How will China Life operate in the future? Three major investment directions to support the development of new quality productivity, seize the "Four Major Dividends," and focus on reforms in five key areas.

Ask AI · How can equity investments become the key winning move for China Life to boost returns?

On March 26, China Life held its 2025 annual results briefing simultaneously in Beijing and Hong Kong. In response to the company’s impressive set of results—total premium for the first time exceeding 700 billion yuan and attributable net profit rising 44.1% year over year—management provided detailed answers to a range of hot topics that the market is watching, including the strategic layout, investment logic, quarterly profit fluctuations, and the direction of future reforms. This article summarizes the core viewpoints from the briefing, fully presenting China Life’s development achievements in 2025 and its future plans.

**I. Total premiumsBreaks the 700 billion yuan mark for the first time, delivering an across-the-board “full house”

In 2025, China Life turned in the industry’s first “700 billion-plus” level performance, with multiple key indicators reaching record highs.

China Life Chairman Cai Liliang set the tone for the full-year performance with “a full house.” He pointed out that 2025 is for the company “a year when multiple pressures intersect and compound, but also a year of abundant rewards and substantial quality.” The company again achieved an across-the-board “full house” in scale, value, speed, quality, structure, efficiency, and safety. Cai Liliang emphasized that this set of data fully demonstrates the company’s “stable” positioning, its “progressing” momentum, and its “resilience” characteristics, achieving a successful close of the 14th Five-Year Plan.

Core financial data rose across the board. The annual report shows that in 2025, China Life’s total premiums were 729.887 billion yuan, up 8.7%, making it the first company in the industry to step onto the 700 billion yuan platform. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 154.078 billion yuan, up 44.1%. By the end of 2025, both the company’s total assets and investment assets exceeded 7.4 trillion yuan, and its market capitalization also surpassed the 1 trillion yuan threshold, ranking first among global life insurers.

China Life’s assistant president, Lan Yonghong, introduced that in 2025, reforms in the company’s individual insurance (individual agents) channel delivered good expected outcomes. The expansion in the individual agent team was significant, with headcount growth improving meaningfully; headcount rose by more than 40%, and the retention level of new recruits improved notably, with the 13-month retention rate up 2.2 percentage points year over year. The structure of new business improved, participating insurance grew rapidly, and the proportion of business with terms of 10 years and above was relatively high; the growth in new business value was also fast.

In 2025, China Life’s total premiums in the individual insurance channel were 551.790 billion yuan, up 4.3%. Of this, renewal premiums were 442.285 billion yuan, up 7.9%. First-year single premiums were 89.171 billion yuan. First-year premiums for terms of 10 years and above were 52.148 billion yuan, accounting for 58.48% of first-year premiums in the individual channel—further improving business structure and enhancing sustainable development capability.

“In 2026, the individual insurance channel will continue to push forward deeper reforms of the marketing system, insist that high-quality development will not waver, stay focused on value creation, continuously optimize the business structure, and drive the year’s business to achieve an effective improvement in quality and steady growth in volume.” Lan Yonghong said.

In 2025, China Life’s bank insurance channel saw all key indicators improve across the board. Total premiums reached 110.874 billion yuan, breaking through the 100 billion yuan mark and up 45.5%. New single premiums were 58.506 billion yuan, up 95.7%, with the share of new single premiums in participating insurance up by about 15 percentage points year over year. First-year regular-premium equivalents were 26.478 billion yuan, up 41.0%. Renewal premiums were 52.368 billion yuan, up 13.1%, accounting for 47.23% of total premiums in the channel. The number of partner banks exceeded 100. The number of new policy issuance outlets reached 77,000, up 25.9%, including a 49.1% year-over-year increase in the number of star outlets. Bank insurance channel customer managers totaled 20,000, with per-capita productivity up 53.7% year over year.

II.EquityInvestments are the “winning move,” focusing on new quality productive forces**

In 2025, China Life achieved its best investment performance in recent years. Total investment returns were 387.694 billion yuan, up 25.8% year over year; the total investment return rate was 6.09%, up 59 basis points year over year. Therefore, the company’s investment strategy became the focus of the briefing.

