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Recently, the continued pullback in A-share technology sectors has sparked widespread market discussion. In a recent weekly report sent to fund holders, Liang Hong, founder of the ten-billion-yuan-level private equity giant Hainan Xiwa, said he learned that "certain insurance asset management giants" had bought tech stocks at highs in July but significantly reduced positions to cut losses in late September. "Long-term capital that should have been a market stabilizer instead amplified the decline through short-term trading behavior." The related discussion quickly spread throughout institutional circles.
The market then raised questions: In this round of tech stock adjustment, are insurance funds the main sellers? Is the position adjustment logic of insurance asset management based on changes in fundamental judgment, or stop-loss operations under passive risk control constraints? Reporters from National Business Daily (hereinafter referred to as NBD reporters) interviewed industry insiders from insurance asset management and insurance investment lines to analyze the market controversy.
Insurance industry insiders interviewed said that market fluctuations cannot simply be attributed to the trading behavior of insurance funds. A senior executive at a leading insurance asset management institution said in an interview that, with policy support such as 30% of new annual premiums entering the market and the lowering of stock investment risk factors, the company is steadily raising the central allocation of equity assets and continuously providing long-term stable capital supply to the capital market. An anonymous securities analyst also said in an interview that there was some position reduction in insurance outsourcing (public funds) at the end of the third quarter, but the impact on the market was not that significant.
Insurance Asset Management Focused on Researching Hard Tech Growth Targets in September
After the STAR 50 Index hit a stage high of 2,255.25 points in early July, tech mainlines such as AI, semiconductors, and optical modules entered a deep adjustment channel. From July to October, the sector as a whole oscillated downward, with only sporadic brief rebounds in between. Many hard tech targets that had previously risen significantly saw notable retracements, and the net values of institutional holders came under pressure.
Amid such dramatic fluctuations, the market began discussing the capital behavior behind this round of adjustment, with some private equity views directly pointing to certain insurance asset managers chasing rallies and selling on declines, amplifying sector volatility. NBD reporters interviewed asset management companies in the industry, and multiple insurance asset management institution sources were unwilling to comment on short-term market fluctuations, reiterating the insurance asset management stance of "long-term money, long-term investment."
As of the end of the second quarter of 2026, China's insurance fund utilization balance surpassed the 40 trillion yuan mark for the first time. While the scale reached a new level, insurance capital's equity allocation intensity also continued to increase. At the end of the second quarter this year, the combined allocation balance of stocks and securities investment funds reached 6.39 trillion yuan, an increase of 690.7 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, with its share of the fund utilization balance rising to 16.23%, both scale and proportion hitting historic highs.
Looking at the top ten tradable shareholders of A-shares held by insurance capital at the end of the second quarter this year, sectors such as finance, public utilities, electronic equipment, and transportation were favored, with high dividends and high growth still being the core logic for stock selection. At the same time, insurance companies' investment direction is expanding from traditional high-yield bank and infrastructure stocks to hard tech and other new quality productive forces fields.
On July 20 this year, the five major listed insurance companies collectively voiced firm optimism about China's capital market, promising to leverage their advantages as long-term capital and patient capital to increase investment in technology growth and new quality productive forces. In equity investment, the "barbell" strategy has become a common allocation framework for leading insurance companies: on one side, high-dividend OCI assets solidify the foundation; on the other side, high-growth assets in new quality productive forces directions enhance elasticity.
According to iFinD, the top ten individual stocks with the highest insurance fund research frequency in September were Dingtai Gaoke, Bank of Jiangsu, Inovance Technology, Hymson, Fenghua Advanced Technology, Worldia, Kingdomway, Jinhaitong, Amlogic, and Orbbec. In terms of target industry distribution, on one hand, attention was paid to relatively low-volatility bank targets such as Bank of Jiangsu; on the other hand, focus was on researching hard tech growth targets, covering multiple fields including semiconductor equipment and chips, industrial automation, laser equipment, electronic components, and AI vision. The top five institutions with the highest insurance company research frequency this time were Taikang Asset, Huatai Asset, Xinhua Asset, Ping An Asset Management, and China Life Pension.
"New Quality Productive Forces" Is One of the Main Lines of Insurance Capital Equity Investment
NBD reporters noted that multiple insurance asset management institutions said they would further explore investment opportunities in high-dividend assets, while围绕 AI, semiconductors, new energy, biomedicine and other new quality productive forces tracks, using individual stocks and thematic ETFs (exchange-traded funds) to implement small-proportion satellite allocations to capture industrial upgrading dividends.
