With the completion of 2025 annual report disclosures by China's five major listed insurers, the industry's investment performance and the layout of insurance capital's key stock holdings have been unveiled simultaneously.
In 2025, the combined investment assets of the five major insurers reached 20.7 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%, with investment returns showing substantial growth across the board. Among them, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. (601336.SH) led the industry with a total investment return rate of 6.6%. Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd. (601318.SH) and China Life Insurance Company Limited (601628.SH) followed closely, joining the top tier with a comprehensive investment return rate of 6.3% and a total investment return rate of 6.09% respectively. China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. (601601.SH) and The People'S Insurance Company (Group) Of China Limited (601319.SH) both maintained a stable position in the second tier with a total investment return rate of 5.7%.
Amid a low-interest-rate environment and policy guidance encouraging insurance capital to enter the market, insurers collectively increased their equity investments. Companies like China Life Insurance Company Limited and Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd. implemented strategic increases in their equity asset allocations, leading to significant growth in their public market equity scale.
Concurrently, the list of heavily held liquid stocks by insurance funds has been released. Based on data from listed companies that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, insurance funds held significant positions in nearly 200 individual stocks, with a total holding value approaching 1.48 trillion yuan. Bank stocks accounted for nearly 30% of this total holding value. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Ping An Life Insurance, a subsidiary of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd., substantially increased its holding in Agricultural Bank Of China Limited (601288.SH) by 946 million shares. China Life Insurance Company Limited newly entered the top ten liquid shareholders of several listed companies, including Bank Of Communications Co.,Ltd. (601328.SH), Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd., and Aluminum Corporation Of China Limited (601600.SH).
**Increased Allocation to Equity Assets**
In 2025, the investment returns of all insurers achieved year-on-year growth, becoming a key driver for boosting net profit. New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. led its peers with a total investment return rate of 6.6%, and its total investment income surged by 30.9% year-on-year. Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd. followed with a comprehensive investment return rate of 6.3%, and its total investment income grew by 13.5% year-on-year. China Life Insurance Company Limited held the top position in the industry by investment asset scale, which stood at 7.42 trillion yuan. It realized a total investment income of 387.694 billion yuan, a 25.8% year-on-year increase, with a total investment return rate of 6.09%. These three companies formed the first tier in terms of investment return rates.
China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. and The People'S Insurance Company (Group) Of China Limited were in the second tier, both with a total investment return rate of 5.7%. They achieved total investment incomes of 141.634 billion yuan and 92.323 billion yuan, representing year-on-year increases of 17.6% and 12.4% respectively, demonstrating good stability. Regarding the improvement in total investment income, China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. stated in its annual report that the primary reason was a significant increase in gains and losses from securities trading.
In 2025, against the backdrop of a low-interest-rate environment and policies guiding insurance capital into the market, insurers proactively optimized their asset allocation structure. Increasing equity investment intensity became the core driving force behind the improvement in investment returns.
By the end of 2025, the allocation ratio of stocks and funds (excluding money market funds) for China Life Insurance Company Limited had risen from 12.18% at the end of 2024 to 16.89%. This was mainly due to the company seizing market opportunities and decisively increasing its equity investments, leading to a notable rise in its equity investment scale. In 2025, China Life's public market equity investment scale exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of over 450 billion yuan from the beginning of the year.
Recently, Liu Hui, Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of China Life Insurance Company Limited, stated at a performance briefing that equity investment in 2025 was the decisive factor for enhancing returns. China Life actively promoted the entry of medium to long-term funds into the market and strategically raised its equity ratio by nearly 5 percentage points.
By the end of 2025, within Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd.'s equity-type assets, the proportion of stocks had increased to 14.8%, while funds accounted for 4.4%. Ping An stated in its annual report that the company adheres to a long-term investment philosophy, enhancing the balanced allocation between dividend-value and technology-growth equities, aiming for steady investment returns that outperform the market over the long term.
During the same period, the investment amount in stocks and funds for New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. reached 389.026 billion yuan, with its proportion in investment assets rising by 2.4 percentage points to 21.2%. The combined investment in stocks and equity funds for China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. totaled 408.716 billion yuan, accounting for 13.4% of its assets, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from the end of the previous year. The People'S Insurance Company (Group) Of China Limited increased its stock investment ratio by 5 percentage points to 8.7%.
