Analysis of Listed Insurance Companies' 2025 Annual Reports: Bancassurance, Dividend Insurance, Health & Wellness, and AI Have Become Industry Transformation "Keywords" | Banking and Insurance

In 2025, the final year of the “14th Five-Year Plan,” became a key stage where deep adjustments in China’s insurance industry and proactive change intertwined. During the year, the mechanism for dynamic adjustment of the assumed interest rate was formally implemented, and regulatory requirements for “separation of selling and selling expenses under one-to-one reporting” were expanded from the life insurance sector to non-auto insurance businesses as well. Under the combined impact of a falling interest-rate cycle and the gradual recovery of capital markets, the performance of China’s five major listed insurers in the A-share market—China Ping An, China Life, China Taiping, PICC P&C, and New China Life—was strong. Their attributable net profits all recorded positive growth, totaling RMB 8B. In the H-share market, five insurers—China Taiping, Sun Life Insurance, ZhongAn Online, AIA, and Prudential—recorded combined earnings of about RMB 104.8 billion. Meanwhile, among six insurance intermediaries listed in the U.S. and the H-share market, total earnings amounted to about RMB 3.1 billion.

Behind these results, what business logic is reflected? And how does the investment side play a key role in it?

I. Core data: Who is leading? Who is under pressure?

A-share Top Five: Scale and Value Climb Together

In terms of operating revenue, among the five major A-share listed insurers, China Ping An broke through the RMB 1 trillion mark with RMB 1,050.506 billion, ranking first; China Life recorded RMB 425.29B, ranking second; and New China Life stood at RMB 615.68B, ranking last.

In terms of attributable net profit, China Life led comprehensively in both profit scale and growth momentum, with RMB 157.75B and a year-on-year growth rate of 44.1%; China Ping An followed with RMB 154.08B; and New China Life ranked last with RMB 134.78B.

In terms of new business value (NBV), China Life ranked first with RMB 36.28B; China Ping An ranked second with RMB 45.75B; and PICC P&C ranked last with RMB 36.9B.

Figure 1: Comparison of key performance among the five major A-share insurers in 2025 (based on annual report data)

In terms of premium scale, PICC P&C ranked first across the industry with RMB 8.23B in gross premiums from original insurance, up 6.5%. China Life came next, with total premiums of RMB 8B, up 8.7%, becoming the first life insurer in China to surpass the RMB 700 billion threshold. Ping An Life followed with RMB 738.33B. New China Life’s premium growth rate was impressive: full-year total premiums reached RMB 729.89B, up 14.9%. In addition, China Taiping maintained steady growth, with total premium scale reaching RMB 669.65B.

H-share insurers: AIA’s net profit shows negative growth

In addition to China Ping An, China Life, China Taiping, PICC P&C, and New China Life, among five H-share listed insurers—China Taiping, Sun Life Insurance, ZhongAn Online, AIA, and Prudential—based on the scale of attributable net profit, AIA ranked first with USD 195.87B (about RMB 497.35B), followed by Prudential with USD 6.23B (about RMB 44.89B) ranking second. ZhongAn Online ranked last with RMB 3.98B. In terms of growth rate, China Taiping grew 220.9% year over year, the highest increase; ZhongAn Online ranked second with a growth rate of 82.5%; and AIA was the only company among them with negative net profit growth.

In terms of new business value (NBV), AIA ranked first with USD 1.1B (about RMB 5.52B); Prudential ranked second with USD 39.72B (about RMB 19.12 billion); and China Taiping ranked third with HKD 2.78B (about RMB 9.59B). From the perspective of growth rates, Sun Life Insurance led with 48.2% growth; AIA, with 15% growth, ranked second; and China Taiping, with a 2.7% growth rate, ranked last.

Figure 2: Performance of major H-share insurers in 2025 (based on annual report data)

(Converted at the April 3 exchange rate)

What is worth noting is that AIA’s growth momentum in China’s mainland market is not evident enough. According to its 2025 financial report, AIA’s mainland new business value increased only slightly by 2% to USD 8.92B. In the same period, the Hong Kong market grew significantly by 28%, and the Thailand market grew by 22%, showing a notable divergence in regional growth trends. The Hong Kong market rebounded strongly on the recovery momentum brought by cross-border travel facilitation policies, while the mainland market faced two challenges at the same time: an overall slowdown in growth rates and a split among internal regions. Due to macroeconomic volatility and intensifying industry competition, growth in some mature markets has already shown signs of a bottleneck.

