New business value reaches a recent high, China Life Insurance tops "700 billion"

A-shares listed insurance companies’ first annual reports of the year are unveiled as scheduled. On March 25, China Life Insurance Company Limited (hereinafter referred to as “China Life”) officially released its 2025 annual report. Over the past year, the insurance industry, under the main theme of “preventing risks, strengthening regulation, and promoting high-quality development,” accelerated the shift from scale expansion to value creation. As an industry leader, China Life delivered a report demonstrating both speed and quality, with outstanding structure and efficiency.

Specifically, in 2025, the company’s total premiums first surpassed 700 billion yuan, reaching 729.89B yuan, an 8.7% increase year-on-year, setting a new industry record; meanwhile, net profit attributable to the parent company’s shareholders grew strongly by 44.1% on a high base, reaching 154.08B yuan. Embedded value remained at the top of the industry, demonstrating strong resilience and growth potential.

Profitability and investment performance both improved, with dividend payouts significantly increased

In the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the performance report of insurance companies is seen as an important indicator of the entire life insurance industry’s ability to cycle through periods.

In 2025, China Life achieved a net profit attributable to the parent company’s shareholders of 154.08B yuan, a robust growth of 44.1% on a high base.

While profitability continued to strengthen, the company emphasized sharing high-quality development results with investors. The board of directors proposed a final cash dividend of 6.18 yuan per 10 shares (tax included) for 2025. Combined with the interim cash dividend already paid for 2025, the total annual dividend per 10 shares reached 8.56 yuan (tax included), totaling 24.2B yuan, a 31.7% increase year-on-year.

“Significantly increasing dividends is a mark of mature corporate governance. Behind this is a positive cycle of ‘profit supporting returns, returns attracting capital, and capital optimizing operations,’” said Wang Peng, deputy researcher at Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

The more complex the market environment, the more it tests an insurance company’s asset-liability management ability. In 2025, bond market interest rates remained low and volatile; equity markets performed strongly overall but showed significant structural differentiation. How to lock in yields amid fluctuations and balance risks has become a common challenge for all insurers. China Life’s answer is: to embed asset-liability management concepts throughout operations, adopt a long-term perspective for asset allocation, and deepen asset-liability linkage.

Steady investment performance provided solid support for profit growth. China Life delivered its best investment results in recent years in 2025. As of December 31, 2025, total assets and investment assets reached 7.59 trillion yuan and 7.42 trillion yuan, respectively, crossing the 3-trillion-yuan mark for three consecutive periods during the 14th Five-Year Plan.

In 2025, bond yields fluctuated slightly at low levels, with the ultra-long-term spread widening; the stock market performed strongly overall, with clear structural differentiation. Against this backdrop, the company stated that it would continue to adhere to asset-liability linkage management, long-term investment, value investing, and prudent investment principles. China Life will continuously enhance its investment expertise, dynamically optimize asset allocation, and improve the stability of investment portfolio returns, thereby increasing long-term return potential.

Meanwhile, China Life is actively promoting the entry of medium- and long-term funds into the market. The scale of equity investments in the public market exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of over 450 billion yuan from the beginning of 2025. The company is also actively deploying in fields related to new productive forces, steadily expanding high-dividend stock allocations. This forward-looking layout contributed to a total investment income of 75.9k yuan in 2025, an increase of 74.2k yuan compared to 2024; the total investment yield was 6.09%, up 59 basis points from the same period last year, achieving leapfrog growth in investment returns.

Regarding China Life’s investment performance over the past year, Wang Peng said that the success essentially reflects the meticulous implementation of the “long-term money, long-term investment” philosophy. In a low-interest-rate environment, the company increased its allocation to equity assets, not only gaining excess returns but also locking in asset-liability matching amid macroeconomic volatility. Looking ahead to 2026, as the transformation of new and old kinetic energy accelerates, insurance funds are expected to further focus on high-tech manufacturing and other new productive fields. Supported by proactive policies, the investment side will place greater emphasis on yield stability and alignment with national strategies.

New business value continues to rise, with individual channels stabilizing and rebounding

If profit and other data reflect the overall results of last year’s operations, then new business value represents the growth momentum of the business in the past year. In 2025, under the background of downward adjustment of the guaranteed interest rate and product restructuring, the life insurance industry underwent profound reshaping. How to respond to the downward interest rate cycle, prevent interest spread losses, and meet increasingly diversified customer needs for wealth management and protection has become a shared challenge for the industry.

