Where will insurance funds be invested, and how will health management companies plan their business strategies... The PICC management team responds.

Each Daily Reporter｜Yuan Yuan    Each Daily Editor｜Yang Jun

On March 27, China Life Insurance Company Group held its 2025 annual performance briefing. The management of China Life Insurance Company Group responded to hot-button issues drawing attention from the market.

“2025 is the concluding year of the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’ and also the first year of implementing China Life Insurance Company Group’s ‘Building a First-Class’ strategy. Faced with a complex and shifting development environment and arduous, heavy reform tasks, the group has continued to deepen reforms, solidly advance high-quality development, and taken solid steps on its journey toward building a world-class insurance and financial group.” Ding Xiangqun, Chairman of China Life Insurance Company Group, said in his remarks at the briefing.

Data show that in 2025, China Life Insurance Company Group achieved gross written premium income of RMB 738.33 billion, up 6.5% year over year; insurance service revenue of RMB 570.717 billion, up 6.1% year over year; and net profit of RMB 63.033 billion, up 9.0% year over year.

China Life Insurance Company Group’s total assets have surpassed RMB 2 trillion

The annual report shows that in 2025, China Life Insurance Company Group achieved a net profit of RMB 63.033 billion, up 9.0% year over year; net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was RMB 46.646 billion, up 8.8% year over year. As of end-2025, China Life Insurance Company Group’s total assets exceeded RMB 2 trillion, reaching RMB 2027.683 billion, up 14.8% from the end of the previous year; the scale of investment assets exceeded RMB 190 trillion, up 15.8% from the beginning of the year.

By segment, in property and casualty insurance, in 2025, PICC P&C achieved insurance service revenue of RMB 511.594 billion, up 5.4% year over year; underwriting profit of RMB 12.535 billion, up 119.4% year over year; combined loss ratio of 97.5%, down 1.3 percentage points year over year; combined payout ratio of 73.9%, up 0.9 percentage points year over year; combined expense ratio of 23.6%, down 2.2 percentage points year over year; and net profit of RMB 40.377 billion, up 25.5% year over year.

In 2025, PICC Life achieved insurance service revenue of RMB 25.337 billion, up 13.2% year over year; gross written premiums by original insurance increased 18.8% year over year, and installment premiums increased 21.0% year over year; it achieved new business value of RMB 8.229 billion, up 64.5% year over year on a comparable basis; and achieved net profit of RMB 11.774 billion.

In 2025, PICC Health achieved insurance service revenue of RMB 30.433 billion, up 11.8% year over year, and net profit of RMB 8.182 billion, up 42.8% year over year. New business value was RMB 7.387 billion, up 22.5% year over year on a comparable basis. It is worth noting that in 2025, PICC Health was approved to establish a health management company fully owned by the company. According to disclosures in the annual report, its health management business achieved service revenue of RMB 509 million, up 17.2% year over year. It provided various health management services to more than 9.52 million customers, with total service volume up 16.9% year over year. The scale and service level of the health management business continued to improve.

“Establishing a health management subsidiary is a core step in building PICC’s ‘health and wellness + healthy aging’ ecosystem, and it is also a key measure for a professional health insurance company to realize ‘management-based healthcare.’” said Shao Lidu, President of PICC Health. In the future, PICC Health will use the professional health management company as a key lever to better play the dual roles of “health protection + health promotion,” focus on strengthening the layout in three major areas—medical care, pharmaceuticals, and rehabilitation nursing—and further promote the transformation of the commercial health insurance business model from the traditional expense reimbursement type to management-based healthcare.

Total investment returns achieved in 2025: RMB 92.987 billion

On the investment side, in 2025, China Life Insurance Company Group achieved total investment returns of RMB 92.987 billion, up 13.2% year over year; net investment returns of RMB 59.411 billion, up 3.7% year over year; total investment yield was 5.6%, down 0.2 percentage points year over year on a restated basis; net investment yield was 3.5%, down 0.2 percentage points year over year on a restated basis; and the 3-year average total investment yield was 4.9%.