**Heavy Holdings in Bank Stocks**
As representative long-term patient capital in the market, the stock holdings within insurance funds' equity investments, particularly their heavily held liquid stocks, have always attracted significant attention from the capital market.
Based on data from A-share listed companies that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, insurance funds held significant positions in nearly 200 stocks, with a total holding value approaching 1.48 trillion yuan.
In terms of sector allocation, the deployment of insurance funds showed a characteristic of absolute dominance by the banking sector and a dispersed allocation in manufacturing. Insurance funds continued their preference for low-risk, high-dividend assets, with bank stocks being the core allocation area. By the end of Q4 2025, insurance funds held significant positions in 16 banking stocks, with a total holding value of 438.313 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 30% of the total holding value of insurance funds, far exceeding other sectors. Leading banks such as Ping An Bank Co.,Ltd. (000001.SZ), China Merchants Bank Co.,Ltd. (600036.SH), and Agricultural Bank Of China Limited were heavily held by multiple insurers.
The allocation in manufacturing was more dispersed, with a larger number of heavily held stocks, but the proportion of total holding value was less than 4%, exhibiting a configuration feature of "many individual stocks, small single holding value."
Looking at changes in holdings, insurance funds overall showed an active trend of increasing their positions. In Q4 2025, insurance funds increased their holdings in Agricultural Bank Of China Limited, Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited (601398.SH), and China Citic Bank Corporation Limited (601998.SH) by more than 100 million shares each. Specifically, Ping An Life Insurance increased its holding in Agricultural Bank Of China Limited by 946 million shares, while China Life Insurance Company Limited increased its holdings in Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited by 402 million shares and in China Citic Bank Corporation Limited by 195 million shares. Furthermore, insurance funds increased their holdings in stocks such as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (600028.SH), China Telecom Corporation Limited (601728.SH), Sinotrans Limited (601598.SH), Hunan Valin Steel Co.,Ltd. (000932.SZ), and Industrial Bank Co.,Ltd. (601166.SH) by more than 10 million shares each. However, some targets also saw reductions by insurance funds. Notably, Hexie Health Insurance reduced its holding in Goldwind Science&Technology Co.,Ltd. (002202.SZ) by over 133 million shares, and China Life Insurance Company Limited reduced its holding in Bank Of China Limited (601988.SH) by over 57.98 million shares.
It is noteworthy that in Q4 2025, insurance funds newly entered the top ten liquid shareholders of over 80 listed companies. The targets were mainly concentrated in sectors such as finance, transportation, non-ferrous metals, and electrical equipment.
Among these, China Life Insurance Company Limited newly became a top ten shareholder of Bank Of Communications Co.,Ltd., Ping An Insurance (Group) Company Of China, Ltd., and Aluminum Corporation Of China Limited. The number of shares added in Q4 2025 was 670 million, 206 million, and 131 million shares respectively, with quarter-end holding values of 4.858 billion yuan, 14.076 billion yuan, and 1.600 billion yuan. Additionally, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. increased its holding in The People'S Insurance Company (Group) Of China Limited by 159 million shares, with a quarter-end holding value of 1.421 billion yuan. Taiping Life Insurance and Taiping Assets collectively increased their holding in Hunan Valin Steel Co.,Ltd. by 127 million yuan in value, with a quarter-end holding value of 711 million yuan.
Yang Delong, Chief Economist and Fund Manager at Qianhai开源基金, commented that in the divergent market of 2025, the "barbell strategy" combining "technology + low-valuation dividend stocks" proved relatively effective, with bank stocks repeatedly hitting new highs. He suggested that this strategy would remain applicable in 2026, with one end of the barbell still being technological innovation industries, but the other end might gradually shift from dividend stocks to resource stocks and some traditional blue-chip stocks in heavy-asset industries.
Yang Delong pointed out that under the current fourth technological revolution, the extensive use of artificial intelligence is a characteristic of the era. Investment should focus on two types of targets: first, areas difficult for AI to replace, such as the HALO assets (Heavy Asset, Low Obsolescence industries) mentioned by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, including infrastructure sectors like power equipment, non-ferrous metals, and railway logistics; second, industries accelerated by AI development, corresponding to the key directions of the "15th Five-Year Plan," such as humanoid robots, chips and semiconductors, computing power and algorithms, energy storage, and biomedicine.
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