By the end of March, eight listed insurers—China Life, PING AN, PICC, China Pacific Insurance, New China Life, China Taiping, Sunshine Insurance, and ZhongAn Online—had all released their 2025 financial results. Combined, these companies achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 4.573 trillion yuan (using an exchange rate of 0.8836 HKD to CNY), marking a 26.7% year-on-year increase and reaching a new high in recent years.
Throughout the year, most of the eight insurers reported positive growth in net profit. China Taiping led with a net profit of 271 billion HKD (approximately 239 billion yuan), surging 221% year-on-year. China Life secured the top position with a net profit of 1.541 trillion yuan, up 44% year-on-year, reflecting substantial growth. New China Life (363 billion yuan, +38%) and China Pacific Insurance (535 billion yuan, +19%) also delivered strong performances. Although PING AN recorded the highest net profit at 1.348 trillion yuan, its growth rate of 6.5% was relatively moderate.
Behind the divergent growth rates, each insurer pursued distinct strategies. Some opted for aggressive transformation, prioritizing long-term stability by increasing the proportion of participating insurance to nearly 90%. Others adhered to traditional approaches, focusing on high-value products to achieve short-term growth. Certain companies made bold moves in equity markets, capturing returns while enduring volatility, while those favoring stability employed FVOCI strategies to build a safety cushion for earnings.
Against a macroeconomic backdrop of persistently declining interest rates, insurers with varying resource endowments and risk appetites demonstrated their strengths in a complex environment, each interpreting the wisdom of navigating economic cycles in their own way.
Life Insurance: Rise of Participating Insurance and Bancassurance The life insurance sector stood out as the brightest spot in the 2025 financial reports. Seven major life insurers collectively achieved premiums of approximately 2.29 trillion yuan, a 9.1% year-on-year increase, and net profits of about 3.949 trillion yuan, surging 32.6% year-on-year. However, beneath the overall positive surface, structural divergences in profit growth and new business value growth highlighted the differentiated outcomes of various transformation paths.
In terms of profit distribution, the trend showed "Taiping leading growth, China Life and New China Life following closely, and PICC declining alone." Taiping Life topped the list with a net profit of 295.93 billion yuan and a 146.6% year-on-year growth rate, primarily benefiting from improved investment returns and one-time tax policy impacts. China Life (1.56552 trillion yuan, +43.7%) and New China Life (362.89 billion yuan, +38.3%) also recorded high growth. In contrast, PICC Life was the only company to report a negative profit growth, declining 31.1% year-on-year to 117.74 billion yuan.
New Business Value (NBV) serves as a core indicator of a life insurer's future profit potential. In 2025, all seven companies achieved positive NBV growth, but the growth rates varied significantly: PICC Life led with a 64.5% increase, followed by New China Life (57.4%) and Sunshine Life (48.2%), while Taiping Life recorded only a slight 2.7% growth.
Taiping Life's notably lower NBV growth compared to peers stemmed from its faster transition to participating insurance. Data showed that participating insurance accounted for nearly 90% of Taiping Life's first-year regular premium for long-term policies across all channels, far exceeding the industry average. Since participating insurance offers lower guaranteed returns and a lower new business value margin than traditional insurance, it inevitably dampens NBV growth in the short term. However, in the long run, this strategy reduces interest rate sensitivity. Taiping Life's annual report indicated that its NBV sensitivity to interest rate changes decreased from 25.9% to 5.7%, building a more robust profit foundation amid low-interest-rate cycles.
PICC Life took the opposite approach: its NBV surged 64.5%, leading the pack, but its net profit fell 31.1% year-on-year. Notably, PICC Life's participating insurance premiums dropped 51.0% in 2025 as it shifted focus to promoting ordinary life insurance. While this strategy boosted the new business value margin in the short term, it may increase pressure from interest spread losses in a low-interest-rate environment.
In 2025, bancassurance emerged as a core growth driver for life insurance. PING AN Life and Health Insurance's bancassurance premiums nearly doubled, rising 92.2% year-on-year. China Pacific Life and China Life grew 46.4% and 45.5%, respectively, while PICC Life, Sunshine Insurance, and New China Life all exceeded 30% growth. This surge was largely driven by the implementation of the "unified reporting and execution" policy and regulatory relaxations on the number of insurer partnerships allowed per bank branch. Bancassurance is evolving from a mere scale contributor to a value contributor.
In contrast, the individual agency channel generally showed weak growth. PING AN Life's individual insurance premiums fell 9.6% year-on-year, making it the only company with negative growth in this segment. China Life, China Pacific Life, New China Life, and PICC Life saw growth rates between 4% and 5%, while Sunshine Insurance led with a 13.6% increase. The slowdown in individual channel growth reflects the ongoing industry-wide efforts to streamline agent numbers and improve key metrics such as per-agent productivity and persistence rates.
The transition to participating insurance was another major theme in the 2025 life insurance sector, but companies adopted vastly different paces. Taiping Life's participating insurance premiums reached 578 billion yuan, up 91.7% year-on-year, accounting for nearly 90% of its first-year regular premium for long-term policies, representing the most aggressive transformation. New China Life (376 billion yuan, +33.0%), PING AN (919 billion yuan, +41.3%), and Sunshine Insurance (128 billion yuan, +25.5%) maintained high growth rates, with the proportion of participating insurance continuing to rise. PICC Life was the only insurer to report a decline in this segment.
Property and Casualty Insurance: Universal Cost Ratio Reduction, New Energy Auto Insurance Becomes Key Growth Driver The property and casualty insurance sector in 2025 was characterized by simultaneous "competition in existing markets" and "breakthroughs in new growth areas." Five listed P&C insurers collectively generated nearly 1.18 trillion yuan in premiums, with a common feature: universally optimized combined ratios and multiplied underwriting profits.
