Ant Group Discloses Corporate Governance Performance: 50% of Sole Directors, Over 1/3 of Female Directors

Recently, Ant Group released its 2022 Sustainable Development Report, which disclosed the company's governance performance for the year. The report shows that over the past year, Ant Group has been benchmarking its international and domestic practices and continuously exploring modern corporate governance systems that are in line with its own development reality: increasing the proportion of sole directors to 50%, establishing two special committees of the board of directors, and making shareholder voting rights more transparent and decentralized

Recently, Ant Group released its 2022 Sustainable Development Report, which disclosed the company's governance performance for the year. The report shows that over the past year, Ant Group has been benchmarking its international and domestic practices and continuously exploring modern corporate governance systems that are in line with its own development reality: increasing the proportion of sole directors to 50%, establishing two special committees of the board of directors, and making shareholder voting rights more transparent and decentralized. At the same time, facing the industry, Ants is also solidly promoting the construction of an open and orderly platform ecosystem, and building an inclusive and win-win business environment.

Ant Group claims that a diversified board structure helps the company make better decisions and drive innovation and growth in its business. In 2022, Ant hired two new independent directors, with the proportion of independent directors increasing to 50%, promoting the orderly and efficient operation of the board of directors. At present, Ant's four independent directors include well-known economists, senior financial experts, senior legal experts, and individuals with rich international regulatory experience, ensuring the professionalism of the board of directors. In addition, the proportion of female directors exceeds one-third, ensuring a diverse perspective for decision-making.

Ant Group's board of directors has added two professional committees to the existing four, namely the Risk Management and Consumer Rights Protection Committee and the ESG Sustainable Development Committee. In 2022, Ant Group held 19 special committee meetings, and each committee provided recommendations for the company's long-term sustainable development through in-depth discussions in areas such as internal audit, related party transactions, risk management, consumer rights protection, privacy protection, and selection of directors and executives.

The upper shareholder structure of Ant Group has also been adjusted, and there is no longer any situation where direct or indirect shareholders control the company alone or jointly. The voting rights of shareholders are further transparent and dispersed, and the governance structure is more stable, which is conducive to the long-term sustainable development of the company.

The governance mechanism of the "Three Meetings" has been solidly implemented: In 2022, Ant Group held three shareholder meetings and reviewed and passed 11 proposals; Convene 8 board meetings and review and approve 34 proposals; Convene three meetings of the board of supervisors and review and approve four proposals.

The report also provides detailed disclosure on key governance concerns such as risk management, data security, and privacy protection. Over the past year, Ant's risk management system has continued to upgrade. In addition to establishing new committees at the level of the group's board of directors, important subsidiaries of the group have also established risk management committees and incorporated climate risk into the comprehensive risk management framework. For the first time, the identification, assessment, and disclosure of climate change risks and opportunities have been carried out in accordance with the disclosure framework of the Climate Related Financial Information Disclosure Working Group (TCFD).

In terms of data security and privacy protection, completed 4 internal special audits related to personal information protection. In 2022, Alipay will become the first enterprise in the financial industry to pass the Personal Financial Information Protection Capability Certification issued by the National Financial Technology Certification Center of the People's Bank of China.

In the promotion of ESG's sustainable development strategy, Ant pays more attention to the perspective of stakeholders, and takes systematic measures to enhance industry development and win-win cooperation from three aspects: jointly serving customers, jointly building governance systems, and sharing business results. At the same time, we adhere to openness and professionalism, and promote sustainable development with an attitude of seeking knowledge with an open mind.

In multiple professional fields, Ant has established advisory committees composed of external experts, including the ESG Sustainable Development Advisory Committee, the Technology Ethics External Committee, and the Personal Information Protection Supervision Committee, to listen to the insightful opinions of expert advisors and invite external experts to provide systematic guidance on our related work.

Ants also pay more attention to evaluations from their partners. Taking the Fortune open platform as an example, a scientific and comprehensive partner feedback system was established in 2022. For the first time, a third-party agency was hired to conduct independent research on partner satisfaction, and the research feedback was disclosed to the public.

The report shows that the openness of Ant Wealth feedback from partners is high, which can help solve investment difficulties from the perspective of users. However, some cooperation rules are more complex and hope to be simplified. In response to this feedback, the Wealth Platform has simplified 49 rules to 24 in early 2023.

We hope to make more stakeholders feel the various changes brought by ESG sustainable development to ants through practical actions. "Peng Yijie, Chief Sustainable Development Officer of Ant Group, said in his speech," Facing the future, ants will better utilize their own technology and platform capabilities, serve society, create value, and move forward towards the vision of 'bringing small and beautiful changes to the world', firmly determined to move forward

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