"Insurance + Services + Investment" Three-Pillar Collaborative Development: New China Insurance Reveals Operational Priorities at 2025 Performance Conference

Xinhua Finance, Beijing, March 31 (Reporter Xue Jin) “China’s life insurance industry is facing a profound transformation in its functional positioning and business model. For New China Life, this is a critical period when opportunities and challenges coexist—one in which opportunities outweigh challenges.” New China Life Chairman Yang Yucheng said at the company’s 2025 annual performance briefing on March 30. Facing opportunities and challenges, New China Life’s management introduced that the company will practice a “big insurance” approach, promote coordinated development across the three fronts of “insurance + services + investment,” deeply implement a customer-centered strategy, comprehensively enhance the core competitiveness of its life insurance main business, strengthen investment capabilities and build a diversified investment strategy, and continuously create a value-growth curve.

Seizing opportunities for development in the life insurance industry

In terms of development opportunities in the life insurance industry, Yang Yucheng said the first opportunity is the one presented by Chinese-style modernization entering a new journey. The outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan” depicts a grand blueprint for high-quality economic development in China, and deploys major tasks such as building a modern industrial system, accelerating high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening, and stepping up efforts to improve protection and address and improve people’s livelihoods. These major tasks are highly aligned with the insurance industry’s functions of risk protection, fund intermediation, and social governance—“two instruments and three networks”—opening up a broad space for value realization for the industry. This is the biggest development opportunity the insurance industry is facing.

The second opportunity is the opportunity to do “the five major articles” well in finance. China’s population aging has driven a systemic change in society’s demand for risk protection. In particular, when combined with China’s macroeconomic transition and structural adjustments, it makes it even more important for the insurance industry to have a functional positioning to serve the real economy by doing “the five major articles” in finance, with even broader market demand. Society is facing increasingly rich and diversified scenario-based insurance needs, from risk protection to wealth management, from healthcare to culture, education, and travel. The integration of commercial insurance with consumer scenarios and service scenarios is becoming increasingly close, which will bring important incremental development for life insurance companies.

The third opportunity is the opportunity in wealth management. The new “Ten Guiding Rules” for insurance have positioned wealth management as the main responsibilities and core business of insurance companies, enriching and expanding the meaning and scope of insurance. At present, people’s demand for preserving and increasing wealth is very strong and diversified, flowing continuously toward capital markets and insurance products. The advantages of steady returns from insurance products and the intergenerational transmission of pension reserves have become more prominent.

“At present, the primary challenge facing the life insurance industry is how to deal well with spread-loss risk and achieve effective asset-liability matching and coordinated development in a low interest-rate environment.” Yang Yucheng said, “After customers choose to buy insurance and large amounts of premiums flow into insurance companies, how to turn that into long-term returns that can cross cycles, overcome volatility, and ultimately be realized for customers will place higher demands on a life insurer’s operating capability and investment capability.”

“We must always have a sense of responsibility to ‘revere every single premium, do every service well, and hold every investment steady,’ guard the money bags of ordinary people, and truly fulfill the promise to customers of long-lasting coverage.” Yang Yucheng said.

Develop the core insurance business better

“We will do everything we can to develop high-quality, high-value businesses, and effectively increase the proportion of floating-income type products and long-term and health-coverage type products. We will continue to optimize the business structure, revenue structure, and profit structure, and realize a transition from ‘spread dependence’ to ‘value-driven development.’ We will make sure that insurance policies return to their roots, services return to customers, and the team returns to professionalism—thereby pushing the enhancement of competitiveness on the liabilities side to a new level.” Yang Yucheng said.

To a certain extent, the liabilities side of an insurance company can be seen as its core insurance business. The development of this core business directly determines whether a given insurance company’s value-growth logic is solid.

According to New China Life President Gong Xingfeng, over the past three years, the company has practiced an internally driven high-quality development philosophy and introduced a series of reform and development initiatives that focus on “laying a foundation, planning for the long term, and building staying power.” First, it has focused on business development to enhance product competitiveness, effectively promoting the growth of premium-paying in installments (periodic) business. Second, it has improved the business structure. In 2025, in line with market changes, it comprehensively advanced the transformation of participating insurance, and the proportion of participating insurance business rose significantly. Third, it has improved policy persistency. It has deepened governance, adopted strict assessments, and made persistency a top priority—pulling persistency improvement through to the end. Fourth, it has increased the efficiency of resource utilization. It has optimized the expense investment policy, reduced expenses with no benefit, and tilted resources toward the front line.

“In 2026, the company will focus on its primary responsibilities and core businesses, and continue to deepen the transformation of participating insurance. It will precisely seize the policy dividend window for participating health insurance, promote the sales of health insurance together with participating annuity insurance, and consolidate the results of the transformation of participating insurance.” Gong Xingfeng said. In the future, the company will continue to adhere to “customer-centricity,” deepen diversified product competition strategies, integrate new concepts of omni-channel marketing, and continuously strengthen product innovation. It will deeply implement the new concept of “scenarios + products + services + technology,” strengthen the coordinated development across the three fronts of “insurance + investment + services,” and deepen the “products +” model. It will enrich a diversified portfolio of retirement and wealth management products, continue to enrich a matrix of health protection product offerings, and continue to drive product innovation.

Leverage advantages accumulated on the investment side

New China Life’s management disclosed that the investment side is one of New China Life’s advantageous business areas in recent years. In the future, the company will comprehensively strengthen investment capability and the development of a diversified investment strategy, build a powerful investment research and investment talent team, and create an investment ecosystem.

New China Life Vice President Qin Hongbo said that New China Life is firmly optimistic about the medium- to long-term development prospects of China’s capital markets, mainly focusing on three areas: first, industries with rising business conditions and continuously improved performance; second, industries that align with national strategic directions, especially areas related to new productive forces; and third, high-dividend investment strategies.

Qin Hongbo said that the company will adhere to the asset-liability matching principle. Based on the characteristics of its liabilities, it will reasonably arrange asset duration and structure to ensure that investment returns can effectively cover the cost of liabilities. It will also adhere to the concept of diversified and multi-dimensional asset allocation, make rational allocations among major asset categories including fixed income, equities, and alternatives, continue to optimize portfolio structure, and enhance the portfolio’s ability to withstand risks and its yield elasticity. It will adhere to an absolute return orientation, emphasize a margin of safety amid market volatility, actively seize structural opportunities, and strive to create long-term, steady investment returns for the company and its customers.

With respect to investments in equity-type assets, Chen Yijiang, President of New China Asset Management, said the company attaches great importance to the allocation value and strategic significance of equity-type assets within the overall investment portfolio, and will coordinate the timing and scale of equity-type asset allocation. Through scientific allocation of major asset classes and diversified investment, it will reduce the portfolio’s overall sensitivity to volatility in any single market. It will reasonably apply the asset classification mechanism under the new financial instrument standards to properly manage the impact of fair value fluctuations of equity-type assets on the income statement. It will actively create excess returns by selecting excellent external asset managers, fully leverage market-based forces to diversify risks and reduce the impact of volatility from a single strategy. It will focus on improving the ability to judge index interest rates, the ability to select industry directions, the ability to control market timing, the ability to bind and manage cooperation partners, and the ability to execute deep transactions. Through active management, it will strive to capture excess returns amid volatility.

Editor: Liu Runrong

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