Dialogue with Ping An Road Hao Yang: Filter short-term fluctuations and confidently allocate to equity assets; in the future, increase investment in the "hard technology" sector.

Ask AI · What are the main obstacles facing insurance funds investing in hard technology?

Caixin (March 30, (Reporter Li Ting)) Listed insurance companies’ 2025 annual reports are being released one after another, and one keyword keeps showing up: hard technology.

The latest annual reports show that by the end of 2025, China Ping An’s allocation to equity investments rose as a share of total investments from 11% in 2024 to 20%. The scale of equity investments increased significantly, with investment focus on high-dividend stocks and technology-growth stocks. China Life, China Taiping, and other insurance companies also stated clearly in their 2025 annual reports that they are actively laying out initiatives related to new productive forces.

“Hard technology has already become a certain area for insurance funds’ future investment.” Several insurance-company investment business executives told Caixin reporter that. Consistent with the above view, recently Caixin reporter interviewed Lu Haoyang, Deputy Chief Investment Officer of China Ping An. He also clearly said, “Hard technology will definitely be an area China Ping An focuses on for subsequent investment and layout.”

**Caixin: How do you view the recent volatility in the capital markets? Will it affect the allocation pace? **Lu Haoyang: Filter out short-term volatility and look at the long term—we are firm in allocating to equity assets.

From the 2025 performance of various listed insurance companies, it can be seen that capital market volatility will be reflected quickly in their results. This is a challenge facing insurance companies, which have long favored stability. At earnings press conferences, executives from multiple insurance companies said they would guide the market to look at a company’s profit situation over a longer cycle.

Capital market volatility can trigger profit fluctuations in financial statements. Then, in the first quarter of 2026, when volatility in capital markets such as the A-share market increases, will it affect insurance funds’ investment pace in 2026?

Lu Haoyang frankly acknowledged that the market is indeed paying a lot of attention to this issue, but for insurance funds, it is definitely about the long term. “Insurance funds are large in scale, and their funding characteristics determine that insurance funds have a long duration. That means insurance institutions must ‘look long and invest long.’”

“Ping An will firmly allocate to equities.” Lu Haoyang said. For how to handle short-term volatility, Lu Haoyang offered solutions: first, adjust the structure to better fit the short-term market—for example, allocate to high-dividend stocks. “This kind of stock has lower volatility by nature, and it has stable cash-flow support for dividends, so you can find certainty in the midst of volatility.” Second, for growth areas with policy support and confirmed growth, “these growth-type stocks can filter out short-term volatility and be even more courageous in allocating.”

**Caixin: What are the areas with policy support and certain growth? **Lu Haoyang: Industries such as hard technology and new productive forces are the key directions for future planning.

In the interview, Lu Haoyang repeatedly emphasized emerging industries encouraged by national policies, and this is also the area that insurance funds focus on. “When insurance funds invest, we need to ‘resonate in sync’ with the state.”

During this year’s two sessions, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) stated clearly that China will focus on building six major emerging pillar industries and six future industries. The six emerging pillar industries include integrated circuits, aerospace, biopharmaceuticals, the low-altitude economy, new energy storage, and intelligent robots; the six future industries include quantum technology, bio-manufacturing, green hydrogen and nuclear fusion energy, brain-computer interfaces, embodied intelligence, and 6G. All these areas are important for strengthening China’s “hard technology” capabilities.

These areas are also precisely the direction in which insurance funds are gradually increasing investment. At the most recent earnings press conference, Sun Yonglin, General Manager and Co-CEO of China Ping An, stated clearly that as insurance funds are patient and long-term capital, they are actively planning the six emerging pillar industries and the six future industries, and actively supporting the development of China’s new productive forces. “Ping An’s investments have already covered frontier areas such as GPUs, robots, next-generation semiconductors, and brain-computer interfaces.”

In response, Lu Haoyang also said that Ping An supports technological innovation actively through equity and debt investments, participating in investment in national efforts to tackle “bottleneck” technologies and in strategic emerging industries. “For example, in a more detailed segment: for major national semiconductor industries, Ping An’s investment scale has already exceeded 10 billion yuan. This is only one sub-industry. For other, larger strategic emerging industries, the investment scale will be even bigger.”

Based on data obtained by Caixin reporter, by the end of 2025, Ping An invested 11.5 billion yuan in major national semiconductor industries, supporting independent development of domestic chip industries; and in cooperation with excellent private fund managers, invested more than 10 billion yuan in areas such as AI, semiconductors, robots, and biopharmaceuticals in the form of equity, fully supporting the development of new productive forces enterprises.

**Caixin: Are there any difficulties or bottlenecks in investing in the “hard technology” sector now? **Lu Haoyang: Equity investment in non-listed companies consumes more capital; we expect policy optimization to encourage insurers to make even greater efforts in wider allocation

Increasing investment in “hard technology” is a certain direction for insurance funds’ investments today and in the future. So, are there still difficulties or bottlenecks for insurance funds during the investment process?

“Overall, with policy support from all sides, investment in hard technology is fairly smooth.” Lu Haoyang said.

But he also acknowledged that when making equity investments in non-listed hard-technology companies, there is still the situation that solvency risk factors remain relatively high. “This means the capital consumption for insurance companies is still fairly large.”

Taken together, in the past two years, regulators have optimized solvency-related policies multiple times. In 2023, regulators issued the “Notice on Optimizing Insurance Company Solvency Regulatory Standards.” In it, when insurance companies invest in CSI 300 index constituent stocks, the risk factor was adjusted from 0.35 to 0.3; when investing in ordinary stocks listed on the STAR Market, the risk factor was adjusted from 0.45 to 0.4.

In 2025, regulators optimized policies again and issued the “Notice on Adjusting Risk Factors for Relevant Business of Insurance Companies.” For insurance companies, the risk factors for CSI 300 index constituent stocks and the CSI Asset Management? No, it says “CSI Redolow Volatility 100 Index constituent stocks” held for more than three years were lowered from 0.3 to 0.27; and for ordinary shares of STAR Market companies held for more than two years, the risk factor was lowered from 0.4 to 0.36.

However, these policy optimizations apply only to listed companies. For insurance companies’ equity investments in non-listed strategic emerging industries, the risk factor has remained at 0.4.

Lu Haoyang said that both regulators and insurance institutions are currently working together to jointly study this issue, and they hope that when insurance funds support the country’s priority areas and new productive forces, there can be some discount on risk measurement, so insurance funds can increase their efforts in allocating to “hard technology.”

“In addition, investing in hard technology will raise requirements for insurance funds themselves. Strategic emerging industries and industries related to new productive forces have very high requirements for insurance companies’ investment teams’ investment capabilities, post-investment management capabilities, and risk management capabilities. We need to continuously optimize the investment team and improve relevant capabilities.” Lu Haoyang disclosed that, “For a long time into the future, Ping An will definitely increase its layout for hard technology.”

(Reporter Li Ting, Caixin)