Profit increases by 22.4%, with the five largest listed insurance companies in A-shares showing steady growth in performance

So far, the five largest A-share insurers’ 2025 annual performance has all been released. On March 29, according to statistics compiled by Beijing Business Daily, in 2025, China Ping An, China Life, China Property & Casualty Insurance (PICC), China Pacific Insurance (CPIC), and New China Life—five A-share listed insurers in total—collectively generated attributable net profit of RMB 425.29B, up 22.4% year over year.

The surge in net profit is inseparable from contributions on the investment side. Benefiting from the 2025 performance of the stock market, the listed insurers’ investment returns generally performed well. In their annual reports, multiple insurers said they increased investments in high-dividend assets. From the underwriting side, thanks to marginal improvements in claims experience and expense control, the “old three” non-life insurers’ business costs were optimized across the board. At the same time, against the backdrop of low interest rates and sluggish competitor wealth-management products, the growth in new business value for life insurance was clearly strong. Looking ahead, can non-life insurers’ business costs remain at low levels, and can life insurance maintain its glory? Everything needs to be tested by time.

Investment-led growth in net profit

In 2025, all five listed insurers delivered impressive growth in performance. Their year-over-year net profits attributable to shareholders of the parent company all showed an upward trend; collectively, they achieved attributable net profit of RMB 425.29B, up 22.4%.

As the first A-share insurer to disclose its results, China Life achieved attributable net profit of RMB 154.08B. On a high base, it continued to grow steadily by 44.09%. China Ping An’s profit scale followed closely; in 2025 it achieved net profit of RMB 134.78B, up 6.5% year over year. In addition, China Pacific Insurance, PICC, and New China Life recorded net profits of RMB 53.51B, RMB 46.65B, and RMB 36.28B, respectively, with growth rates of 19%, 8.8%, and 38.3%.

A deeper look at these standout results shows that performance on the investment side has become the core engine driving the sharp jump in net profit. The rebound in the capital markets in 2025 provided insurers’ funds with a rare window to generate gains. Multiple insurers seized opportunities with precision, achieving a leapfrog increase in investment returns. For example, China Life achieved what was among the best investment performance in recent years: total investment returns of RMB 387.69B, up 25.8%, and a total investment yield of 6.09%. New China Life’s total investment returns for the full year last year were RMB 104.33B, with growth of 30.9%. PICC achieved total investment returns of RMB 92.32B, reaching a historical high.

However, behind investment-side growth, there are also hidden concerns. How to balance returns arising from short-term market volatility with long-term steady growth? How to respond to the low interest-rate environment is an important issue that major insurers must face. Fu Yi-fu, a special research fellow at SuShang Bank, predicted that in 2026 the stock market is expected to show a structural trend. Benefiting from policy support and economic transformation, certain sectors may perform better, but attention is needed on trends in bond yields and differentiation in credit risk.

In the future, how will listed insurers respond to the low interest-rate environment on the investment side? At the company’s earnings call, Guo Xiaotao, co-CEO of China Ping An, said the company’s investment approach is to find certainty amid uncertainty. New quality productive forces are the certainty factor; vigorous development of infrastructure is the certainty factor; overall national economic development is the certainty factor; high-dividend assets and a strong financial sector are the certainty factor; and a healthy China is the certainty factor. These are all important directions for allocating long-term investment assets.

For specific allocation tactics, Liu Hui, vice president of China Life and secretary to the board of directors, said: in a low interest-rate environment, further strengthen strategic allocations and active management; continuously improve asset-liability matching, and steadily reinforce fixed-income “base holdings.” In addition, fully leverage the advantages of long-term capital and patient capital; increase product innovation and strategy innovation; build an alternative investment ecosystem covering all product types and across the full lifecycle. The overall alternative investment scale exceeds RMB 1 trillion, opening up room for long-term growth.

Strong growth in new business value for life insurance

As the “weather vane” for measuring an insurer’s future profitability and business quality, new business value has long been a focus of market attention. In 2025, the five A-share listed insurers all saw two-digit positive growth in life insurance new business value.

In terms of scale, China Life also leads. In 2025, its one-year new business value reached RMB 45.75B, up 35.7% year over year. Closely behind is China Ping An, whose new business value for life insurance and health insurance business was RMB 36.9B, with growth of 29.3% as well.

In terms of growth momentum, all companies performed impressively. China Pacific’s life insurance new business value was RMB 18.61B, up 40.1%. New China Life achieved new business value of RMB 9.84B, with growth as high as 57.4%. PICC Life last year achieved new business value of RMB 8.23B; on a comparable basis, its year-over-year growth rate was 64.5%, the highest among the five companies.

