Setting the tone for the next five years, China Life Insurance unveils its "Stepping Up" roadmap

Ask AI · How China Life Insurance Leverages Four Major Tailwinds to Achieve Growth in the Next Five Years?

A live connection between Beijing and Hong Kong: the Company’s annual results press conference for China Life Insurance Company Limited (hereinafter “China Life Insurance”) was held as scheduled on March 26. In the just-concluded 2025, this life insurer “industry leader” delivered an answer sheet that its Chairman, Cai Xiliang, characterized as “a perfect score across the board” (“满堂红”): gross premiums first surpassed the 700 billion yuan mark, net profit increased by 44.1% on a high base, and both total assets and investment assets crossed 7.4 trillion yuan. This sequence of figures jointly sketches out China Life’s solid tracks in the closing year of the “14th Five-Year Plan.”

When the spotlight shifts from past brilliance to an unknown road ahead, the market is even more focused on how this industry “giant” will plan the next five-year period. Especially in the “15th Five-Year Plan Outline,” the word “insurance” is mentioned 27 times; from commercial health insurance to long-term care insurance, policy tailwinds and evolving societal needs intertwine into a vast network. How will China Life “step up to a higher level”? At the results meeting, from Cai Xiliang’s assessment of the “four major tailwinds,” to President Li Mingguang’s detailed breakdown of channel development, and then to Vice President Liu Hui’s positioning of the “decisive points” in its investment strategy, a clear roadmap is gradually taking shape.

A dialectic of “stability” and “progress”: from “a perfect score across the board” to the “golden period”

Cai Xiliang summarized the company’s 2025 performance with three words—“a stable overall pattern,” “a momentum to grow,” and “resilience.”

This “quality” is reflected even more directly at the data level: total premiums of 729.887 billion yuan make the company the first in the industry to step onto a 700 billion yuan platform; attributable net profit of 154.078 billion yuan achieves strong growth of 44.1% on a high base; total market capitalization surpasses 1 trillion yuan, firmly ranking at the top among global life insurers by market value.

These achievements were not without challenges. Cai Xiliang candidly stated at the results meeting that the past year was “a year where multiple pressures overlapped,” but what the company ultimately harvested was an answer sheet “full of substance.”

The labels of “stability” and “progress” are equally evident on the channel development front. As the “base” for value creation, the individual insurance channel also delivered a steady answer sheet in 2025: total premiums of 551.79 billion yuan, up 4.3%; and new business value for the year grew rapidly by 25.5%, reaching 39.299 billion yuan.

Behind this are ongoing optimizations to the team structure. The data show that in 2025, China Life’s net additional headcount for the individual insurance channel increased by 40% year over year, and the 13-month retention rate also improved by 2.2 percentage points. This means more high-quality, resilient new forces are flowing in, laying the groundwork for future growth. Regarding channel development, the company’s President Li Mingguang said that among all sales channels, the individual insurance channel plays a fully supportive role as the main channel, and its sustainable development capability remains solid. With the individual insurance channel as the base, China Life also allows multiple channels to flourish—such as bank insurance and group insurance—continuously improving the level of channel professionalized operations, strengthening the capability to provide product and service offerings, fully matching and meeting customers’ diversified insurance protection needs for annuities, life insurance, health insurance, and more, thereby building a favorable pattern of multi-point support and multi-engine driving.

Looking ahead to the next five years, Cai Xiliang said, “Although the external environment remains complex and changeable, we judge that the next five years will still be a golden window of strategic opportunity for China Life.” He summarized this confidence into “four major tailwinds”: the tailwind from the economic environment, the tailwind from policy, the tailwind from demand, and the tailwind from technology.

Among them, the policy tailwind sends the strongest signal—there are multiple references to the insurance industry in the “15th Five-Year Plan Outline,” which the company views as “a major opportunity” for the industry. As a “response,” China Life’s strategic goal is also already clear: to accelerate the building of a world-class life insurer with Chinese characteristics. To this end, the company will focus on forging three core capabilities: the ability to create value that can traverse long cycles, digital capabilities oriented toward the future, and continuously strengthening risk prevention and control capabilities, to ensure it moves steadily and goes far in a complex and changeable environment.

In the view of financial commentator Guo Shiliang, China Life delivered a satisfactory set of results. Whether in revenue and net profit, or investment return rates, growth has been seen to varying degrees; in particular, the total dividend amount reached 24.195 billion yuan, up 31.7% year over year. This reflects that China Life’s attention to shareholders has strengthened. Behind the growth of insurance company performance, the company is beginning to further enhance its dividend capacity—by increasing cash dividends and other measures—to improve its investment attractiveness.

“A ballast stone” and “decisive factor”: the game of offense and defense for trillion-level capital

For China Life, with its “large overall scale,” every decision on the investment side affects market sentiment.

In 2025, the company’s total investment income reached 387.694 billion yuan, up 25.8% year over year; its total investment yield was 6.09%, achieving the best investment performance in recent years.

This performance stems from precise grasp of the “ballast stone” and “decisive factor.”