Liu Hui said that equity investments are the “winning move” to enhance returns, fixed-income investments are the “stabilizing ballast” for steady returns, and alternative investments are the “growth engine” to enrich returns. In 2025, the company seized favorable market opportunities and strategically increased the equity allocation by 5 percentage points. The overall investment scale in equities exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan. It also focused on technology-sector stocks and high-dividend-quality assets that represent directions of new quality productive forces. Meanwhile, on the fixed-income side, it accumulated 3 trillion yuan in long-term high-quality assets, building an alternative investment ecosystem across all product categories and the entire life cycle. The overall alternative investment scale exceeded 1 trillion yuan.

Looking ahead to the equity investment layout, Liu Hui said at the meeting that China Life’s investment planning for 2026 and the period of the “15th Five-Year Plan” will revolve around the deployment to cultivate emerging industries and future industries. It will use diversified tools such as merger and acquisition funds, PE funds, and S funds to support the development of new quality productive forces, focusing on three major directions:

First, artificial intelligence and semiconductors—staying tightly aligned with the main line of technological iteration and domestic substitution, and uncovering targets with explosive growth opportunities across the entire industry chain;

Second, healthy aging and biotechnology—based on population aging and upgraded health consumption, and allocating to areas such as innovative drugs and devices, intelligent diagnosis and treatment, and chronic disease management;

Third, green energy and new infrastructure—around the dual-carbon goals, going deep into clean energy sectors such as wind power and nuclear power, and focusing on investment opportunities such as new energy storage and computing power coordination.

**III.Capturing the “Four Major Divits,” focusing on reforms in five key areas

At the outset year of the “15th Five-Year Plan,” China Life’s management disclosed the company’s future strategic blueprint and reform path to the outside world.

Despite a complex and changeable external environment, Cai Liliang is confident about the future. He said that the next five years will still be China Life’s golden window of strategic opportunities, containing the “Four Major Dividends,” including an economic environment dividend, a policy dividend, a demand dividend, and a technology dividend. Based on this, the company set its strategic goal for the “15th Five-Year Plan” period—to accelerate the building of a world-class life insurer with Chinese characteristics.

To achieve this goal, Cai Liliang proposed that the company will continue to focus on three major areas:

First, strengthen the ability to create value over long cycles and across cycles; deepen asset-liability coupling; continuously build and optimize an “insurance +” service system; and improve the product-service supply-demand fit.

Second, forge digital and intelligent capabilities for the future, driving upgrades to management, products, and business models through digital-intelligent transformation.

Third, continuously strengthen risk prevention and control capabilities, build and improve a comprehensive risk management system that is robust on assets and reliable on liabilities, adequately capitalized for solvency, with multiple lines of defense working together in an efficient and coordinated manner, ensuring the company can move steadily and go far.

At the meeting, Li Mingguang introduced in detail the five key reform areas for 2026, aiming to ensure that the company continues to maintain stable development even on a high base:

First, advance digital-intelligent transformation. Implement the “digital-intelligent transformation” project to tightly integrate digital-intelligent capabilities with the company’s operations, comprehensively empower every link of the company’s operations, including product design, precise sales, operational services, risk and risk control, and other areas, to fully promote high-quality development.

Second, advance upgrades to the operating and management model. Further improve the asset-liability management and transmission mechanism, including strengthening the organizational structure and promoting asset-liability management at higher levels and over a wider range. Strengthening asset-liability management is not only a regulatory requirement, but also the need for the company to forge cross-cycle, long-cycle operating and management capabilities.

Third, promote coordinated development across all channels. We will fully leverage our strengths in operating across all channels, strengthen professional sales and service capabilities in each channel, further expand online and offline customer touchpoints and coverage, comprehensively improve the match between sales service supply and customer needs, meet diverse insurance protection needs such as pension, life insurance, and health insurance, form a favorable situation of multi-point support and multi-engine driving, and enhance the company’s capability for steady operations and its core competitiveness.

Fourth, advance customer operations in depth. Improve the big-services system, provide solid basic services, enhance value-added services, and strengthen distinctive services, and steadily improve the quality and efficiency of services.

Fifth, advance the building of investment capabilities. The company will continuously strengthen its organizational structure to adapt to new asset-liability management requirements, and continuously strengthen asset allocation capability and product investment capability, thereby enhancing the ability to serve the overall situation, leverage the role of patient capital, and achieve value investing, steady investing, and long-term investing.

Looking ahead to the “15th Five-Year Plan,” Cai Liliang said that China Life will drive high-quality development to a new level, build a world-class life insurer with Chinese characteristics at an early date, work hard to provide customers with more warm and thoughtful services, create long-term and steady value returns for shareholders, and make more contributions from China Life to the modernization drive with Chinese characteristics.