(Yicai Global) April 27 -- Lufax Holding’s shares climbed in pre-market trading after the fintech arm of China’s largest insurer reported a 19 percent jump in net profit for the first quarter from a year earlier due to higher corporate lending and lower taxes.

Lufax [NYSE:LU], which went public last October, climbed as much as 2.6 percent ahead of the market opening in New York today, after sliding 0.9 percent yesterday to close at USD14.08.

Net profit at the unit of Ping An Insurance Group was USD758 million in the three months ended March 31, the Shanghai-based firm said in an earnings report issued after the market closed yesterday. Income rose 17 percent to USD2.3 billion.

The company attributed the profit gain to an uptick in its retail credit facilitation business and an effective 1 percentage point tax cut to 26 percent.

Lufaxbegan life as a peer-to-peer lending platform in 2011 but as regulation tightened it exited the field in July 2019 and moved into consumer finance. The company raised USD2.4 billion from its initial public offering.

2021 Forecasts

Lufax said it expects first-half profit to increase between 19 percent and 22 percent and between percent and 26 percent in the second half, reaching as high as CNY3.9 billion.

“Looking forward, we plan to prioritize the growth of unsecured loans over secured loans, as unsecured loans provide higher operating margins but smaller ticket sizes,” Chief Executive Gregory Gibb said. The firm will also “continue improving our technology deployment to enhance our O2O sales productivity and achieve greater operating efficiency.”

In the first quarter, new facilitated loans rose by 17 percent to USD26.3 billion. High-quality borrowers made up 65.9 percent of all new unsecured loans in comparison to the 58.7 percent share logged a year ago, the firm said.

Lufax’s outstanding balance of facilitated loans rose 15 percent to USD88.9 billion, while the number of borrowers climbed 17 percent to 15.1 million.

Editor: Emmi Laine