Lufax Holding Ltd (LU): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

How does a financial services enabler like Lufax Holding Ltd, which has facilitated a massive retail credit balance of RMB 213.1 billion as of late 2024, manage to serve China's small and micro business lending market?

You're looking at a tech-driven giant with a trailing twelve-month revenue of $3.56 billion, but one that is defintely facing headwinds, reporting a net loss of approximately -$473.0 million over the same period, forcing a strategic pivot.

Understanding this balance-from its history as a Ping An Group subsidiary with 67% ownership to its current model-is crucial for any investor or strategist trying to map its near-term risks and opportunities, so let's break down exactly how Lufax Holding Ltd works and makes money.

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) History

You're looking at Lufax Holding Ltd, a company that started as a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending pioneer and then, facing China's intense regulatory shifts, successfully pivoted to become a pure technology platform. The story is a masterclass in adapting to regulatory pressure. The direct takeaway is this: Lufax's history is defined by its deep ties to Ping An Insurance and a critical, multi-billion-dollar shift from a lending model to a loan facilitation model, which is why their 2025 focus is entirely on serving small business owners (SBOs).

Given Company's Founding Timeline

Year established

Lufax Holding Ltd was established in 2011.

Original location

The company began operations in Shanghai, China.

Founding team members

Lufax was founded with the substantial backing and strategic support of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd., which remains the controlling shareholder. While Ping An provided the institutional muscle, the initial leadership team included long-standing executives who steered the company through its P2P phase and subsequent transformation.

Initial capital/funding

Specific initial capital isn't publicly detailed, but the backing from Ping An Insurance provided significant resources. The first major external capital injection arrived in 2014 with a Series A funding round of $292 million.

Given Company's Evolution Milestones

Given Company's Transformative Moments

Lufax's journey wasn't a straight line; it involved several sharp turns, mostly driven by China's evolving regulatory landscape. The most significant move was the complete exit from P2P lending in 2018. That was a defintely tough decision, but it let them sidestep a massive regulatory crackdown and re-emerge as a more scalable, capital-light technology enabler.

The company's 2025 corporate actions underscore its commitment to stability and compliance in a complex market. Here's the quick math on their current scale: as of March 31, 2025, Lufax had approximately 27.0 million cumulative borrowers, a 23.9% increase year-over-year. That's a huge user base that requires constant risk management and governance focus.

• Regulatory Pivot and Technology Focus: The 2018 pivot to a technology platform allowed Lufax to leverage its risk management expertise to connect borrowers with external financial institutions, enhancing sustainability.
• Auditor Change and Governance: In June 2025, shareholders approved the removal of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the appointment of Ernst & Young as the new auditor for the 2025 financial year. This change signals a focus on strengthening financial reporting and governance.
• 2025 Leadership Realignment: The appointment of Mr. Xiang Ji as Co-Chief Executive Officer on October 31, 2025, alongside CEO Yong Suk Cho, brings in fresh, high-level expertise in retail credit and risk management from his previous role as Global Managing Partner at McKinsey & Consulting Company Inc. This is a clear move to bolster the management bench for the next phase of growth.
• Strategic Collaboration: The September 2025 approval of the 2025 Ping An Consumer Finance Collaboration Supplemental Agreement revised the annual caps, formalizing and expanding the crucial relationship with their parent company's consumer finance arm for the year ending December 31, 2025.

If you want to dig deeper into the current ownership dynamics and institutional interest, you should read Exploring Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Ownership Structure

Lufax Holding Ltd is controlled by a single, dominant public company shareholder, Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd., which gives it significant influence over strategic decisions. This structure means that while Lufax is a publicly traded company on both the NYSE and HKEX, its governance is heavily weighted toward its parent financial conglomerate.

Lufax Holding Ltd Current Status

Lufax Holding Ltd is a dual-listed public company, trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: LU) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX: 6623). As of November 2025, the company maintains a stable share structure with 1.73 billion issued shares, according to its October 2025 filings. Despite this public status, the ownership concentration means that the majority of control rests with a single corporate entity, not the public float.

