Datong speeds up expansion

Datong Financial Services, China's first nationwide professional insurance brokerage firm, is expected to see its premium income reach 2.5 billion yuan ($373 million) this year and 5.5 billion yuan in 2017, the company's top management says.

The rapid growth, according to Datong's chairman and chief executive Jiang Ming, is being contributed to ongoing supply-side reform. The record-filing system has replaced the approval system to simplify procedures regarding the establishment of company affiliates, thus speeding up Datong`s expansion in many third-tier and fourth-tier cities, as well as counties.

Over the past seven years, Datong has opened 100 affiliates in different cities. This year alone, however, 59 new city and county-level affiliated agencies were open to business. So far, Datong`s service network has covered 23 provinces in total. Next year, Datong will set foot in three to four other provinces and open more than 100 city-level affiliated agencies, and the total premium is estimated to soar to 5.5 billion yuan from this year`s 2.5 billion yuan.

"We hope our entity service network could reach every city of China in 5 to 10 years," Jiang said. "And we are quite confident that our average annual growth will exceed 100 percent in the coming three years."