Annual Report Review | AI from Cost-Reduction Tool to Core Engine: Five Major Listed Insurance Companies Boost Computing Power and Compete in Tech Strength

The Paper’s reporter｜Yuan Yuan｜The Paper’s editor｜Xu Shaohang

As the top five listed insurance companies in China gradually release their 2025 performance reports, the annual scorecards of China Life, China Ping An, China Pacific Insurance, PICC People’s Insurance, and New China Life have all been unveiled in full. Against the backdrop of the macroeconomic recovery and a rebound in the capital markets, the five A-share insurers’ attributable net profits in total exceeded 425.2 billion yuan, up more than 20% year over year.

Behind the impressive figures of steady growth in premium income and a broad rebound in investment returns, a deeper trend is quietly emerging: technology—especially artificial intelligence—is accelerating its evolution from an “auxiliary tool” in the insurance industry into a “core engine.” Whether it is China Life’s “Digital Transformation Project,” or China Ping An’s emphasis on “AI in ALL” (full-scale AI enablement), or PICC People’s Insurance’s positioning of its technology line as an “accelerator,” all five listed insurers, in unison, have raised their technology spending to a strategic level in their annual reports and earnings briefings, and have clearly stated that they will continue to increase technology investment during the “15th Five-Year Plan period.” A deep transformation of the insurance industry centered on digital intelligence has already been set in motion.

Industry insiders note that artificial intelligence is no longer an independent project, but rather an entirely new operating model. Insurance companies that actively embrace this change can not only improve operational efficiency, but also accelerate innovation, manage risks more effectively, and set an industry benchmark for responsible AI technology applications.

Crowds Chasing “Intelligence”: Technology Applications Reshaping Traditional Insurance Models

Flipping through the annual reports, “digital intelligence transformation” has moved from a strategic slogan to tangible business investment. AI is embedded across strategic planning, infrastructure, business scenarios, and value growth, becoming the core main thread for reshaping the industry’s competitive logic.

China Ping An adheres to the “AI in ALL” principle, with empowering its core business as the focus, and continues to increase R&D investment. By building industry-leading internal databases and combining advanced technologies such as high-quality distillation and reinforcement learning, Ping An has established vertical large models for the financial and health-and-aging care (medical and elderly care) fields, laying a core foundation for AI value creation. It also drives the group’s business management model to shift from “experience-based decision-making” to “data-based decision-making.” Data show that in 2025, more than 230k Ping An employees used the company’s internal agent platform, developing more than 70k agent applications. Total model calls reached 3.65 billion times throughout the year. Ping An’s database has accumulated 230k bytes of data, covering 251 million individual customers. It has also accumulated more than 3.2 trillion high-quality text corpora, 500k hours of labeled speech data, and over 8.5 billion image corpora.

In scenario application and value realization, AI has penetrated multiple links such as policy issuance, claims, risk control, underwriting review, customer service, coding, and sales. In 2025, Ping An Property & Casualty’s anti-fraud intelligent claims interception and loss reduction amounted to 10.51 billion yuan, marking the third consecutive year of losses reduced by more than 70k yuan; AI seat service volume was about 330k times, covering 80% of Ping An’s total customer service volume.

China Life and PICC People’s Insurance have also continued to push efforts in data centers and algorithm engineering. China Life, through its “Digital China Life” strategy, has built a digital platform based on hybrid cloud, and constructed a data space of “hundreds of millions of data—ten thousands of features—hundreds of-dimensional labels.” PICC People’s Insurance has orderly advanced the construction of its Western data centers; its Northern Information Center has obtained certification for national green computing infrastructure. By using its self-developed insurance-sector vertical large model “PICG Cheng Ling” (People’s Insurance Cheng Ling), the scenario intent understanding accuracy rate has exceeded 99%.

New China Life launched 11 large-model intelligent agents across 2025, with problem resolution rates exceeding 97%, and Q&A accuracy approaching 100%. It empowered more than 3,500 branch outlets’ front-desk staff nationwide and more than 100k agents; it also introduced intelligent strategies such as precise assisted face-to-face meetings, intelligent customer service, customer profiling, and dynamic recommendations, improving the capabilities of digital customer operations. After the “dual recording” (Double Recording) system for sales was upgraded, the recording and quality inspection time dropped significantly, and service efficiency reached an industry-leading level. Meanwhile, New China Life has comprehensively strengthened the foundation for technological development: its data center floor area increased from 7,000 square meters to 27,000 square meters, and core support capability grew nearly 4 times. It also built a new-generation “network information superhighway,” increasing data transmission efficiency by 10 times.