You need to understand this majority stake when assessing the company's risk profile, especially concerning strategic alignment with its primary shareholder. For a deeper dive into the company's financial stability, you can check out Breaking Down Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Lufax Holding Ltd Ownership Breakdown

The ownership breakdown, based on the latest available data from the 2025 fiscal year, clearly shows the controlling interest held by public companies. This concentration is a key factor in Lufax Holding Ltd's decision-making process.

Lufax Holding Ltd Leadership

Lufax Holding Ltd has seen significant executive turnover and appointments in late 2025, signaling a potential shift in operational focus. The leadership team is a mix of long-tenured executives and new appointments with deep retail credit and risk management experience, which is defintely a trend to watch.

• Dicky Peter YIP: Chairman of the Board and Independent Director (since April 2025).
• Yong Suk Cho: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) (since August 2022).
• Xiang Ji: Co-Chief Executive Officer (Co-CEO) (appointed October 31, 2025), bringing nearly 20 years of retail credit and risk management expertise.
• Tongzhuan Xi: Chief Financial Officer (CFO) (since April 2025).
• Cheng Jianbo: Chief Risk Officer (CRO) (appointed October 24, 2025).
• Tao Wu: Executive Deputy General Manager and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) (appointed October 31, 2025).

The appointment of a Co-CEO and a new CRO in October 2025 suggests a strong push to address credit quality and reaccelerate growth, the two biggest near-term risks for the company. You should monitor their next earnings call for specific strategic shifts.

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Mission and Values

Lufax Holding Ltd's purpose extends beyond its balance sheet, focusing squarely on financial inclusion for China's small business owners (SBOs). The company's mission is a clear commitment to fostering small business competitiveness and sustainability, which is a powerful driver for the real economy.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Core Purpose

For a financial technology (fintech) platform like Lufax Holding Ltd, the core purpose is rooted in bridging the gap between underserved small businesses and the capital they desperately need. This is how they create value, and it's a defintely challenging market to navigate.

Official Mission Statement

The mission statement is precise, detailing the dual mandate of serving entrepreneurs directly while empowering institutional partners. It's a B2B2C model, clearly stated.

• Foster small business competitiveness and sustainability.
• Provide individual entrepreneurs with easy access to inclusive products and services.
• Empower institutional partners to reach and serve SBOs efficiently.

This focus is visible in their operational metrics; for instance, total new loans enabled in the first quarter of 2025 reached RMB57.3 billion (about $8.2 billion USD), demonstrating the scale of their impact on the small business sector.

Vision Statement and Core Values

While a single, formal vision statement is not always public, the company's strategic direction points to a clear aspiration: to be the most trusted, technology-empowered platform. They want to drive financial inclusion, which means serving the populations traditional banks overlook.

• Be the leading technology-empowered personal financial services platform in China.
• Connect borrowers and investors efficiently and transparently.
• Drive financial inclusion for underserved populations.

The core values that underpin this vision are simple but critical in a regulated financial market:

• Integrity: Building trust is non-negotiable, especially when dealing with over 27.0 million cumulative borrowers as of March 31, 2025.
• Innovation: Using technology to manage risk, such as maintaining a non-performing loan (NPL) ratio for consumer finance loans at just 1.2% as of Q1 2025.
• Customer-Centricity: Tailoring products to meet the unmet needs of small business owners.

Honestly, the numbers show they are walking the talk on risk management, which is key to long-term trust. You can dive deeper into the operational risks and opportunities in Breaking Down Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Functional Tagline

Lufax Holding Ltd's operational positioning is the simplest summary of its value proposition. They cut through the complexity of credit and wealth management for their target market.

• Making retail borrowing and wealth management easier, safer and more efficient.

This tagline highlights their dual-hub model: the Retail Credit Facilitation Hub and the Wealth Management Hub. The total outstanding balance of loans was RMB203.9 billion as of March 31, 2025, showing the massive scale of their retail credit enablement business.

