Over the past year, the bancassurance channel has staged a robust recovery, emerging as the core pillar supporting industry growth.
The bancassurance channel's annual premium equivalent for the life insurance industry grew by 10% year-on-year in 2025. However, this strong comeback is not a universal upswing but rather reveals a pattern of polarization. The "Big Seven" life insurers saw a collective 48% year-on-year increase, with Ping An Life Insurance leading the bancassurance APE ranking with a staggering 163% growth rate. In stark contrast, many small and mid-sized insurers, along with some bank-affiliated insurers, are mired in growth difficulties, with several bank-backed insurers experiencing double-digit premium declines. The "Matthew Effect" in the industry is intensifying, accelerating the concentration of market resources towards the leading players.
The high-growth trend in bancassurance, dominated by top insurers, results from the confluence of multiple factors. On one hand, over two years since the implementation of the "Fee Reporting Compliance" policy, industry competition on costs has rationalized, significantly reducing channel expense costs and directly boosting the value of bancassurance business. On the other hand, the lifting of the "1+3" restriction on bank branch partnerships has allowed leading institutions to accelerate their capture of high-quality bank branch resources, continuously strengthening their market share gains. Catalyzed by these policy tailwinds, the bancassurance channel is rapidly moving beyond traditional distribution models towards a high-quality operational model centered on "strategic synergy and ecosystem co-creation."
In 2026, the ongoing release of household deposit reallocation demand is injecting strong growth momentum into the bancassurance market, pushing industry competition into deeper waters. How will leading insurers leverage their resource endowments and channel advantages to precisely capture this historic opportunity and further consolidate their market positions? Conversely, how can small and mid-sized insurers break through resource bottlenecks to carve out differentiated development paths? Looking back at the 2025 bancassurance restructuring, Ping An Life Insurance, CITIC Prudential Life Insurance, and MetLife, representing the Big Seven, bank-affiliated, and joint-venture insurers respectively, achieved rapid growth, demonstrating the diverse possibilities of bancassurance model transformation. Their experiences may offer practical references for the industry to break new ground.
In recent years, banks have an urgent need to increase their non-interest income. Coupled with the features of increasing whole life insurance products—simple structure, high cash value, and higher sales commissions compared to short and medium-term regular premium products—this has jointly driven the growth of APE in the bancassurance channel.
Data from Guojin Securities shows that from 2019 to 2023, the compound annual growth rate of bancassurance APE was 16.2%, while the CAGR for new standard premium bills in bancassurance and agency channels fell by 4.9% and 10.9%, respectively, over the same period. Large insurers have significantly increased their focus on bancassurance channel development. In 2023, the market share of new standard premium bills for the Big Seven insurers' bancassurance business increased by 15.6 percentage points from 2019 to 23.8%, indicating an initial concentration in the industry.
In August 2023, the National Financial Regulatory Administration vigorously promoted the implementation of "Fee Reporting Compliance," imposing constraints on bancassurance channel commissions. This policy requires that the expense ratios reported by insurers to regulators must be completely consistent with those actually implemented, prohibiting hidden fee arbitrage. This has led to unified industry commission standards, with rates set at 18% for ten-year pay products and 14% for five-year pay products, directly compressing the space for the traditional extensive development model of "competing on costs and chasing scale."
Post-implementation, the average commission level in the bancassurance channel across the industry decreased by approximately 30%. The channel broke free from "internal involution," shifting from being fee-driven to being demand-driven and product-driven. The trend of rising market share for leading insurers continued, with the Big Seven's share of new bancassurance APE increasing to 26% in 2024.