China Pacific Insurance Life’s “Six Warriors” intelligent application system increases agent productivity by 15.7% through AI scenario rehearsals. For users of “Intelligent Client Journey Assistant,” the 30-day conversion rate improved by 1.23 times. China Pacific Property & Casualty’s self-developed online claims intelligence employee “Lingxi” has become the industry’s first AI employee that deeply integrates the full chain of “work assistance, risk early warning, and quality management.”

Continually Increasing Investment: AI Is Not a “Multiple-Choice Question,” but a “Mandatory Answer”

Judging from the statements of the five insurers, technology investment has become a long-term strategy, and future efforts will continue to be strengthened. Zhang Daoming, a member of the Party Committee of PICC People’s Insurance and Party Secretary of PICC Property & Casualty, said that artificial intelligence will comprehensively reshape insurance business models and operating workflows, providing strong technological support for the company to improve operational efficiency, enhance service experience, prevent risks, and reduce costs. From an industry perspective, the rollout of emerging intelligent products and scenarios such as intelligent driving and intelligent robots also brings new opportunities for innovation in insurance products.

At the earnings briefing, the five listed insurers clearly stated that they will continue to increase technology investment in 2026. Guo Xiaotao, Co-CEO of Ping An, pointed out: “AI is not a multiple-choice question, but a mandatory answer.” In 2026, Ping An will upgrade and build a “comprehensive financial integration into one—Jiu Jiu Gui Yi” platform. Driven by AI, it will integrate more than 700 million internet-registered users into a unified super entry point, enabling comprehensive aggregation of traffic, entry points, and backend data, so that customers can complete the closed loop of medical, eldercare, and comprehensive financial services within a one-stop entry.

China Pacific Insurance will list “AI+” as one of its three major strategies for the future. At the earnings briefing, Fu Fan, Chairman of China Pacific Insurance, said that during the “15th Five-Year Plan period,” it will focus on implementing three strategies: “Big Health and Eldercare, Internationalization, and Artificial Intelligence+.” Among them, the “AI+” strategy will target core business scenarios, promoting large-scale application of AI technologies, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness, remaking business processes, optimizing customer experience, and innovating service models.

China Pacific Insurance and China Life likewise show a competitive push to secure the commanding heights of AI. Ding Xiangqun, Chairman of PICC People’s Insurance, clearly positioned the technology line as an “accelerator,” and said the company should “more proactively seize the opportunities for AI development, deepen reform of the technology system and digital construction, accelerate the release of technology productive forces, and capture the key point for digital intelligence transformation.”

Cai Xiliang, Chairman of China Life, has instead listed “technology dividends” as one of the four dividends for the next five years. He said it will “forge future-oriented digital-intelligence capabilities, and drive management, product, and business-model upgrades through digital-intelligence transformation.” In 2026, China Life has proactively planned 14 reform projects, positioning digital-intelligence transformation as a strategic priority.

While capturing technology opportunities, insurance companies also face challenges directly. Zhang Daoming said that AI applications impose higher requirements on a company’s data foundation and operational capabilities. Companies need to have clear AI application plans and definite target ratios for return on investment, and meanwhile establish and improve systems for technical security and data security protection. From an industry standpoint, the emergence of new products and new business models also brings new challenges to the insurance industry’s risk identification and management capabilities.

In an article, Jia Ruo, a long-term associate professor at the School of Economics, Peking University, wrote: “Generative AI is reshaping the insurance customer experience with a force that cannot be ignored, and is giving rise to new business models. But it is also necessary to remain clear-headed about the risks and challenges hidden within it, which require careful handling.” For China’s insurance industry, technology dividends and risk governance coexist—we have the soil for consumers to embrace new technologies openly, and the motivation for companies to actively explore them. At the same time, we also shoulder major responsibilities to guide the safe implementation of technology and maintain the steady operation of the industry.

Cover image source: The Paper’s media resource database