The announcement came at the opening ceremony of the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference on Thursday, where Ping An was among 10 enterprises selected by the Ministry of Science and Technology to build the platform. Known as the National Open Innovation Platform for Next Generation Artificial Intelligence, it aims at integrating the enterprises' respective advantages to promote the country's AI development in the new era.

With Ping An's advantage in financial services and AI technology, the company is expected to establish an innovation platform to foster inclusive finance. According to the company, by deeply exploring the financial sectors and business difficulties, it will improve the transformation efficiency of AI technology in the financial field, and promote the innovation and achievements of AI technology in the financial sector.

Jessica Tan, Ping An Group's co-CEO, said that "as a comprehensive financial enterprise established for 31 years, Ping An has actively cultivated a number of financial technology innovations based on AI, block chain and cloud technology. Thanks to our advantages in experience, capital, technology and talent, Ping An has the ability to promote the development of inclusive finance."

Over the past decade, Ping An has reached an accumulative research and development investment of over 100 billion yuan ($13.9 billion), setting up eight major research institutions and more than 50 laboratories. Ping An currently employs has 32,000 technicians, owning a total of 18,050 patent applications and taking the lead in global financial institutions.

Through its comprehensive financial operation mode of "one customer, multiple products and one-stop service", Ping An has provided financial products and services to over 196 million individual customers and 576 million internet users.

On Aug 20, Ping An Technology, the tech-arm of Ping An Group, announced that 10 essays, published by its AI center, were selected by the 2019 International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, and the 2019 Radiology Society of North America - the top academic annual meeting in the medical field.

The next stage will see Ping An's inclusive finance platform develop the external output modularization capacity and standardized AI technology, helping to solve the pressure-points of current economic and financial business transformations. Focus will also be centred around developing a new system with partners to promote the sustainable development of the industry.