Fan Yanming, member of the Party Committee and Vice President of China Life Asset Management Company, told NBD reporters that the company deeply and accurately grasps the investment mainline of insurance capital serving the development of "new quality productive forces." It focuses on five investment directions: upgrading of traditional industries, emerging pillar industries, future industries, breakthroughs in core technologies, and modernized infrastructure. According to him, public market equity investment in the technology sector, represented by the artificial intelligence industry chain, has already formed a large-scale, systematic pattern. The funds directly and indirectly invested in the technology sector by China Life Asset through public market equity investment account for no less than 30% of the total scale of overall equity investment, making it a core area of the company's equity asset allocation.
A senior executive of a large insurance company said in an interview with NBD reporters that the company closely follows national strategic direction, lays out new quality productive forces growth tracks, and seeks long-term excess returns. Around strategic emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, the digital economy, and green low-carbon, it actively invests in growth-leading enterprises representing new quality productive forces, and treats this strategic growth sector as the elasticity source of equity assets in order to obtain cross-cycle long-term excess returns and capital appreciation dividends.
Regarding the claim that insurance asset management institutions "chase rallies and sell on declines," industry insiders said that position adjustment in equity investment is normal operation. The above-mentioned insurance company executive said that the two major investment mainlines—high-quality blue chips and strategic emerging industries—are highly complementary. The company will dynamically optimize allocation based on market valuation and changes in fundamentals; within the overall risk limit framework, it will scientifically adjust the allocation proportion of the two types of assets according to the macroeconomic cycle, valuation cost-effectiveness, and market liquidity, neither blindly chasing market hotspots nor mechanically sticking to a single asset, ensuring the organic unity of safety, liquidity, and profitability of insurance funds.
When discussing investment strategy, Fan Yanming also said that it is necessary to balance long-term industrial trends with phased market opportunities, grasp the long-term direction of the technology industry's rise, and take into account the phased rotation rhythm in the spiral upward process of hardware, software, and applications promoting each other.
Industry: Position Adjustment May Be Necessary Risk Management Behavior
Why are tech stocks under pressure while institutional funds maintain a relatively large scale of net outflow every day? The team of Zhongtai Securities analyst Xu Chi pointed out in a recently released strategy report that insurance and "fixed income plus" funds significantly increased their equity allocation proportion in the second quarter, with a considerable portion of the new positions entering technology. Such funds usually focus on absolute returns and drawdown control. After buying at relatively high levels, once a tech decline triggers net value, risk control, or redemption constraints, selling will show passive, continuous, and price-insensitive characteristics.
The strategy report also pointed out that the complete third-quarter holdings of insurance have not yet been disclosed, but estimates suggest that the technology positions added since the second quarter have roughly been reduced by 70% to 80%. "When asset fundamentals deteriorate, valuations significantly deviate from reasonable levels, or an insurance company's solvency and liquidity face constraints, adjusting positions may be necessary risk management behavior," said Zhu Junsheng, postdoctoral researcher and professor of applied economics at Peking University, in an interview with NBD reporters.
He said the actual impact of insurance capital trading should be objectively assessed: one cannot exclude the possibility that individual institutions engage in pro-cyclical trading simply because insurance capital has long-term capital attributes; nor can one regard market fluctuations and insurance capital position adjustments occurring at the same time as an important cause of increased market volatility. Zhu Junsheng said that insurance funds have characteristics such as longer liability duration and relatively stable funding sources, but actual investment behavior is still affected by performance assessment, solvency constraints, accounting measurement, and risk management factors.
What is worth noting is not normal position adjustment itself, but whether related mechanisms may induce excessive pro-cyclical trading. "On the premise of ensuring the safety, liquidity, and solvency of insurance funds, the long-cycle assessment mechanism should be further improved to guide insurance institutions to invest based on liability characteristics and long-term value, enhancing the stability and sustainability of investment behavior," he suggested.
In response, some insurance asset management company sources also suggested "improving the assessment fault-tolerance mechanism," further increasing the proportion of long-term assessment indicators, scientifically setting performance benchmarks, assessment indicators, and calculation methods, and enhancing the consistency and stability of value investment behavior.
Regarding the causal relationship between insurance capital trading and localized market fluctuations, Zhu Junsheng analyzed that insurance capital is large in scale, and concentrated trading may affect individual stocks or industries, but market fluctuations are also affected by multiple factors such as the macroeconomy, valuation changes, market expectations, and the trading behavior of various investors.
According to estimates by Zhongtai Securities non-bank analyst Ge Yuxiang, from the beginning of 2026 to the end of September, the return rate of insurance funds' stock fund investments was -1.8%, compared with 26.6% in the same period of 2025.
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