Last year, the overall loss for new energy vehicle insurance was 5.6 billion yuan, with PICC, Ping An, and Taiping Insurance leading the way past the profit and loss threshold.

If you’re trading stocks, just rely on Jinqilin analysts’ research reports—authoritative, professional, timely, and comprehensive. Help you uncover high-potential themes and opportunities!

Jiemian News reporter | Lü Wenqi

Against the backdrop of continuous growth in the number of new-energy vehicles on the road, the business structure and profitability in the auto insurance market have begun to diverge.

Recently, data disclosed by the China Association of Actuaries and China’s insurance information technology provider (C-IBFI) show that in 2025, China’s insurance industry underwrote 43.58 million new-energy vehicles, generating premium income of RMB 190 billion. However, the underwriting side still recorded a loss of RMB 5.6 billion. Despite narrowing the year-on-year loss by RMB 0.1 billion and lowering the combined cost ratio by 1.3 percentage points, the industry as a whole has not yet exited the loss-making range.

On one side is rapid scale expansion; on the other is profitability that has been slow to arrive—new-energy auto insurance has long been trapped in a structural contradiction of “owners saying it’s too expensive, insurers saying they’re losing money.” That said, it’s worth noting that while the industry as a whole faces pressure, leading property and casualty insurers have already crossed the break-even point first and begun to achieve underwriting profits.

The industry is still losing, but signals of a turning point are already appearing

Judging from the data structure, the “base” of new-energy auto insurance is being rapidly enlarged. In 2025, the number of new-energy vehicles in China was close to 44 million, accounting for 12% of all vehicles. The share of newly registered vehicles during the year was close to half, driving rapid growth in demand for auto insurance.

Meanwhile, underwriting scale is expanding in step. In 2025, 43.58 million new-energy vehicles were underwritten, up 40.1% year on year, providing risk protection amounting to as much as 159 trillion yuan.

However, scale expansion has not translated into an improvement in profitability. In 2025, the average premium per vehicle for new-energy auto insurance was about RMB 4,360, still significantly higher than that of traditional auto insurance. Pressure on the claims side remains prominent, and the industry’s overall underwriting loss was RMB 5.6 billion.

Zhang Daoming, Party Secretary of PICC Property and Casualty, said at the PICC 2025 annual performance briefing that, overall, new-energy auto insurance faces three major challenges: first, the incidence rate of accidents involving new-energy vehicles is high, far higher than that of fuel vehicles; second, there is insufficient socialized vehicle repair channel capacity, so vehicle repair costs are relatively high; third, both the proportion of bodily injury claims and the compensation standards show an upward trend, and the average claim payout per case is increasing. All of this keeps underwriting claims pressure for new-energy auto insurance at a high level.

However, even though the industry as a whole has not yet turned profitable, leading property and casualty insurers have managed to break through first on the underwriting side by leveraging their advantages in data, pricing, and operational capabilities.

In 2025, PICC underwrote 15.56 million new-energy vehicles, up 34.3% year on year; Ping An underwrote 12.84 million, up 44.8%; and CPIC coverage exceeded 63 million, up about 37%.

More crucially, there is a split in profitability. In its annual report, Ping An disclosed for the first time that its new-energy auto insurance business achieved underwriting profit; CPIC said household new-energy auto insurance has entered a stable profit-making range; PICC also expects that the profitability of related businesses will continue to improve.

Zhang Daoming pointed out that, as driving behavior improves, assisted-driving technology advances, and vehicle model mix is optimized, the accident incidence rate for new-energy vehicles has shown a downward trend. At the same time, safety configurations such as AEB are substantially reducing claims risk. Combined with increasingly strict regulation on the expense side, it is expected that the industry’s combined cost ratio will continue to improve in 2026.

Chen Hui, general manager of CPIC Property and Casualty, emphasized from the business operations side that realizing profitability in new-energy auto insurance depends on building two capabilities: “technology + ecosystem,” including connecting directly with OEMs’ after-sales systems, promoting intelligent claim assessment and data application, and reducing costs through whole lifecycle management, ultimately pushing the business into a stable profit-making range.

From “high claims” to “priceable”

If the profitability of leading insurers reflects individual capabilities, then the industry-wide shift toward profitability depends on rebuilding the system and ecosystem.

“Right now, the biggest change in new-energy auto insurance is that risk is becoming ‘explainable.’” Li Ting (a pseudonym), an actuary head at a joint-venture property and casualty insurer, told Jiemian News that the core problems faced by new-energy auto insurance in the past were insufficient samples and strong heterogeneity of risk, making pricing models difficult to converge stably. But as underwriting scale expands and telematics data is gradually connected, risk factors are being continuously broken down. “From vehicle models and battery types, to driving behavior and usage scenarios, the granularity of risk increases significantly—this creates the foundation for differentiated pricing.”

Chen Fang, an actuary in North America, also told Jiemian News that new-energy auto insurance is undergoing a key leap from “experience-based pricing” to “data-based pricing.” “When accident frequency and average claim payout per case can be split and quantified, an insurer can offer more precise rates for different risk combinations, rather than covering risk by broadly raising premiums. This will fundamentally ease the structural contradiction of ‘high premiums and high claims.’”

At the institutional level, regulatory and industry coordination is also accelerating. Li Ting analyzed for Jiemian News that the model risk grading system being advanced is, in essence, to move “vehicle risk” forward to the manufacturing end. Through a standardized data feedback mechanism, it guides OEMs to optimize safety and repair economics during the design stage. “This is like converting part of insurance risk into an industrial problem to be solved, thereby lowering claim payouts from the source.”

At the same time, product forms are also changing. “Vehicle-battery separation” is viewed within the industry as an important breakthrough direction. A person in charge at an insurance technology company said that once battery risk is separated from the complete vehicle, it not only can reduce premium volatility, but also reduce the uncertainty of battery-related claims through specialized management.

Looking further into the long term, the widespread adoption of intelligent driving will further change the logic of risk pricing. At the “Major Achievements—Special Release Session” of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum held at the end of March, the Beijing Financial Regulatory Administration formally announced the launch of business insurance development and application for intelligent connected new-energy vehicles.

据悉，此次专属产品在现有新能源车险基础上优化升级，明确概念、规范条款、扩充保障范围，初期主要面向北京地区新能源新车车主，以及适用于北京依法依规开展测试或取得正式上路资质的L3、L4级自动驾驶车辆。

The product R&D负责人 of Cheche Technology introduced to Jiemian News that as L3 pilots are rolled out, many times it’s the system that is driving, and risk naturally shifts from “people” to “systems and algorithms”—for example, the system makes the wrong judgment, or the algorithm boundary is not covered. Under these circumstances, if you only use traditional auto insurance designed around driver liability to cover all situations, there will definitely be gaps.

He pointed out that as assisted driving becomes more widespread, the core of auto insurance pricing shifts from static factors of “people and vehicle” to technical dimensions such as sensors, algorithms, and data quality. The scope of underwriting is also expanded to technical liability arising from system failures. And determining liability in claims relies on data traceability—by analyzing the system status and algorithm performance at the time of the accident to complete the process.

		Sina Statement: This message is republished from a Sina partner media source. Sina.com publishes this article for the purpose of conveying more information, and does not imply endorsement of its viewpoints or confirmation of the descriptions. The article content is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors act on this at their own risk.

Massive information, precise interpretation—exclusively on the Sina Finance APP