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Insurance payout sad confirmation

By Hu Yuanyuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-15 09:14

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The parents of Tang, a 10-year-old primary school student in Chongqing, broke down at the sight of the 20,000 yuan that a Ping An Insurance executive brought for them.

The insurer was remarkably prompt in reaching Tang's parents with the money that will go a long way in helping them rebuild their lives - the company came to know about Tang's death at 9 am yesterday and the executive was at the door with the claim payment by 3 pm.

But having lost their only son to an angry earth, the money served only as a cruel reminder that nothing would make up for Tang's loss, nothing would be the same again.

"This is the fastest we could do," Sheng Ruisheng, Ping An's spokesman, said.

"Because of the terrible traffic, it took our executive six hours to get there, otherwise we would have done it even earlier," he said.

Some 1,374 people bought Ping An policies in Beichuan and Wenchuan areas, the regions worst hit by the quake. The insurer's employees have been seeking out and contacting the policyholders to help speed up the processing of their claims.

Sheng said most of the deaths reported so far have been from regions surrounding the epicenter, so worse could be in store.

But Wang Xiaogang, an analyst with Shanghai-based Orient Securities, said the earthquake's impact on insurance companies is "quite limited".