JAPAN’S SoftBank Group will invest just over US$100 million in a joint venture with the international arm of China’s ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance, a ZhongAn executive said.

SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund will own 51 percent of the venture that aims to sell the Chinese firm’s technology to financial and health-care firms in Asia-Pacific.

ZhongAn will have a 49-percent stake in the venture, which will have an initial capital of US$200 million.

The companies announced the partnership earlier this month, without sharing the size of the investment.

ZhongAn will nominate two people to the new company’s board, while SoftBank will have one, ZhongAn’s chief financial officer Francis Tang said Monday, after the company reported a loss of 655.8 million yuan (US$95.40 million) for the first half of 2018.

SoftBank bought just under 5 percent of ZhongAn as part of the insurer’s stock market debut in Hong Kong in September last year.

“After their investment into ZhongAn’s initial public offering, ... (SoftBank) saw that our technology could be exported to some of their portfolio investments, so they wanted to set up this joint venture,” Tang said.

(SD-Agencies)