China Life Insurance Company Group said that the investment segment has comprehensively implemented the requirement for medium- to long-term funds to enter the market, actively participated in the pilot reforms for insurance funds’ long-term investments, and continued to optimize the structure of secondary equity investments. With asset securitization business as a breakthrough, it increased efforts to shift toward alternative investments and innovate. In 2025, within insurance peers, the issuance scale of the group’s inter-institutional offerings ranked first among insurance intermediaries. It promoted the landing of multiple industry’s first deals and benchmark projects, achieving an effective integration that both helps to revitalize existing assets, optimizes the enterprise financing structure, contributes to building a multi-level securitization product system, and meets the needs of insurance funds for allocation.

“Insurance funds have a long duration and large scale, and they come with a rich set of investment strategies and a diverse toolkit of investment instruments, making them an important source of long-term patient capital.” said Cai Zhiewei, Vice President of China Life Insurance Company Group. In 2026, China Life Insurance Company Group will uphold the philosophy of “long-term investment and value investment,” focus on four principles: “stability, growth, diversification, and innovation,” further optimize asset allocation, and build long-term, steady, and balanced investment portfolios.

From the perspective of investment strategies by major asset classes, fixed-income investment is an important lever for managing asset-liability matching well and preventing interest-rate risk. In 2026, China Life Insurance Company Group will further refine differentiated allocations to sub-accounts and enhance fine-grained management based on the attributes of liability funds for property and casualty insurance and life insurance. Equity investment is the decisive factor for stabilizing and improving investment performance. It will adhere to making progress while ensuring stability, continue to focus on the allocation of OCI (fair value changes recognized in other comprehensive income) high-dividend stocks, while also focusing on growth opportunities embedded in the “15th Five-Year Plan.” It will strengthen research on key industries and key areas of industry, reasonably plan TPL stock allocation, and build an equity investment portfolio that features steady long-term performance, market competitiveness, and greater balance. For alternative investments, in 2025, China Life Insurance Company Group used asset securitization and real-asset investment as breakthroughs to actively advance innovation and transformation in alternative investments. For the full year, the issuance scale of ABS on the exchanges ranked first among insurance asset management peers. It formed a business model with “issuance, management, and investment” as an integrated system, and better achieved an effective combination of implementing the central requirement to revitalize existing assets and meeting the needs of funds for allocation.

Opportunities and challenges coexist in the insurance industry

When asked how to view the opportunities and challenges facing the insurance industry today, Ding Xiangqun said that under the current international and domestic situation, there are three profound changes. First, the international situation is becoming increasingly complex and volatile, with more factors of uncertainty and things that are hard to predict. Second, a new round of technological revolution—especially the opportunities and challenges brought by artificial intelligence—has driven in-depth evolution in industrial transformation, and people’s lifestyles and business models have also undergone profound changes. Third, the population structure has undergone profound changes, and China has already entered a deep aging society.

Based on broad analysis and understanding of these three aspects, China Life Insurance Company Group will leverage the insurance industry’s role as an economic shock absorber and a social stabilizer to meet and respond to future opportunities and challenges: first, new opportunities brought by the switching of growth momentum; second, new opportunities brought by the leap forward in industrial development; third, new opportunities brought by the shift in wealth allocation; and fourth, new opportunities brought by changes in regional structure.

At the same time, Ding Xiangqun said that the insurance industry also faces some challenges. “From the standpoint of industry development, challenges remain in matching the supply of insurance products with the risk-management needs arising from the transformation of the economy and society. From the standpoint of financial markets, the long-term persistence of low interest rates and potentially further increases in volatility pose challenges to asset-liability management and financial soundness. From the standpoint of the technological environment, artificial intelligence may bring disruptive challenges to the traditional insurance industry.”

Ding Xiangqun also said that most of these difficulties and challenges are problems arising during development and transformation, and they can be solved through sustained efforts. China Life Insurance Company Group will remain firmly confident and take proactive actions, seeking certainty from uncertainty, and continuously shaping new momentum and new advantages for high-quality development. In essence, challenges are also driving force. The company will face opportunities and challenges head-on and turn them into the company’s competitive advantages for development.

Cover image source: Each Daily Media Materials Database