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) How It Works

Lufax Holding Ltd operates as a financial services enabler, primarily in China, connecting small business owners and individual borrowers with funding partners through a highly automated, technology-driven platform. The company essentially acts as a middle layer, using data and artificial intelligence (AI) to handle credit risk assessment and customer acquisition for its funding partners.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Product/Service Portfolio

Lufax focuses on two main pillars: retail credit facilitation and wealth management, with a clear recent emphasis on serving China's small and micro-sized enterprises.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Operational Framework

The company's operational process is built on a tech-first approach to manage the entire loan lifecycle, from customer acquisition to risk control and servicing. This digital transformation is defintely key to their efficiency.

• Customer Acquisition: Use digital channels and proprietary data analytics to identify and onboard credit-worthy small business owners and individual borrowers across China.
• Credit Underwriting & Risk Control: Employ AI and predictive analytics to perform real-time risk assessment and loan pricing, which is crucial for managing the DPD 90+ delinquency rate for general unsecured loans, which stood at 2.5% as of Q1 2025.
• Funding Facilitation: Partner with a wide network of financial institutions-about 85 funding partners-to match borrower demand with capital supply, maintaining a capital-light model for much of its history.
• Value Creation: Generate revenue primarily from fees for facilitating loans and providing technology services to funding partners, plus income from its own consumer finance subsidiary where it bears a larger portion of the credit risk.

Here's the quick math: Analysts project Lufax's revenue to grow strongly by +12.7% in RMB for the 2025 fiscal year, showing the facilitation model is picking up pace.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Strategic Advantages

Lufax's market success hinges on its deep-rooted institutional backing and its technological edge in a heavily regulated market, plus the sheer scale of its customer base.

• Institutional Backing & Trust: Majority ownership by Ping An Group (a major Chinese insurer), which provides a strong foundation of capital, compliance expertise, and brand trust in a sensitive financial sector.
• Unmatched Scale: A massive and growing user base, with the cumulative number of borrowers hitting approximately 28.5 million in Q3 2025, which gives them a significant data advantage for risk modeling.
• AI and Fintech Integration: A strategic shift toward AI-powered platforms enhances operational efficacy, streamlining service delivery and improving customer experience. This is how they keep their consensus forward FY 2025 normalized P/E ratio low at around 3.3 times, suggesting deep value.
• Financial Resilience: The company holds a significant equity base, reported at around $12 billion as of Q1 2025, which provides a large margin of safety even amidst current financial losses. You can dive deeper into the ownership structure and market sentiment by Exploring Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

What this estimate hides is the regulatory risk in China, but still, the strong net margin projection of 10.5% for FY 2025 suggests the core business is stabilizing and profitable.

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) How It Makes Money

Lufax Holding Ltd primarily makes money by acting as a technology-empowered intermediary, connecting small business owners and consumers with funding sources, a model that has shifted dramatically from a pure peer-to-peer (P2P) facilitator to a credit-enabler and consumer finance provider.

The company's revenue engine is now driven less by platform service fees and more by the interest income generated from its growing consumer finance loan book, a strategic pivot necessitated by China's evolving regulatory environment. This means they are taking on more balance sheet risk but capturing a larger portion of the economics.

Lufax Holding Ltd's Revenue Breakdown

The firm's revenue mix is undergoing a major structural change, moving away from 'Technology platform-based income' (loan facilitation fees) and toward 'Net interest income' from its own balance sheet lending, specifically through its consumer finance arm. This table reflects the latest reported mix from Q3 2024, which illustrates the current state of this transition.

Here's the quick math: Net Interest Income, which comes from loans held on Lufax's balance sheet, made up nearly half of total income in Q3 2024, up from 41.1% a year prior. That is a clear sign of the business model shift in action. The traditional platform fee revenue-Technology Platform-Based Income-fell by nearly 50% year-over-year as the old loan facilitation model shrinks.

Business Economics

The new economic fundamental for Lufax is its 'take rate' and the expansion of its consumer finance business, which is a higher-risk, higher-reward model. The company is actively shedding its legacy Puhui loan facilitation business, which focused on small business owners (SBOs), and concentrating on consumer finance loans.