II. Investment side and liability side: “Dual-wheel drive” for performance growth

Investment side: Equity asset allocation improves, and yields recover

In 2025, the total investment yield of multiple insurers hit the highest level in nearly a decade. Insurance companies generally increased the allocation proportion of equity-type assets, with new equity assets exceeding RMB 1 trillion, which became a key factor driving the growth in investment returns. By the end of 2025, the total investment assets of the five major A-share listed insurers reached RMB 2.0 trillion? (No—RMB 20 trillion). Of this, the total amount of stock investments was RMB 2.5 trillion, an increase of more than RMB 1.0 trillion compared with the end of the previous year.

Liu Hui, Vice President of China Life, said, “Equity investment is the key to determining performance in returns.” In 2025, China Life actively promoted medium- and long-term funds to enter the stock market, taking advantage of favorable market windows. It strategically raised the allocation proportion of equity assets by 5 percentage points, bringing the total scale of equity investments to over RMB 1.2 trillion, with重点投向 (focusing on) areas related to new quality productive forces and high-dividend-quality assets. The full-year total investment yield was 6.09%, up 59 basis points compared with the same period of the previous year.

China Ping An’s total investment yield in 2025 was 6.3%, up 0.5 percentage points year over year. Fu Xin, Deputy General Manager, revealed that the company’s stock holdings recognized in Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) had unrealized gains of more than RMB 90 billion that had not yet been included in current-period profit. “This portion of gains effectively thickens the company’s balance sheet, laying a solid foundation for future development and the release of sustainable profit.” In addition, Ping An had laid out its gold investments relatively early, starting to actively allocate at the beginning of 2025 and achieving returns consistent with expectations.

Su Gang, Deputy General Manager of China Taiping, said that the core dividend-value strategy the company has long adhered to has shown clear stability. The average dividend yield of its held stocks reached 4.27%, effectively enhancing net investment returns.

China PICC P&C also increased its allocation of equity assets on the investment side. Cai Zhiwei, Vice President, said that in an environment of falling interest-rate centroids, the group proactively responded mainly in three ways: first, strengthen active management of fixed-income assets and seize interest-rate highs to add long-duration bonds; second, enhance the contribution of high-dividend stocks to net investment returns. By the end of 2025, the group’s OCI stock investment scale increased 158% versus the beginning of the year, and the average dividend yield of held stocks was 4.27%; third, push the transformation of alternative investments and explore opportunities in alternative assets that can provide stable cash flows.

New China Life’s total investment yield in 2025 reached 6.6%, the highest level in recent years. Qin Hongbo, Deputy General Manager, said the company firmly looks favorably on China’s capital market’s medium- and long-term development prospects. In 2026, it will continue to adhere to three key principles in asset allocation: asset-liability matching, diversification and multi-dimensional allocation, and an absolute-return orientation.

Figure 3: Comparison of investment-side performance among the five major A-share insurers (based on annual report data)

Liability side: Individual insurance channels stabilize; bancassurance surges

On the liability side, after deep adjustments in individual insurance channels, the market has already shown signs of stabilization. China Life’s individual insurance channel total premiums reached RMB 8B, up 4.3%; New China Life’s individual insurance channel premiums were RMB 120.6 billion, up 4.0%. Lan Yonghong, Assistant to the General Manager of China Life, revealed that the scale of high-quality new agents hired through the individual insurance channel surged by 40%, and the 13-month retention rate improved by 2.2 percentage points year over year.

The bancassurance channel became the main bright spot for performance growth in 2025. China Taiping’s life insurance bancassurance channel premium scale was RMB 1.24B, up 46.4%, of which new policy—single premium paid during the new保期缴 period—premiums grew 43.2% year over year. China Life’s bancassurance channel core indicators improved across the board. Total premiums surpassed RMB 100 billion, reaching RMB 200k, up 45.5%; first-year new premiums were RMB 25k, up sharply by 95.7%. New China Life’s bancassurance channel premiums were RMB 72.1 billion, up 39.5%; its new business value contribution had already exceeded that of the individual insurance channel. First-year new premiums from bancassurance reached RMB 37.93 billion, up 52.3%. Wang Lianwen, Vice President of New China Life, said that bancassurance business has become an important engine driving coordinated growth in both scale and value for the company.

Figure 4: Comparison of life insurance premium structures by channel among multiple insurers (based on annual report data)

In 2025, participating insurance (dividend-linked insurance) became the focal product in the annual reports of insurance companies.

Against the backdrop of the industry’s assumed interest rate being lowered to 2.0%, participating insurance—with its structure of “guaranteed returns + floating dividends”—has become a joint strategic choice for insurers to balance the risk of interest spread losses while also meeting customers’ needs for stable wealth management.

In China Life, the proportion of participating insurance within first-year single premium for the individual insurance channel has risen to nearly 60%, becoming a core support for new premium business. Li Mingguang, General Manager of China Life, said the company will implement the mechanism linking assumed interest rates to market interest rates and continue to enrich product lines of floating-return products such as participating insurance products.