In 2025, China Life’s total premiums reached 12k yuan, becoming the first domestic life insurer to surpass 700 billion yuan, marking a new milestone. New business value grew rapidly, increasing by 35.7% year-on-year to 387.69B yuan, continuing to lead the industry.

Behind this, the company implemented a deep business structure transformation. China Life stated that the restructuring proceeded smoothly, with its floating-rate business achieving strong growth in 2025, accounting for nearly 50% of first-year premiums. Among these, dividend insurance became an important support for new business premiums. Data shows that in 2025, dividend insurance business grew rapidly, with its share of first-year premiums in individual channels rising to nearly 60%.

For insurers pushing dividend insurance, Wang Peng believes this is an inevitable choice to cope with declining interest rates and prevent interest spread losses. This risk-sharing mechanism allows insurers to respond flexibly to changes in the financial environment, while channel strategies to “optimize and increase” agents help transform them into professional financial advisors, reshaping the industry’s professional image.

At the same time, the company’s new single premiums for life insurance, annuities, and health insurance in 2025 accounted for 31.75%, 32.11%, and 31.23%, respectively, achieving balanced development. The company’s market competitiveness and resilience are further enhanced. Against the backdrop of actively responding to changes in market interest rates and effectively implementing a package of policies, the rigid cost of new business liabilities has steadily declined for three consecutive years.

From the channel perspective, various business sectors work together to support this value growth. The individual insurance channel, as the main driver of value creation, maintained a solid development foundation. In 2025, China Life’s individual insurance premiums totaled 551.79 billion yuan, a 4.3% increase; the new business value from individual channels reached 79.44B yuan, up 25.5% year-on-year.

Over the past year, the company continued to deepen the professionalization, specialization, and youthfulness of its sales force. As of December 31, 2025, the individual insurance sales force numbered 587k, maintaining the industry’s top position. Among them, the marketing team had 371k members, and the distribution team 216k. The quality of the team continued to improve, with “optimize and increase” personnel growing by 40.0% year-on-year.

China Life’s bancassurance channels saw comprehensive improvements in key indicators, with total premiums exceeding 729.89B yuan, surpassing the 100-billion-yuan mark; group insurance short-term insurance cost ratio significantly declined, greatly improving efficiency. Undoubtedly, the coordinated development of multiple channels has built a strong strategic depth for China Life.

Digital intelligence empowers the ecosystem, further advancing health and wellness services

Beyond financial metrics, China Life also announced the latest progress and roadmap in digital transformation, ESG management, and future strategic planning.

The ongoing technological revolution makes digital transformation a key path for insurance companies to improve efficiency and optimize customer experience. China Life has built a comprehensive digital intelligence ecosystem covering the entire management chain, implementing large model applications through knowledge bases, intelligent agents, AI robots, and other dimensions. By 2025, over 5.3 million claims were paid directly through one-stop claims services, with intelligent identification and prompt customer claim applications reaching 680k instances; data connectivity supports fast claims with no documentation required, with claims paid in seconds. AI-assisted coding accounts for 30%. Large models empower agents with professional and personalized business development, improving customer outreach efficiency, with annual customer visits increasing by over 15%.

In risk management, China Life’s comprehensive risk rating has maintained an A level for 30 consecutive quarters, with the highest AAA rating for the last 8 quarters; MSCI’s ESG rating has risen to AA, placing the company among the global leaders in sustainable management.

As the aging population accelerates, public demand for high-quality elderly care services is rising. The insurance industry is transforming from a simple risk protector to a comprehensive provider of elderly care services. For industry benchmark China Life, the company is vigorously promoting the “Insurance + Service” ecosystem. It is advancing the deployment of three major elderly care product lines: CCRC retirement communities, urban elderly apartments, and health and wellness travel. By the end of 2025, the company had established 20 elderly care projects across 16 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Suzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu, and launched the first four travel retirement products under the “Sui Xin Ju” brand.

As the “14th Five-Year Plan” begins a new journey, this annual report is not only a summary of the past but also a declaration of confidence in the future. China Life stated that in 2026, it will adhere to the theme of high-quality development, maintain the general tone of steady progress, and focus on the core ideas of “Three Persistences,” “Three Improvements,” and “Three Breakthroughs.” It will promote comprehensive deepening reforms around digital transformation, management model upgrades, multi-channel collaboration, customer management, and investment capacity building, striving for breakthroughs and helping the company serve the national strategy to reach new heights.

Source: Beijing Business Daily

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