Judging by the industry's performance in 2025, the overall growth rate for bancassurance APE business was about 10%, with leading companies still demonstrating outstanding performance. Ping An Life, China Life, New China Life, Taiping Life, CPIC Life, PICC Life, and Taikang Life collectively grew by 48% year-on-year, with Ping An Life registering the largest increase to top the bancassurance APE premium ranking. Long Ge, Deputy Director of the Innovation and Risk Management Research Center at the University of International Business and Economics, analyzed that Ping An Life leveraged the cost advantages saved from its dealings with Ping An Bank to subsidize other bank channels, resulting in a massive 163% APE growth. The other six companies combined grew 31% year-on-year, further increasing the Big Seven's market share to 36% in 2025.
Looking at the New Business Value (NBV), a key metric for life insurance business value, in the first half of 2025, the NBV growth rate for the bancassurance channel of many listed insurers exceeded 100%. Among them, Ping An's bancassurance NBV grew 168.6% year-on-year, while CPIC Life and New China Life grew 155.97% and 137.08% respectively. The bancassurance channel has become the core engine for insurers' value growth.
In 2025, the divergence in the bancassurance channel intensified further, creating a sharp contrast between the high growth of leading companies and the pressure on small and mid-sized insurers. Excluding the top players, bank-affiliated and small to mid-sized life insurers overall showed a downward trend in premiums. Analyst Long Ge noted that bank-affiliated insurers' APE fell 7% overall, mainly dragged down by a 27% decline at China Post Life Insurance; small and mid-sized domestic life insurers saw their APE decrease by 14% year-on-year.
Behind this divergent landscape, a core reason lies in the differing endowments of bank branch resources among insurers. In May 2024, regulators removed the "1+3" restriction on the number of insurers a bank branch can partner with, broadening the scope for bancassurance collaboration. Leading insurers, leveraging their comprehensive strength, accelerated their capture of high-quality branch resources, continuously reinforcing the industry's Matthew Effect.
Judging from the mid-2025 reports of leading insurers, bancassurance cooperation achieved breakthroughs in both depth and breadth. Taking CPIC Life as an example, the total number of bank branches achieving APE sales targets in the first half of the year reached 13,000, a 28.9% year-on-year increase. The average monthly number of branches achieving APE targets grew 70.2%, with state-owned banks seeing a remarkable 164.9% growth. CPIC management revealed at the Q3 2025 results briefing that "a significant portion of our branch growth comes from state-owned banks. The currently projected growth rate for branches is around 35% to 40%."
In the view of Huayuan Securities analysis, most listed insurers still have room for branch network expansion. According to financial license information disclosed by the NFRA, there are approximately 220,000 bank branches nationwide. Applying the "80/20 rule," the proportion of branches serving clients with investable assets exceeding 500,000 RMB might be 20%, equating to 40,000 to 50,000 branches. Based on CPIC Life's 13,000 branches achieving APE sales, leading insurers still have significant potential to increase their branch penetration and are currently in a phase of rapid expansion.
Brokerage firms hold optimistic expectations for bancassurance channel growth in 2026, believing that household fund reallocation demand and insurers' strategic focus will form a dual driving force. Huayuan Securities points out that 2026 will see substantial demand for reallocating maturing bank deposits. These risk-averse funds may partially flow into bancassurance products, which offer high safety attributes and yield potential. Major listed companies are strategically emphasizing the bancassurance channel, with growth drivers likely coming from continued penetration of bank branch networks and the development of high-net-worth clients. It is estimated that the growth rate for new premium bills in the bancassurance channel of listed insurers could exceed 30% in 2026.
According to further calculations by Guojin Securities, incremental funds flowing into the bancassurance channel in 2026 are expected to show a pattern of "high first, low later": 305.7 billion yuan in January, 509.4 billion yuan in Q1, and 1.115 trillion yuan for the full year, corresponding to bancassurance growth rates of 91%, 59%, and 28%, respectively. The reason is that a large portion of household deposits mature in the first quarter, making the marginal contribution of deposit shifting more significant then. Additionally, the industry's bancassurance new bill base in Q1 2025 was low, down 20% year-on-year, and this base effect amplifies the growth rate in the early period.
