Lufax raised $2.36 billion in New York in October 2020, just as Beijing began to crack down on online finance. The company was born inside Ping An, the giant Chinese insurer. It had started as a marketplace where savers lent to strangers online, then dropped that business and moved into loans for small-business owners. Investors valued it at more than $30 billion.

Born Inside an Insurer

Ping An founded Lufax in Shanghai in 2011. The bet was that the internet could match China's savers with borrowers faster and cheaper than banks did. Lufax began with peer-to-peer lending, then left it as regulators shut that industry down. It rebuilt itself around two businesses. One made loans to small-business owners, often with banks and trusts putting up the money. The other sold wealth management products to the middle class.

Thirteen Fifty an ADS

Lufax priced its IPO at $13.50 per American depositary share in late October 2020 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as LU. It sold 175 million ADSs. Tighter Chinese rules on lending and a weak economy then cut into its business, and the stock fell far below its offer price. Ping An raised its stake to about 73 percent. Hong Kong trading in Lufax shares resumed on September 24, 2026, after a suspension of more than 600 days, and the stock fell 41 percent that day.

Cover: A Pagoda near Chao-Chowfu, John Thomson. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a Chinese pagoda (a Shanghai lender).