Seven leading insurance companies conclude their annual reports; equity investments drive overall performance growth

◎ Reporter Han Songhui

As of March 27, China Life, China Property Insurance, China Taiping, China Taibao, Ping An, New China Insurance, Sunlight Insurance Group, and other 7 leading listed insurance companies have completed the release of their 2025 annual reports, with their performance rising across the board.

Against the backdrop of major changes in both 2025 insurance industry policies and the market environment, leading insurers have proactively increased their equity allocation in investment business to drive growth in net profit. The annual reports show that the net profit attributable to shareholders of China Life, Ping An, China Taibao, China Property Insurance, New China Insurance, Sunlight Insurance Group, and China Taiping were RMB 154.78 billion, RMB 134.78 billion, RMB 53.505 billion, RMB 46.646 billion, RMB 36.284 billion, RMB 63.1 billion, and HKD 27.059 billion, respectively, rising year over year by 44.1%, 6.5%, 19.0%, 8.8%, 38.3%, 15.7%, and 220.9%, respectively.

Looking ahead to 2026, asset-liability matching is a common challenge faced by all companies. At performance briefings, management teams from multiple insurers said that strengthening asset-liability management is not only a regulatory requirement, but also a need for companies to forge cross-cycle and long-cycle operating and management capabilities. They will comprehensively consider scientific management of liability duration and flexible adjustment of asset duration to address the asset-liability matching challenges brought by the low interest rate environment.

Equity investments deliver high returns

Against the market environment of a long-term interest rate benchmark trending downward, the investment side has posed substantial tests for the seven listed insurance companies last year. According to annual report data, all seven listed insurance companies seek to improve long-term investment returns by increasing their allocation to equity assets and optimizing the structure of their fixed-income assets.

The seven insurance companies together hold investment assets of about RMB 16 trillion. By the end of 2025, China Life, China Property Insurance, China Taibao, New China Insurance, Sunlight Insurance Group, and China Taiping had investment asset scales of RMB 7.42 trillion, RMB 1.90 trillion, RMB 3.04 trillion, RMB 1.84 trillion, RMB 640.2 billion, and HKD 1.74 trillion, respectively. Ping An’s insurance funds investment portfolio had a scale of RMB 6.49 trillion.

Overall, the investment return rates of each insurer are impressive: China Life achieved nearly the best investment performance in recent years, with a total investment return rate of 6.09%; New China Insurance’s total investment return rate rose by 0.8 percentage points year over year to 6.6%; Ping An’s insurance funds investment portfolio’s comprehensive investment return rate was 6.3%; and both China Property Insurance and China Taibao had a total investment return rate of 5.7%.

Proactive moves in equity investments are a shared choice. As of the end of 2025, China Life’s public market equity investment scale exceeded RMB 1.2 trillion, increasing by more than RMB 450 billion from the beginning of the year. The allocation proportions of stocks and funds rose from 12.18% to 16.89%. Ping An increased its balanced deployment of dividend-value and technology-growth equity. China Property Insurance net added more than RMB 40 billion in A-share holdings, and the proportion of equity in the secondary market increased by 4.3 percentage points.

China Property Insurance vice president Cai Zhiwei said to a reporter from Shanghai Securities News: “This year, on the one hand, the company continues to focus on OCI high-dividend stock allocation; on the other hand, it focuses on growth-oriented investment opportunities embedded in the ‘15th Five-Year Plan to the 5th Year Plan’ and strengthens research into key industries and key sectors, so as to reasonably plan TPL stock allocation.”

Fixed-income assets are the foundation of insurance funds investment, and all companies generally place emphasis on duration matching and adopt a “configure when valuations are high” strategy. China Life vice president Liu Hui said that in the past few years, the company seized opportunities when interest rates were at a high level and long-dated bonds were attractive, and increased long-dated bond allocation across cycles. The company has already accumulated RMB 3 trillion in long-term bonds. Ping An actively responds to the risk of interest rate decline and proactively allocates to interest-rate-sensitive bonds when conditions are favorable.