“Equity investment is the decisive factor for boosting returns; fixed-income investment is the ballast stone for stable returns; alternative investments are a growth engine for enriching returns.” At the results meeting, Liu Hui distilled the company’s “investment philosophy” in such a sentence. Specifically regarding 2025 operations, she revealed that the company actively advanced the entry of medium- and long-term funds into the market, strategically increased its equity investment ratio by 5 percentage points, and focused on emerging productive forces and high-dividend-quality assets. The result of this strategy is that by the end of 2025, the company’s equity investment scale in public markets had exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, up by 450 billion yuan from the start of the year, becoming a key engine behind the sharp improvement in investment returns.

At the same time, fixed-income investment continues to play the role of a stabilizer. Over the years, the company has consistently allocated long-duration bonds and quality alternative assets, building a solid “core holdings.” In a low interest rate environment, it further strengthens strategic allocation and active management, continuously optimizing asset-liability matching so that the fixed-income “ballast” is continuously reinforced. In addition, by fully leveraging the advantages of long-term capital and patient capital, increasing product innovation and strategy innovation, and building an alternative investment ecosystem spanning all product types and all life cycles, the overall alternative investment scale exceeds 1 trillion yuan, opening up space for long-term growth.

Given volatility in global geopolitical risks, Liu Hui acknowledged that China Life’s exposure to overseas investments is currently very small, accounting for less than 0.89% of total assets; the company has not participated in investments in private debt. As insurance funds that can cross cycles, she emphasized, “The stream does not compete for who flows first; what it competes for is endless flow.” The company will dynamically adjust its asset allocation strategy, seize opportunities amid market fluctuations, and allocate quality core assets to achieve long-term and steady investment performance.

In the view of industry participants, this kind of steadiness of “responding to ever-changing circumstances with what remains unchanged” is precisely the underlying confidence of “patient capital” to traverse cycles. Regarding China Life’s performance on the investment side over the past year, Jiang Han, a senior research fellow at the Pangu Think Tank, said: first, the total investment yield increased to 6.09%, which is truly rare in a complex and changeable market environment. This benefits from its steadfast commitment to long-term investing and value investing, as well as professional capabilities to dynamically optimize broad asset allocation. Second, with an equity investment scale exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan, it not only thickened returns, but also demonstrated the impact of long-term funds entering the market, reflecting the responsibility and commitment of a central state-owned enterprise.

“Silver-haired” is a new track: China Life’s practice in long-term care insurance

When the “silver-haired wave” intersects with “Healthy China,” aging and health become an era-defining issue that the insurance industry must answer.

On March 25, the General Offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the “Opinion on Accelerating the Establishment of a Long-Term Care Insurance System,” which mentions that within about three years, the institutional arrangements covering both urban and rural areas will be basically established; the funding-raising mechanism based on shared responsibility and the fair and appropriately scaled benefit protection mechanism will be gradually improved; the scientific and standardized management and operating mechanism will be basically formed; and a long-term care insurance system that fits China’s basic national conditions will be basically established.

At the results press conference, China Life responded to this national “task sheet” with a set of data.

“Since 2016, the company has actively participated in pilot programs for more than 70 long-term care insurance projects,” China Life’s Assistant President and Chief Actuary Hou Jin revealed its long-term deep involvement in long-term care insurance.

She introduced that the company has accumulated professional capabilities and rich experience. First, the company has the capability to handle the full chain of long-term care insurance business and has formed a comprehensive, professionally strong operating and management system. Second, by leveraging advantages of institutions and outlets, it has assembled a professional service team with broad coverage, high quality, and strong capabilities, able to provide participating people with high-quality service experiences for long-term care insurance. Third, through digital enablement, it has built China Life’s smart long-term care insurance management information system. It can provide technical solutions for long-term care insurance scenarios across the full process and multiple business lines.

This accumulation gives China Life the confidence to be ready for new policy opportunities. At the meeting, Hou Jin said that the company will, with a responsible corporate attitude, high-quality service supply, and professional operating management, actively contribute China Life’s strength to the steady and orderly implementation of long-term care insurance.

In the view of industry participants, this is not only a response to policy calls, but also a natural extension in the company’s large health and large elderly care domain.

As is understood, in terms of “insurance + elderly care,” the company has already laid out 20 elderly care institution projects in 16 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, and Chengdu, and launched the first batch of four travel-and-living elderly care products under China Life’s “Suixinju.” It is actively exploring the development of an at-home elderly care service system to meet customers’ diversified elderly care needs and empower the company’s core insurance business development.

As Cai Xiliang said, China’s insurance penetration and density are only about 60% of the global average; the proportion of insurance industry total assets in total financial assets is less than 10%; and the development of the third pillar is still at its initial stage, with its scale share and replacement rates all lower than those in developed markets. There is also significant room for improvement in the share of commercial health insurance claims in total health expenditures. People’s demand for higher-quality health, elderly care, and wealth management is more urgent than ever, providing broad space for the industry’s development. This is both “demand tailwind” and the responsibility of China Life. From participation in and surpassing pilots of more than 70 long-term care insurance projects, to strategic focus after total premiums surpassed 700 billion yuan, China Life is trying to transform its insights into the “silver-haired” issue into solid strength to serve the country’s overall priorities and improve people’s well-being—laying down a warm base tone for China Life’s “step up” journey in the “15th Five-Year Plan.”

Beijing Business Daily reporter Hu Yongxin