In 2025, the "big three" P&C insurers continued their steady leadership. PICC Property & Casualty reported premium income of 5.5578 trillion yuan, up 3.3% year-on-year; PING AN Property & Casualty achieved 3.4317 trillion yuan, a 6.6% increase; and China Pacific Property & Casualty recorded 2.015 trillion yuan, with a slight 0.1% growth. As a representative of internet P&C insurance, ZhongAn Online demonstrated strong momentum with a 6.7% growth rate.
PING AN Property & Casualty optimized its combined ratio by 1.5 percentage points to 96.8%, with underwriting profits surging 96.2%. China Pacific Property & Casualty and PICC Property & Casualty both saw underwriting profit increases exceeding 75%. This improvement reflects a substantive shift in the industry from price competition to service-oriented competition.
However, some companies faced challenges. Sunshine Insurance's combined ratio rose to 102.1% due to drag from surety bond business, though it would have been 98.9% (down 1 percentage point year-on-year) excluding this segment. China Pacific's non-auto insurance combined ratio was also affected by personal credit guarantee business; excluding this, it improved by 2.1 percentage points year-on-year. This indicates that risk clearance in credit guarantee business remains an issue for some insurers.
Notably, both Sunshine Insurance and China Pacific Property & Casualty reported minimal premium growth of 0.1%. China Pacific's personal credit guarantee insurance premiums plummeted 144.2% year-on-year, directly dragging down overall premium growth. Sunshine Property & Casualty was mainly impacted by contraction in auto insurance, but it is noteworthy that its financing-related surety bond premiums reached 4.244 billion yuan in 2025. The company has decided to halt new such business from 2026 onward, suggesting potential growth pressure in the coming year.
New energy auto insurance emerged as the largest growth market in 2025. ZhongAn Online's new energy auto insurance premiums surged 206.2% year-on-year, PING AN Property & Casualty grew 39.0%, and Sunshine Property & Casualty saw this business's proportion increase by 3.2 percentage points. With the continuous rise in new energy vehicle penetration, this insurance line is becoming the most significant growth market for P&C insurers over the next five years. Those who can establish pricing models and risk control systems for new energy auto insurance will gain a competitive edge in the next cycle.
Investment Side: Net Returns Decline Universally, Total Returns Turn Positive On the investment front,交织着 declining interest rates and recovering stock markets led to significant divergence in investment performance among the eight listed insurers. Looking at three key yield metrics, net investment returns declined across the board, total investment returns mostly turned positive, while comprehensive investment returns showed mixed results: some companies remained stable, while others experienced substantial adjustments.
Due to persistently declining interest rates, all companies disclosing net investment returns reported year-on-year decreases. Sunshine Insurance (-0.5 percentage points), PING AN (-0.1 pct), PICC (-0.3 pct), China Pacific Insurance (-0.4 pct), China Taiping (-0.25 pct), New China Life (-0.4 pct), and ZhongAn Online (-0.4 pct) were all affected.
This collective decline reflects the pressure from maturing high-yield assets and lower returns on new fund allocations. As China Pacific Insurance's Chief Investment Officer Su Gang stated during the earnings call: "Maintaining stable net investment returns has become a common challenge for the industry in a low-interest-rate environment."
However, the universal decline in net investment returns did not prevent total investment returns from turning positive. New China Life (+0.8 pct), China Life (+0.59 pct), Sunshine Insurance (+0.5 pct), ZhongAn Online (+1.9 pct), China Pacific Insurance (+0.1 pct), and PICC (+0.1 pct) all recorded improvements, with China Taiping (-0.53 pct) being the only company to decline.
China Life Vice President Liu Hui emphasized during the earnings call: "Equity investment is the key to enhancing returns." In 2025, China Life strategically increased its equity allocation by 5 percentage points, focusing on new quality productivity sectors, driving a 25.8% year-on-year increase in total investment income. New China Life concentrated on high-dividend strategies, achieving the highest total investment yield among listed insurers.
The most surprising development was the sharp divergence in comprehensive investment returns. China Pacific Insurance and PING AN remained stable, while New China Life and China Taiping saw significant declines, dropping 3.5 percentage points and 8.59 percentage points, respectively.
This difference primarily stems from the accounting treatment of FVOCI (Fair Value Through Other Comprehensive Income) assets. China Taiping's comprehensive investment return fell sharply by 8.59 percentage points, mainly due to floating losses on OCI bonds caused by rising interest rates. In contrast, China Pacific and PING AN effectively smoothed volatility by consistently emphasizing FVOCI equity investments. Although New China Life led in total investment return, its comprehensive return declined 3.5 percentage points, also affected by changes in the fair value of bonds.
This divergence was vividly reflected in the fourth-quarter income statements. Only China Pacific Insurance achieved a 17% year-on-year increase in net profit to 78 billion yuan in the fourth quarter alone, while most other companies either declined or turned to losses. China Life reported a quarterly loss of 137 billion yuan, PICC a loss of 2 billion yuan, and PING AN's quarterly profit plummeted 74%.
China Life's larger equity exposure, predominantly classified as FVTPL (Fair Value Through Profit or Loss), meant that market adjustments in the fourth quarter directly eroded profits. Meanwhile, China Pacific's FVOCI strategy served as an earnings safety cushion.
Through the data divergences in 2025, a clear trend has emerged: only companies that optimize product structures on the liability side, establish stable return capabilities on the asset side, and achieve value reconstruction in distribution channels can navigate deep waters steadily and sustainably.
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