In 2025, banks will focus on insurance agency sales: double growth in premium scale and agent income

【Source: Global Times】

【Global Times Finance and Economics Joint Report】As the annual reports of listed banks for 2025 have been released one after another, relevant data on bancassurance distribution businesses has come to light. Last year, many banks saw year-over-year growth in both bancassurance premium volume and agency income, making it an important growth driver for banks’ intermediary business income.

Judging from the operating performance of large state-owned banks, in 2025, China Postal Savings Bank’s agency insurance business saw a continued rise in the share of long-term regular premium installment (期交) business. The bank focused on stepping up the promotion of products such as dividend insurance and annuity insurance, and steadily培育 new growth points such as internet insurance. During the reporting period, China Postal Savings Bank’s agency insurance long-term regular premium installment premium sales reached RMB 103.406 billion, accounting for 58.26%, up 4.78 percentage points year over year. Industrial Bank’s bancassurance balance for personal insurance products was RMB 374.0 billion, up 14.61% year over year. Meanwhile, China Construction Bank’s insurance business income was RMB 5.868 billion, an increase of RMB 0.553 billion compared with 2024.

In addition, many joint-stock banks also recorded year-over-year growth in both bancassurance premium volume and agency income. For example, in 2025, China CITIC Bank’s bancassurance business scale reached RMB 24.572 billion, up 24.69% year over year. The share of sales volume of long-term protection-oriented products was 59.51%, up 1.68 percentage points year over year.

CITIC Bank stated that in 2025, it continued to optimize the product structure of bancassurance distribution, deepen tiered and segmented management, and work with high-quality insurance companies to build a protection system covering needs such as health, retirement, and wealth transfer. The bank also enhanced business value and optimized its business structure through scenario-based activities and professional services. In 2026, it will accelerate the release of production capacity in wealth management business, seize structural opportunities such as the capital market and dividend insurance, further deepen its investment research and advisory capabilities, and provide customers with distinctive and professional asset allocation solutions.

In the view of industry insiders, the reasons why bank-distributed insurance business achieved high growth in 2025 mainly have three points: first, deposit interest rates fell, accelerating the “deposit migration” trend among residents; second, banks’ net interest margin narrowed, making insurance agency income an important profit growth point; and third, the “bank-and-insurance unified” (报行合一) policy drove the value of bank-insurance channels back to normal, and bank-insurance cooperation continued to deepen. (Nanmu)