China's Didi launches financial services as core ride hailing business comes under pressure

Chinese giant Didi Chuxing is launching a host of financial and insurance services, as its core ride hailing business comes under increasing scrutiny from regulators.

The company said it will now be offering services such as wealth management, protection insurance and credit for short-term temporary workers, in a bid to "lower the entry barrier for gig economy workers and broaden the scope of protection for more families".

The services were trialed in ten cities last year, and will now be available across China through the Didi app.

The decision to diversify comes just under a month after Didi announced it would be reorganising its operations to help improve the safety of its platform, including adding a new chief safety officer and new chief information security officer.

"Safety is the number one priority for our users," the company had said. "The committee members responsible for safety will promote and implement safety reform work, invest in online and offline resources, and thoroughly improve our standards for safety."

Didi has been facing increasing pressure to push through changes on its platform, following a number of high-profile safety scandals.

Its carpooling service Didi Hitch has been suspended since August, after a female passenger was raped and killed by a driver. Earlier in the year, in May, a 21-year-old woman was also murdered after using Didi Hitch.

The incidents prompted the Ministry of Transport, the Central Committee of the Communist Party and eight other government agencies to launch an investigation into the ride hailing industry. 

In a notice on an official social media account in late November, the Ministry of Transport said it had found that Didi's "management of people and vehicles is out of control". It said it would be clamping down on driver recruitment. 

Didi is the second largest ride-hailing company in the world, and accounts for around 90pc of the market in China. Its chief executive responded to criticism from authorities saying it was a "young company" which "still needs to work on many shortcomings and imperfections that have brought the public great concern".