Profit increases by 22.4%, with the five largest listed insurance companies in A-shares showing steady growth in performance

The five largest A-share insurers’ 2025 annual performance results have all been disclosed so far. On March 29, according to statistics compiled by Beijing Business Daily’s reporter, China Ping An, China Life, PICC Property and Casualty, China Taiping, and New China Life—five A-share listed insurers—collectively recorded attributable net profit of 425.291 billion yuan in 2025, up 22.4% year over year.

The sharp jump in net profit is inseparable from contributions on the investment side. Benefiting from the stock market performance in 2025, the listed insurers’ investment gains generally performed well. Many insurers stated in their annual reports that they increased investments in high-dividend-yield assets. From the underwriting side, thanks to marginal improvements on the claims side and expense controls, the business costs of the “Big Three” property-and-casualty insurers were all optimized. At the same time, against the backdrop of low interest rates and sluggish competitor wealth-management products, the value of new life insurance business grew markedly. Looking ahead, will property-and-casualty insurers’ business costs continue to stay low, and can life insurance maintain its glory? Everything will need to be tested by time.

Investment drives net profit growth

In 2025, all five listed insurers achieved impressive growth in performance. Year over year, net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company all showed an upward trend. Collectively, they achieved attributable net profit of 425.291 billion yuan, up 22.4% year over year.

As the first A-share insurer to release its results, China Life recorded attributable net profit to shareholders of the parent company of 154.078 billion yuan, continuing steady growth of 44.09% on top of a high base. China Ping An’s profit scale followed closely; in 2025 it achieved net profit of 134.778 billion yuan, up 6.5%. In addition, China Taiping, PICC Property and Casualty, and New China Life recorded net profits of 53.505 billion yuan, 46.646 billion yuan, and 36.284 billion yuan, respectively, with growth rates of 19%, 8.8%, and 38.3%.

A closer look at this impressive set of results makes it clear that the performance on the investment side has become the core engine driving the large increase in net profit. The rebound in China’s capital markets in 2025 provided insurers with a rare window to profit. Multiple insurers accurately seized market pulses, achieving leapfrog growth in investment returns. For example, China Life achieved what was among its best investment performances in recent years: total investment returns of 387.694 billion yuan, up 25.8%, and a total investment yield of 6.09%. New China Life’s total investment returns for the full year of last year were 104.334 billion yuan, with growth of 30.9%. PICC Property and Casualty achieved total investment returns of 92.323 billion yuan, reaching a historic high.

However, behind the growth on the investment side there are also hidden concerns. How should insurers balance returns driven by short-term market volatility with sustainable, steady long-term growth? How to respond to a low-interest-rate environment is an important issue that all major insurers must face directly. Fu Yifu, a special research fellow at Susco Bank, predicts that in 2026 the stock market is expected to show a structural market, and sectors that benefit from policy support and economic transformation may perform better, but attention must be paid to the trajectory of bond market yields and the differentiation of credit risks.

How will listed insurers in the future respond to low interest rates on the investment side? At the company’s earnings meeting, Guo Xiaotao, Co-CEO of China Ping An, said the company’s investment approach is to find certainty in uncertainty. New quality productive forces are a certainty factor; the vigorous development of infrastructure is a certainty factor; the development of the entire national economy is a certainty factor; high-dividend yield and a strong financial country are certainty factors; and a healthy China is also a certainty factor. These are all important directions for long-term investment asset allocation.

For specific allocation tactics, Liu Hui, Deputy General Manager of China Life and Secretary to the Board, said that in a low-interest-rate environment, the company will further strengthen strategic allocation and active management, with continuous optimization of asset-liability matching and a solid and strengthened fixed-income “base block.” In addition, it will fully leverage the advantages of long-term capital and patient capital, increase product innovation and strategy innovation, and build an alternative investment ecosystem across all product types and all life cycles. The overall scale of alternative investments exceeds 1 trillion yuan, opening up space for long-term growth.

Life insurance new business value grows strongly

As the “barometer” used to measure an insurer’s future profitability and business quality, new business value has long been a focus of market attention. In 2025, the life insurance new business value of all five A-share listed insurers achieved double-digit positive growth.

By scale, China Life also led the way. In 2025, its one-year new business value reached 45.752 billion yuan, up sharply 35.7% year over year. Closely following it was China Ping An; new business value from life insurance and health insurance businesses was 36.897 billion yuan, with growth also reaching 29.3%.

In terms of growth momentum, each company also performed impressively. China Taiping’s life insurance new business value was 18.609 billion yuan, up 40.1%. New China Life achieved new business value of 9.842 billion yuan, with growth as high as 57.4%. PICC Life achieved new business value of 8.229 billion yuan last year; on a comparable basis, its growth rate was 64.5% year over year, the highest among the five companies.

