Listed insurance companies ramp up their strategies to ease the "immediate concerns" in new energy vehicle insurance

In 2025, listed insurance companies’ property and casualty insurance subsidiaries are still surging ahead in the new energy vehicle insurance business. At the same time, the “near-term worries” in new energy vehicle insurance have eased somewhat, and leading insurers are moving through a crucial turning point from “underwriting losses” to “breaking into profitability.” However, while the “near-term worries” have eased, “long-term concerns” are quietly starting to emerge. Continued breakthroughs in intelligent connected vehicle technology are not only reshaping transportation and commuting, but also posing disruptive challenges to the traditional auto insurance industry. With the pace of intelligent transformation accelerating across the board, how should new energy vehicle insurance develop?

Accelerating Cost Optimization

According to data released on March 31 by the China Association of Actuaries and the China Banking and Insurance Information Technology Management Co., Ltd., in 2025, China’s insurance industry underwrote 43.58 million new energy vehicles (of which passenger vehicles accounted for 41.81 million and trucks accounted for 1.77 million), an increase of 12.48 million year over year, up 40.1%; premium income was 190 billion yuan, providing risk protection of 159 trillion yuan; underwriting losses were 5.6 billion yuan, narrowing by 0.1 billion yuan year over year.

As can be seen, although the underwriting scale of new energy vehicle insurance continues to expand and underwriting losses have decreased, it still has not achieved profitability on the underwriting side.

How has the new energy vehicle insurance business performed at leading insurers? For these past few years, new energy vehicle insurance has been one of the key topics at earnings press conferences of listed insurers. Zhang Daoming, a Party committee member of PICC, the Party secretary and interim responsible person of PICC Property and Casualty, said that, on the whole, new energy vehicle insurance faces three major challenges: first, the claim frequency for new energy vehicles is high, significantly higher than that of fuel vehicles; second, there is insufficient socialized repair channel capacity, making vehicle repair costs relatively high; third, both the share of personal injury cases and the compensation standards are showing an upward trend, and the average claims payout per case is rising.

“These factors keep the claims payment pressure for new energy vehicle insurance at a high level. But in the face of challenges, we actively leverage advantages in data, pricing, channels, and costs, and we have already built a leading edge in the new energy vehicle insurance field.” Zhang Daoming said that currently, some positive factors have started to appear in new energy vehicle insurance. Influenced by multiple factors such as an increase in the proportion of older cars, improvements in driving behavior habits, and advances in assisted driving technologies, the claim frequency for new energy vehicles is showing a downward trend.

In 2025, Taiping Property & Casualty’s premium income from new energy vehicle insurance reached 25.017 billion yuan, accounting for 22.6% of the company’s overall auto insurance business, up 5.6 percentage points year over year. “In general, the growth rate of new energy vehicle insurance is higher than the growth rate of the company’s overall auto insurance business. This is due to the company’s earlier overall strategic layout in the new energy sector.” Chen Hui, general manager of Taiping Property & Casualty, said the company has improved the overall business cost of new energy vehicle insurance significantly by implementing dedicated operations for automaker brands, empowering claims with technology to reduce losses, and further strengthening the service system.

New Technologies Bring New Variables

As new energy vehicle technology continues to evolve, new market variables are starting to appear. The “14th Five-Year Plan” outline for 2021–2025 sets out that we should accelerate the development of strategic emerging industries such as intelligent connected new energy vehicles and steadily advance key technology innovations such as intelligent driving. The intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry has gradually entered a new stage of large-scale rollout and commercial operations. Without doubt, this is also a key variable that affects the ecosystem of the entire auto insurance industry. Recently, Beijing has announced that it will take the lead in launching the development and application of commercial insurance for intelligent connected new energy vehicles.

The first thing technology change impacts is the core pricing system of insurance companies. Zhang Xinyuan, head of the consulting firm Key Fang De (Ke Fang De) Consulting, said that traditional auto insurance pricing relies on historical claim data and driver behavior, but the risk factors of intelligent connected vehicles have changed fundamentally (for example, human error decreases, but new risks such as system malfunctions and cyberattacks have become more prominent). Insurers need to redesign pricing models, but there is a lack of data support, making it difficult to quantify these new risks. At the same time, intelligent connected vehicle technology iterates quickly and risks change dynamically, further increasing the difficulty of pricing.

An inaccurate pricing model is only one side of the challenge; the responsibility identification process in claims also becomes more difficult. In intelligent connected vehicle accidents, responsibility allocation involves multiple parties, including drivers, automakers, software providers, and sensor manufacturers. Current laws and insurance clauses have not yet clearly defined this. “In an accident occurring under an intelligent driving mode, should responsibility be attributed to improper operation by the vehicle owner, system defects, or interference from a third party?” Zhang Xinyuan gave an example. “At present, there is a lack of a basis for determining responsibility, which could lead to claims disputes and rising costs.” In addition, problems such as inconsistent technical standards, regulatory lag, and differences in consumer acceptance also exacerbate insurers’ business uncertainty.

In Zhang Xinyuan’s view, to respond to these challenges, insurance companies need to cooperate with automakers and regulatory authorities to promote data sharing, build a dynamic pricing system, and explore new insurance products based on actual driving performance.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Xiumei

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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