As a benchmark among the "Big Seven," Ping An's bancassurance NBV grew 170.9% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025. Other channels, including bancassurance, contributed 35.1% to Ping An Life's total NBV. Ping An's Q3 2025 report indicated that its bancassurance channel primarily drives value growth by developing premium channels, expanding a high-quality sales force, and enhancing product competitiveness. It focuses on state-owned banks and high-quality joint-stock banks, selectively expanding its network of premium branches, and standardizing operations to deepen penetration and boost productivity.
Xie Yonglin, General Manager and Co-CEO of Ping An, stated that through prior systematic planning, Ping An Bancassurance has gradually built a moat of differentiated competitive advantages: the effectiveness of branch expansion is particularly notable, with the number of partner bank branches steadily increasing from 12,000 at the beginning of 2025 to 17,000, continuously enhancing the breadth and depth of channel coverage. Regarding deep bancassurance cooperation, the deepening implementation of Ping An Bank's "exclusive agency model," paired with a dedicated, customized product matrix, is supported by a professional service team characterized by high quality, high productivity, and high standards. He clearly stated that future efforts will persistently deepen the bancassurance layout through network expansion, team growth, product optimization, and productivity improvement.
Industry exchange data shows that in 2025, the bancassurance APE of other domestic insurers declined year-on-year. Divergence is also evident within bank-affiliated insurers; besides China Post Life, several others experienced negative growth. However, companies like CITIC Prudential Life and Everbright Sun Life achieved high growth rates. As a life insurer established by CITIC Group and Prudential plc, CITIC Prudential Life integrates shareholder resource endowments, long-term investment capability, and localized bancassurance practices, resulting in impressive bancassurance growth last year. In 2025, the company's new scale premium from the bancassurance channel exceeded 11.5 billion yuan, surging 141% year-on-year, significantly outperforming the industry average. In terms of product structure, participating insurance became the core growth driver, contributing 56% of the premiums.
A relevant负责人 from CITIC Prudential Life stated that the explosive growth in the bancassurance channel in 2025 stemmed from the company's high prioritization of bancassurance transformation and development. At the bank cooperation level, the company deepened synergy with key channels, promoted continuous optimization of the product structure, and implemented differentiated operation strategies for different customer segments. It upgraded participating insurance services in bancassurance from a traditional "transactional" model to a "full-cycle value companionship" model, achieving simultaneous improvement in scale and value. The company concurrently advanced upgrades in operational models and management methods, strengthening the team's professional capabilities through specialized empowerment training and enhancing branch service and operational efficiency.
It is noteworthy that joint-venture or foreign-funded companies not affiliated with banks generally performed well in bancassurance. Companies like Manulife-Sinochem Life Insurance and HSBC Life Insurance generally achieved double-digit growth in bancassurance last year, with MetLife leading in APE growth.
A relevant负责人 from MetLife stated that in bancassurance cooperation, the company continues to solidify partnerships with joint-stock banks, city commercial banks, and foreign banks, constantly broadening its bank cooperation coverage. It has currently established cooperative relationships with over 20 domestic banks. It is reported that MetLife's bancassurance channel continues to deepen its focus on high-net-worth client management, accumulating substantial mature experience. Its bancassurance business will continue to accelerate high-quality development centered on being "Long-term Partners, Creating Value Together," building a long-term win-win bancassurance partnership model. Through diversified products and professional services, it aims to provide suitable wealth and insurance management solutions for a broader client base throughout their life cycles.
Leading insurers and some joint-venture insurers, leveraging advantages in channel layout, deep synergistic ecosystems, and product value upgrades, have precisely aligned with market demand and industry transformation trends. This is the core secret to their high bancassurance growth. In the future, this growth logic will continue to dominate the divergence in the bancassurance market, with institutions possessing comprehensive service capabilities and differentiated competitive advantages expected to maintain their leading positions.
Comments