Behind the impressive performance is strong enabling from two major channels: insurance and bank-insurance. Beijing Business Daily’s reporter learned that large companies are pushing “optimizing personnel and improving quality” through their individual insurance channels, developing toward an elite and professional direction. In the bank-insurance channel, guided by the “reporting and selling in one” policy, they are gradually entering a new phase of “value-focused bank insurance.” Fu Yifu further analyzed that the growth in life insurance new business value of listed insurers in 2025 mainly benefited from two factors: first, insurance demand continued to be released, and residents’ awareness of health and pension protection increased; second, insurers actively advanced channel transformation—improving the quality of individual insurance teams—and diversified channels such as bank-insurance also contributed to growth.

As the industry’s flagship, at the earnings release meeting, Li Mingguang, President of China Life, provided a detailed breakdown of the company’s “winning playbook.” He said that among all sales channels, the individual insurance channel fully plays the role of the main channel, with stable sustainable development capability. Meanwhile, the individual insurance channel continues to advance marketing system reforms steadily, focusing on improving quality and volume, reinforcing “increase with better and nurture with better,” optimizing the team structure, continuously enhancing the team’s hard strength, and accelerating the team’s transformation toward professionalization, specialization, and younger talent. The quality of the team has continued to improve, and new talent has continued to grow. The year-over-year growth in “increase in favorable headcount” was 40%. The 13-month retention rate improved by 2.2 percentage points year over year. The proportion of personnel aged 45 and below increased by 2.3 percentage points year over year. For the bank-insurance channel, it maintains comprehensive channel development, expanding and improving the quality of branch operations; both new business issuance branches and star branches achieved double-digit growth.

China Ping An, meanwhile, offered a different solution and emphasized the power of “balance” to deal with market volatility. Guo Xiaotao said the company has life insurance agents, a bank-insurance channel, and a community finance channel. Among them, the agent team’s battle power is becoming stronger, enabling it to achieve sustained performance development more effectively in market competition. The bank-insurance channel can capture growth opportunities in the market, and the company is also actively training the community finance channel. Such a balanced channel structure allows the company to effectively withstand the impact of market fluctuations on performance when the market experiences volatility.

Look for incremental growth from new-energy vehicle insurance in non-auto insurance

Unlike the rapid expansion in life insurance business, the property-and-casualty insurance market has entered a track of steady development. The “Big Three” insurers—PICC Property and Casualty, Ping An Property and Casualty, and China Taiping Property and Casualty—have continued to optimize their business structure and compress business costs last year.

Specifically, in 2025, the combined ratio of the three major property-and-casualty giants—PICC Property and Casualty, Ping An Property and Casualty, and China Taiping Property and Casualty—was reduced to 97.6%, 96.8%, and 97.5%, respectively, optimizing by 0.9, 1.5, and 1.1 percentage points year over year. Improvements in cost control directly translated into stronger growth in underwriting profit. In industry views, the “Big Three” property-and-casualty business cost optimization benefits both from more refined expense management—strengthening channel cost control and cutting unnecessary spending—and from fewer major catastrophes, which reduces claims expenses. According to data from the Ministry of Emergency Management, in 2025 natural disasters in China caused direct economic losses of 241.617 billion yuan, down 39.8% year over year.

At present, the combined ratio of the three property-and-casualty companies is already at a relatively low level. Where is there still room to reduce costs in the future?

Bo Wenxi, Vice Chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, predicts that there are two main areas. First is new-energy vehicle insurance. At present, the industry’s combined ratio for new-energy vehicle insurance is higher than that of conventional fuel vehicle insurance. In the future, as the marketization of autonomous pricing coefficients improves and pure risk premium data becomes more complete, the cost ratio for new-energy vehicle insurance in 2026 is expected to further improve. Second is non-auto insurance. Property-and-casualty insurers can shift the traditional “loss compensation” approach toward “risk prevention” through risk-reduction services. They can use the Internet of Things and big data to reduce the incidence of claims, while also optimizing business structure to bring down high-claims lines and expand stable business such as government-business insurance and agricultural insurance.

Based on remarks by executives of various insurers, the industry will in the future also seek profit growth increments from businesses such as new-energy vehicle insurance and non-auto insurance. Zhang Daoming, acting head of PICC Property and Casualty, said at PICC’s earnings release meeting that after “reporting and selling in one” for non-auto insurance, it is expected that in 2026 the effectiveness of comprehensive governance in non-auto insurance will be reflected first in the comprehensive expense ratios of enterprise property insurance, employer liability insurance, and safety production liability insurance. The comprehensive expense ratio of the above insurance types is expected to decline by more than two percentage points year over year, and the combined ratio of non-auto insurance is expected to fall, achieving underwriting profitability.

Chen Hui, General Manager of China Taiping Property and Casualty, also said that the new-energy vehicle business in household vehicles has already entered a stable profit-making range. China Taiping Property and Casualty will further optimize costs and improve efficiency by building an ecosystem across the full life cycle. The focus is on two aspects. One is improving operational efficiency. The other is management in the claims process—according to brand-based centralized reviews, and exporting to original equipment manufacturers claim standards including, among others, repair standards for large batteries and standards related to flood-damaged vehicles.

Beijing Business Daily’s reporter Li Xiumei

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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