New business value rises sharply

In recent years, regulators have continued to promote reforms to life insurance product pre-assumed interest rates and “report-and-pay-one” changes in sales channels, putting life insurance business under significant transformation pressure.

Publicly listed life insurers generally vigorously develop floating return-type business, further optimizing their business structure. China Life’s floating return-type business achieved strong growth, with its share in first-year premium for initial deposit/first-year premium payments at nearly 50%; Taibao Life’s share of participating dividend insurance in new policy regular-premium installment business has been raised to 50%; and in 2025, Taiping Life’s dividend insurance premiums across all channels, relative to long-term insurance premiums, have nearly reached 90%.

Li Jingsong, general manager of Taibao Life, said that looking ahead to 2026, the development of the bancassurance channel is in a strategic opportunity period. It will drive continuous optimization of the business structure, increase the proportion of floating return-type products, and significantly enhance the share of installment-paying business and high-value business.

Business transformation drives a substantial climb in business value: China Life’s new business value for the year reached RMB 45.752 billion, up sharply 35.7% year over year; Ping An’s new business value for its life insurance and health insurance business increased 29.3% year over year to RMB 36.897 billion; Taibao Life’s new business value increased 40.1% year over year to RMB 18.609 billion; and China Property Insurance’s life insurance new business value increased 64.5% year over year to RMB 8.229 billion.

“In 2026, the company’s individual insurance channel will continue to push forward deeper reforms of the marketing system, continuously optimize the business structure, and drive a meaningful quality-effective improvement in the full-year business alongside stable and steady growth in volume,” said Lan Yonghong, assistant president to China Life’s president.

Auto insurance profitability improves; non-auto segment divergence intensifies

Compared with the booming growth in life insurance business, the non-life insurance business as a whole has entered a stage of steady growth and structural optimization, and the management of the combined ratio has become the key yardstick for non-life insurers’ underwriting profitability.

Judging from the annual reports of each insurer, cost reduction and efficiency improvement effects are evident. The combined ratios of China Property & Casualty, Ping An Property & Casualty, Taibao Property & Casualty, and China Taiping Property & Casualty were optimized to 97.6%, 96.8%, 97.5%, and 98.8%, respectively, decreasing by 0.9, 1.5, 1.1, and 1.3 percentage points year over year, respectively. This in turn drove an increase in underwriting profit. China Property & Casualty, Ping An Property & Casualty, and Taibao Property & Casualty achieved underwriting profit of RMB 12.443 billion, RMB 10.717 billion, and RMB 4.836 billion, respectively, up 75.6%, 96.2%, and 81.0% year over year, respectively.

Each insurer effectively controlled the accident and claim rate of new energy vehicle insurance, bringing improvements to the quality of auto insurance business: Ping An Property & Casualty’s auto insurance combined ratio was optimized to 95.8%, down 2.3 percentage points year over year; China Property & Casualty’s auto insurance combined ratio was optimized to 95.3%, and underwriting profit increased 53.6% year over year to RMB 14.258 billion; Taibao Property & Casualty’s auto insurance combined ratio decreased 2.6 percentage points year over year to 95.6%.

China Property Insurance Party Committee member Zhang Daoming said that, influenced by factors such as improvements in driving behavior habits and advances in assisted driving technology, the accident and claim rate for new energy vehicles has shown a downward trend. It is expected that in 2026, the combined ratio for new energy vehicle insurance will further improve and profitability levels will rise.

Meanwhile, the non-auto insurance business is in a critical period for adjusting structure and improving quality: the proportion of non-auto business at China Property & Casualty increased to 45.0%. Among them, underwriting profit for accident and health insurance increased 154.1% year over year. Taibao Property & Casualty’s personal credit guarantee insurance business scale was sharply reduced. Ping An Property & Casualty’s guarantee insurance business achieved a turnaround to profitability.

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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