In China Taiping, within its new保期缴 business, the share of participating insurance increased to 50.0%, of which the agent channel accounted for 61.4%. Relevant executives disclosed that the participating insurance new保期缴 scale premium in 2025 increased significantly by 806.9% year over year.

China Ping An, meanwhile, continued to enrich the supply of participating products. In a low-interest-rate environment, it focused on building a differentiated participating account system and strengthening R&D and innovation for floating-return products.

New China Life has set the transformation of participating insurance as an important strategic task. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the share of participating insurance within premium-paying business for the policy period already reached 77%. It achieved first-year participating insurance premiums of RMB 12k, up nearly 12 times year over year, indicating that product transformation has achieved substantial breakthroughs. General Manager Gong Xingfeng of the company said that in the future it will focus on expanding the sales of participating annuities, seize the policy dividend for participating health insurance, and increase product suitability management.

III. Industry transformation trends revealed in annual reports: “Convalescence & care” and AI become keywords

Health insurance and pension insurance: “Insurance + services” model deepens

Against the backdrop of accelerating population aging, health insurance and long-term care insurance have become key areas in insurance companies’ strategic planning.

In September 2025, the National Financial Regulatory Administration issued the “Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Health Insurance,” which clearly proposed encouraging the development of long-term care insurance and promoting the establishment of a multi-tiered long-term care protection system, bringing significant policy opportunities for the industry.

China Taiping upgraded its “Big Health & Care Strategy” to the highest strategic level of the group. The company’s Chairman Fu Fan stated clearly that the “Big Health & Care Strategy” is one of the group’s three core strategies for the “15th Five-Year Plan” period. In 2025, the new business scale of commercial pension annuities reached RMB 8B, up 93.4%; the new business scale of health insurance was RMB 551.79B, up 2.8%.

China Life, by contrast, focuses on participating in the construction of a multi-level social security system. It has累计承办 (cumulatively undertaken) more than 200 major illness insurance projects and more than 70 long-term care insurance projects, continuously playing the role of a “cornerstone” in policy-based health insurance. At the performance conference, Chairman Cai Xiliang said the company attaches great importance to the development of long-term care insurance projects and commercial health insurance business.

New China Life achieved an early breakthrough in the “Insurance + services” model. It launched a series of innovative products such as “Medicine Without Worries” and “Care Without Worries,” upgrading its product system from “economic compensation” to “service protection.” Qin Hongbo, Vice President, introduced that the company has already built a service ecosystem covering ten areas including medical care, health & care, finance, law, and education. It has cumulatively served more than 4 million individual customers, and recognition and usage of ecosystem services have continued to rise. Chairman Yang Yucheng stated clearly that the company will seize policy opportunities and actively explore and develop new products such as participating-type health insurance, nursing and disability/long-term care insurance to address the protection needs of an aging society.

Overall, leading insurance companies are shifting from a “single risk protection” model to an integrated model of “insurance + services + ecosystem.” Long-term care insurance and health insurance have become strategic high grounds for industry competition during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period.

Technology enables transformation: Fully achieve AI-driven operations and drive industry change

In 2025, technology-enabled transformation became a common strategic path for insurance companies to improve operating efficiency and optimize customer experience.

At the performance briefing, Guo Xiaotao, Co-CEO of China Ping An, emphasized, “AI is not a choice question; it is a must-answer question.” The company is rolling out the “Comprehensive Finance · Jiǔ Jiǔ Guī Yī” plan, aiming to integrate more than 700 million dispersed internet-registered users within the group into a unified comprehensive finance platform, achieving full connectivity across traffic, service touchpoints, customer experience, and backend data. Guo Xiaotao revealed that applications of AI智能体 at the foundational level have made “taking care of matters with one sentence” a reality—users can complete complex business operations through voice commands, significantly improving service efficiency and experience.

China Taiping has listed “Artificial Intelligence +” as one of the company’s three core strategies for the future. At the performance conference, Yu Bin, Vice President of the group, said, “This year our investment in AI is doubled compared with last year. In the next two years, the compound annual growth rate of the AI investment budget will be no less than 40%.” The company has introduced 50 base large models. By 2025, cumulative calls reached 270 million times, and 129 scenario applications have been launched.

China PICC P&C positions its technology line as a “booster/accelerator” for business development and clearly proposed “seizing the commanding heights of intelligent and digital transformation.” In 2025, its AI capabilities cumulatively provided about 4.4 billion services, up 51% year over year; automation processing volumes such as auto-insurance automatic scheduling and automatic claim review and loss assessment exceeded 100 million times; and the processing efficiency for intelligent claims on small-amount personal injury claims improved by 48%.