Behind the strong performance is strong enablement from two channels: insurance distribution channels and bancassurance. Beijing Business Daily learned that major companies are pushing “optimize personnel, improve quality” in their individual insurance (direct-to-consumer) channels, moving toward an elite and professional direction. Under the “banking-and-insurance unified” policy guidance, bancassurance channels are gradually entering a new stage of “value bancassurance.” Fu Yi-fu further analyzed that the growth in life insurance new business value among listed insurers in 2025 mainly benefited from two factors: first, insurance demand continued to be released, and residents’ awareness of health and pension protection increased; second, insurers actively promoted channel transformation—improving the quality of individual insurance teams—and diversified channels such as bancassurance contributed to growth.

As the industry’s lead flagship, at the company’s earnings conference, Li Mingguang, president of China Life, broke down the company’s “winning formula” in detail. He said that among all distribution channels, the individual insurance channel fully plays the role of the primary channel, with stable sustainable development capacity. Meanwhile, the individual insurance channel steadily promotes marketing system reforms, insisting on improving both quality and volume, strengthening “better hiring and better development,” optimizing team structure, continuously improving the team’s hard strength, and accelerating the team’s transformation toward professionalism, specialization, and youthfulness. With continual improvement in team quality and the strengthening of new talent, “better-than-plan additional hiring” increased by 40% year over year; the 13-month retention rate improved by 2.2 percentage points year over year; and the proportion of personnel aged 45 and below increased by 2.3 percentage points year over year. In the bancassurance channel, the company sticks to comprehensive channel layout; it expands and improves network operations; and both the new-policy issuing networks and the star-rated networks achieved double-digit growth.

China Ping An, meanwhile, offered another way to solve the problem, emphasizing the power of “balance” to deal with market volatility. Guo Xiaotao said the company has life insurance agents, bancassurance channels, and community finance channels. Among these, the combat capability of the agent team is getting stronger and can achieve more effective and sustained business development amid market competition. The bancassurance channel can capture the market’s growth opportunities. The company is also currently intensively cultivating community finance channels. Such a balanced channel structure enables the company to effectively withstand the impact of market volatility on performance when the market fluctuates.

Seeking incremental growth for non-auto insurance from new energy vehicle insurance

Unlike the rapid expansion in life insurance business, the non-life insurance market has already entered a trajectory of steady development. The “old three”—People’s Insurance Company of China (PICC P&C), Ping An Property & Casualty, and China Pacific Property & Casualty—steadily hold the market’s top positions; last year they continued to optimize their business structure and reduce business costs.

Specifically, in 2025, the “combined ratio” for the three non-life insurance giants—PICC P&C, Ping An P&C, and China Pacific P&C—fell to 97.6%, 96.8%, and 97.5%, respectively, improving by 0.9, 1.5, and 1.1 percentage points year over year. The optimization of cost control directly translated into stronger growth in underwriting profit. In the view of industry insiders, the “old three” business cost optimization benefits from both: the companies’ refined expense management, strengthening control over channel costs, and compressing unnecessary spending; and also from fewer large catastrophes, which reduces claims expenses. According to data from the Ministry of Emergency Management, in 2025, natural disasters of all types in China caused direct economic losses of RMB 241.62B, down 39.8% year over year.

At present, the combined ratios of the three non-life insurance companies are already at relatively low levels. What room is there to further reduce costs in the future?

Bai Wenxi, vice chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, predicted that first is new energy vehicle insurance. Currently, the industry’s combined ratio for new energy vehicle insurance is higher than that for gasoline vehicles. In the future, as autonomous pricing coefficients become market-based and pure risk premium data improves, the cost ratio for new energy vehicle insurance in 2026 is expected to improve further. Second is non-auto insurance: non-life insurers can shift the traditional “loss compensation” approach toward “risk prevention” by providing risk-reduction services. Using the Internet of Things and big data to reduce claim frequency, while optimizing business structure, they can reduce high-loss businesses and expand stable lines such as government-related insurance (政保) and agricultural insurance (农险).

Judging from remarks by executives across different insurers, the industry will also seek incremental profitability from businesses such as new energy vehicle insurance and non-auto insurance in the future. Zhang Daoming, acting head of PICC P&C, said at China PICC’s earnings briefing that after the “banking-and-insurance unified” implementation, the effectiveness of non-auto insurance comprehensive governance in 2026 is expected to be reflected first in the combined expense ratios of corporate property insurance, employer’s liability insurance, and safety production liability insurance. The combined expense ratios of the above lines are expected to decline by more than two percentage points year over year, and the overall combined ratio for non-auto insurance is expected to fall, achieving underwriting profitability.

Chen Hui, general manager of China Pacific P&C, mentioned that household-vehicle new energy business has already entered a stable profitability range. China Pacific P&C will further optimize costs and improve efficiency by building an ecosystem across the full lifecycle. The focus is on two areas. On one hand, improving operating efficiency. On the other hand, management in the claims process: it will follow the principle of consolidating claims by brand and exporting claims standards to the main OEMs, including related claims standards such as large-battery repairs and flood-damaged vehicles.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Xiumei

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

Keywords: