Annual Report Observation | From AI as a Cost-Reduction Tool to a Core Engine: Five Major Listed Insurance Companies Boost Computing Power and Compete in Technological Strength

Ask AI · How is AI evolving from an auxiliary tool into the core engine of the insurance industry?

Daily Economic News Reporter: Yuan Yuan    Daily Editor: Xu Shaohang

As the 2025 performance reports of the five major listed insurers are gradually released, the annual performance results of China Life, Ping An, China Pacific Insurance, PICC, and New China Insurance have all come to light. Against the backdrop of macroeconomic recovery and a rebound in the capital market, the total net profit attributable to shareholders of these five insurers listed on A-shares exceeds 4252 billion yuan, up more than 20% year over year.

Behind the impressive figures of steady growth in premium income and broadly improved investment returns, a deeper trend is quietly taking shape—technology, especially artificial intelligence, is accelerating its evolution from an “auxiliary tool” of the insurance industry to a “core engine.” Whether it is China Life’s “Digital Transformation Project,” Ping An’s emphasis on “AI in ALL” (comprehensive artificial intelligence), or PICC’s positioning of technology lines as an “accelerator,” all five listed insurers have, in their annual reports and at performance briefings, raised technology investment to a strategic height and clearly stated that they will continue to increase technology investment during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period. A profound deep transformation in the insurance industry centered on digital intelligence has already begun.

Industry insiders point out that artificial intelligence is no longer an independent project, but rather an entirely new operating model. Insurance companies that proactively embrace this transformation can not only improve operational efficiency, but also speed up innovation, manage risks more effectively, and set an industry benchmark for the responsible application of AI technologies.

As the heroes compete for “intelligence,” technology applications are reshaping traditional insurance models

When you look through the annual reports, “digital intelligence transformation” has evolved from a strategic slogan into tangible operational investment. AI runs through strategic planning, infrastructure, business scenarios, and value growth, becoming the core main line for rebuilding the industry’s competitive logic.

Ping An follows the principle of “AI in ALL,” focusing on empowering its core business, and continues to increase R&D investment. By internally building industry-leading databases and combining advanced technologies such as high-quality distillation and reinforcement learning, Ping An has built vertical large models for the finance and health-and-eldercare sectors, laying a core foundation for value creation through AI. It also drives the group’s operating and management model to shift from “experience-based decision-making” to “data-driven decision-making.” Data shows that in 2025, more than 230,000 Ping An employees use the internal agent platform to develop more than 70,000 agent applications, with 3.65 billion model calls throughout the year. Ping An’s database has accumulated 33 trillion bytes of data, covering 251 million individual customers, with more than 3.2 trillion high-quality text corpora, 500,000 hours of labeled speech corpora, and over 8.5 billion image corpora.

In terms of scenario application and value realization, AI has penetrated multiple links including policy issuance, claims, risk control, underwriting review, service, coding, and sales. In 2025, Ping An Property & Casualty’s anti-fraud intelligent claims interception reduced losses by 105.1 billion yuan, maintaining loss reduction of over 100 billion yuan for three consecutive years; AI seat-based customer service handled approximately 1.702 billion interactions, covering 80% of Ping An’s total customer service volume.

China Life and PICC have also continued to focus their efforts on data centers and algorithm engineering. Through its “Digital China Life” strategy, China Life has built a digital platform based on hybrid cloud, establishing a data space of “a hundred dimensions of labels.” PICC has been advancing the orderly construction of its western data centers, and its Northern Information Center has obtained national green computing facility certification. Through its self-developed vertical large model in the insurance domain, “PICC Chenling,” the scenario intent understanding accuracy has exceeded 99%.

In 2025, New China Insurance rolled out 11 large-model intelligent agents across the year, achieving a problem-solution rate of over 97%, a Q&A accuracy rate close to 100%, and empowering more than 3,500 front-desk/counter personnel and over 100,000 agents nationwide. It also launched intelligent strategies such as precise meeting/interview assistance, intelligent customer service, customer profiling, and dynamic recommendations, improving its ability to manage digital customer operations. After the “dual-record” sales system was upgraded and refreshed, recording and quality inspection times dropped significantly, and service efficiency reached an industry-leading level. Meanwhile, New China Insurance has comprehensively strengthened its technological development foundation: its data center area increased from 7000 square meters to 27000 square meters, with core support capability growing by nearly 4 times. It also built a new generation of “network information highway,” boosting data transmission efficiency by 10 times.

China Taiping Life’s “Six Soldiers” intelligent application system, through AI scenario drills, enables agents’ productivity to be 15.7% higher, and the 30-day conversion rate of users frequently using the “Intelligent Customer Operations Assistant” increases by 1.23 times. Taiping Property & Casualty’s self-developed online claims intelligent employee “Lingxi” has become the industry’s first AI employee that deeply integrates “task assistance, risk early warning, and quality management” across the entire chain.

Continuing to ramp up investment****AI is not an “either/or” question—it is a “must-answer” question

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

At the performance briefing, all 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 an either/or question; it is a must-answer question.” In 2026, Ping An will upgrade and build the “integrated financial platform ‘All-in-One’ with nine-in-one unification” and, driven by AI, integrate more than 700 million internet-registered users into a unified super entry point, achieving comprehensive aggregation of traffic, entry points, and backend data, so that customers can complete a closed-loop for medical, pension, and integrated financial services within a one-stop entry experience.

China Taiping will list “AI+” as one of its three major strategies for the future. At the performance briefing, Fu Fan, Chairman of China Taiping, stated that during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the company will focus on implementing three major strategies: “great health and eldercare, internationalization, and artificial intelligence+.” Among them, the “AI+” strategy will be oriented toward core business scenarios, promoting large-scale application of AI technologies, improving efficiency and effectiveness, reengineering business processes, optimizing customer experiences, and innovating service models.

PICC and China Life have also demonstrated a competitive push to seize the commanding heights of AI. Ding Xiangqun, Chairman of PICC, clearly positioned the technology line as an “accelerator,” and proposed that it is necessary to “more proactively seize the opportunities for AI development, deepen reform of technology systems and digital initiatives, accelerate the release of technological productive forces, and capture the commanding heights of digital-intelligence transformation.”

Cai Xiliang, Chairman of China Life, lists “technology dividends” as one of the four major dividends for the next five years, and said that it will “forge digital intelligence capabilities for the future, and drive upgrades to management, products, and business models through digital-intelligence transformation.” In 2026, China Life has proactively planned 14 reform projects, making digital-intelligence transformation a strategic focus.

While grasping technology opportunities, insurance companies also face challenges head-on. 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 defined target ratios for returns on investment, and at the same time establish and improve technical security and data security protection systems. From an industry perspective, the emergence of new products and new business models also brings new challenges to the insurance industry’s ability to identify and manage risks.

Jia Ruo, a long-term appointment associate professor at the School of Economics of Peking University, wrote: “Generative AI is reshaping insurance customer experiences with an undeniable force and giving rise to new business models. But we must also remain clear that the risks and challenges embedded in this must be addressed with prudence.” For China’s insurance industry, technological dividends and risk governance coexist—on one hand, we have the soil in which consumers are open and receptive to new technologies and the motivation in companies to actively explore; on the other hand, we also shoulder the major responsibility of guiding safe technology deployment and maintaining the industry’s steady operations.

Daily Economic News