Cai Xiliang, Chairman of China Life, listed “technology dividends” as one of the four major dividends the company will focus on capturing over the next five years. He also said the company will “forge future-oriented intelligence and digital capabilities, driving upgrades to management, products, and business models through intelligent/digital transformation.” In 2026, China Life has made forward-looking plans for 14 reform projects, treating intelligent/digital transformation as a strategic focus. It will continue to strengthen its AI capability development, accelerate the rollout of innovative applications, and build intelligent scenarios covering the entire chain including sales, operations, services, risk control, finance, office, and R&D.

New China Life launched 11 AI model agents throughout the year, covering front-end, middle-end, and back-end areas. The problem-solution rate exceeded 97%, effectively enabling nearly 100k agents nationwide and 3,500 front-desk service staff (counter service personnel). At the performance conference, Qin Hongbo, Vice President, said, “AI is not a future tense; it is a present-tense practice.” In 2026, the company plans to build digital employees covering seven high-frequency fields: training, customer service, group insurance, claims, policy preservation, office, and investment advisors, aiming to achieve digital production efficiency equivalent to more than 3,000 full-time employees.

IV. Insurance intermediaries: Division intensifies; the head effect becomes prominent

As an important link in the insurance industry chain, the performance of insurance intermediaries is closely related to insurers’ operating strategies, channel policies, and product structures. In 2025, against the backdrop of the “separation of selling and selling expenses under one-to-one reporting” policy continuing to deepen, insurers’ channel expense ratios generally declined. Intermediaries shifted from extensive scale expansion to more refined operations, and industry divergence further accelerated.

In terms of performance, insurance intermediaries showed clear differentiation in 2025. Shuizhong (Waterdrop) company’s operating revenue was RMB 61.62B, up 43.5%; attributable net profit was RMB 569 million, up 54.8%. Of this, insurance business revenue accounted for nearly 90%, steadily consolidating its market-leading position. Waterdrop and multiple insurers carried out deep cooperation. Despite the backdrop of narrowing commission rates, it still achieved steady growth by leveraging digital capabilities.

Yuanbao’s operating revenue in 2025 was RMB 58.51B, up 33.1%, with a scale slightly higher than Waterdrop. Attributable net profit was RMB 8B, up 51.0%, demonstrating strong profitability. The number of new policies was about 30.70 million, up 36.7%, indicating rapid expansion capability in areas such as health insurance and inclusive insurance.

Huiduo’s attributable net profit surged 722.5% year over year to RMB 404 million; its operating revenue was RMB 11.93B, up 26.7%. Its net profit with correct reading (hand back) increased 682.8% year over year to RMB 793 million; operating revenue was RMB 43.04B, up 5.9%. The explosive growth of these two companies is closely related to the participating insurance transformation strongly pushed by insurance companies in 2025. As intermediaries, these platforms—through their online reach and product comparison advantages—occupy an important position in selling complex products, becoming a direct beneficiary of the participating insurance boom. Zhe Miao Holdings’ operating revenue was RMB 248 million, up 20.5%; attributable net profit was RMB 51.70 million, up 10.8%, maintaining a steady growth trend.

By contrast, one insurance intermediary suffered significant losses. Operating revenue was USD 29.6745 million (about RMB 204 million), down 42.5% year over year. Net loss widened to USD 27.185 million (about RMB 13.85B), a year-on-year decrease of 263.2%. This reflects that under the “separation of selling and selling expenses under one-to-one reporting” policy environment, some intermediaries that rely on low-price competition and lack core capabilities are facing severe survival pressure, and the industry shakeout process is accelerating.

Overall, in 2025, the insurance intermediary industry showed a pattern of “the strong getting stronger and division intensifying.” On one hand, leading institutions with digital capabilities, solid customer bases, and deep coordination with insurers continued to benefit; on the other hand, small and mid-sized institutions that mainly rely on fee-driven models and lack core competitiveness face pressure from industry reshuffling. This trend is highly consistent with insurers’ reform direction to promote “improving quality and efficiency” at the channel level, and it also suggests that professional division of labor in the insurance industry chain will deepen further.

Figure 5: Core indicators from annual reports of insurance intermediary companies (based on annual report data)

(Converted at the April 3 exchange rate)

The annual report performance of listed insurance companies in 2025 is both a stage summary of development during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period and a prelude to the industry’s transformation during the “15th Five-Year Plan.” Whether participating insurance can truly become the core pillar of business growth, whether the scale and value of the bancassurance channel can achieve sustained balance, and whether technology enablement can effectively shift from the investment phase to the output phase—answers to these questions will gradually become clear in subsequent quarterly performance.

Edited by | Han Weiqi (intern), Yang Xi

Reviewed by | Qin Ting

Responsible editors | Lan Yinfan