• Take Rate Expansion: The company's take rate (the percentage of the loan amount Lufax retains) increased to 9.7% in Q3 2024, up from 7.8% a year earlier. This jump is directly tied to the higher proportion of loans being enabled under the 100% guarantee model, which is a more capital-intensive but higher-margin activity.
• Consumer Finance Focus: New consumer finance loans surged by 27.8% year-over-year in Q3 2024, accounting for 52% of total new loan sales. This shift is key because consumer finance loans have a lower non-performing loan (NPL) ratio, which improved to 1.2% in Q3 2024.
• Funding Cost Advantage: The July 2024 acquisition of a nationwide small lending license is a defintely critical development. This license is expected to help reduce funding costs and improve capital management efficiency for the consumer finance segment, strengthening the long-term profitability of the new model.

The old model is dying, but the new, regulated consumer finance model is growing fast. You can see more about the market's reaction by Exploring Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

Lufax Holding Ltd's Financial Performance

As of November 2025, Lufax is navigating a complex financial picture, with significant revenue contraction from the strategic shift but a clear path back to profitability based on analyst consensus. The market capitalization sits at approximately $2.496 billion.

• Revenue Outlook: Analysts project the company's full Fiscal Year 2025 revenue to be around $3.47 billion, reflecting the ongoing wind-down of the legacy business. However, in local currency (RMB) terms, revenue is projected to grow by 12.7% for FY 2025, showing a strong recovery in the core operating segments.
• Profitability & Margins: The consensus forecast for Fiscal Year 2025 earnings per share (EPS) is $0.26, a sharp reversal from the losses seen in 2024. This translates to a projected Net Income of approximately $458.3 million for the year. The normalized net margin for 2025 is expected to be a healthy 10.5%.
• Valuation: Despite the recent volatility, the stock trades at a consensus forward Fiscal Year 2025 normalized Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio of only 3.3 times. This valuation suggests the market is heavily discounting the company's future earnings power, likely due to regulatory risk and the challenging transition period.

What this estimate hides is the execution risk of the consumer finance strategy, particularly in a slowing Chinese economy. Still, the forward P/E of 3.3 times is incredibly cheap if they hit that 10.5% net margin target.

Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Market Position & Future Outlook

Lufax Holding Ltd is navigating a complex transition, pivoting from its legacy peer-to-peer (P2P) roots to a focused financial services enabler for China's small business owners (SBOs), a segment with enormous unmet credit demand. While the company faces near-term headwinds from a business model overhaul and management changes, analyst consensus projects a return to profitability with fiscal year 2025 revenue expected to hit approximately $6.02 billion and Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.26.

Competitive Landscape

In the non-traditional retail credit market in China, Lufax is a major player, but it is not the market leader. Its strategy targets a more affluent, higher-ticket-size borrower, differentiating it from the mass-market consumer lending giants. The firm's deep ties to Ping An Group, its parent company, remain a critical advantage, providing a stable funding pipeline and institutional credibility.

Opportunities & Challenges

The company's future trajectory hinges on two things: successfully completing its business model transition and capitalizing on China's policy push for inclusive finance. The market is defintely rewarding efficiency and a clear compliance path. Breaking Down Lufax Holding Ltd (LU) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors

Industry Position

Lufax Holding Ltd holds a unique, second-tier position in China's non-traditional financial services landscape. It is not the consumer-facing behemoth like Ant Group, but rather a more institutional, partner-driven 'financial services enabler.' The company's strength is its capital-light model, relying on a network of 85 financial institutions for funding, which mitigates balance sheet risk.

• Ranked second among non-traditional financial service providers for inclusive small and micro business (SMB) loans enabled.
• Focus on high-quality borrowers results in a larger average loan ticket size compared to mass-market competitors.
• The firm's market capitalization of approximately $2.43 billion as of November 2025 suggests the market is pricing in significant risk, but also presents a deep discount to equity for value investors.
• ESG standing improved significantly, with MSCI upgrading the company's rating to AA in 2025, signaling better governance and sustainability practices.