China Life earns nearly 400 million yuan daily, with equity investments increasing by 450 billion yuan. Cai Xiliang makes outstanding contributions.

Ask AI · How can investment returns climb against the tide under a low-interest-rate environment?

Produced by|China Insight Net

Reviewed by|Li Xiaoyan

On the evening of March 25, China Life officially released its 2025 annual report. As the “vanguard” of the life insurance industry, the company delivered an impressive set of results in the final year of the “14th Five-Year Plan,” including: total premiums first exceeding 700 billion yuan, attributable net profit up 44.1% year over year, and growth in annual new business value reaching the highest同期 level since 2017. With solid performance showing both scale and profitability rising together, the results highlight the industry leader’s steady resilience.

In 2025, China Life’s operating performance achieved leapfrog growth, with multiple key indicators setting historical records, fully demonstrating the company’s capability for long-term value creation and its market core competitiveness. Premium scale continued to move forward steadily, and core growth momentum remained strong. For the full year, total premiums were 7298.87 billion yuan, up 8.7% year over year; it marked the first time the company stood at the 7000 billion yuan threshold. Daily average premium income was nearly 2.0 billion yuan, demonstrating strong market absorption capacity and a foundation of customer trust. In terms of structure, renewal premiums made a standout contribution: for the full year, they reached 4958.08 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 68% of total premiums, laying a solid foundation for cash-flow stability. New single premiums were 2340.79 billion yuan, up 9.29% year over year, with the base remaining solid and trending positively. As a key metric for measuring the core value of life insurers, annual new business value reached 457.52 billion yuan, up 35.7% year over year; the growth rate reached the highest同期 level over the past eight years, reflecting a substantive repair in value-creation capability.

Profitability surged significantly, and investment capability continued to lead. On a high base, attributable net profit reached 1540.78 billion yuan, up 44.1% year over year; earnings per share also increased by 44.1%, showing a marked improvement in profitability. The investment side was particularly impressive. In a low-interest-rate environment, the company adhered to an allocation approach of “fixed income as the primary focus, with equities strengthened.” For the full year, total investment returns were nearly 3877 billion yuan, and the total investment return rate climbed to 6.09%, up by 59 basis points from the previous year. Investment returns and efficiency rose together, providing strong support for growth in performance. By the end of 2025, the company’s total assets were 7.59 trillion yuan, with investment assets of 7.42 trillion yuan. With its scale firmly ranked first in the industry, the company continued to cross three consecutive trillion-yuan thresholds during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, and its capital strength and risk-resilience continued to strengthen.

Facing industry transformation pressures and changes in the market environment, China Life focused on channel innovation and product upgrading, deepened structural adjustments, and achieved coordinated development of scale growth and quality improvement.

Channel transformation delivered notable results, and the overall pattern remained solid: “individual insurance stabilizes value, bancassurance drives scale.” The individual insurance channel is the core of value creation. For the full year, it achieved total premiums of 5517.90 billion yuan, up 4.3% year over year. Although sales headcount of 587,000 was in a contraction cycle compared with the historical peak, the company continued to optimize its talent structure through a “prioritize better recruitment and better development” model, driving annual new business value to grow 25.5% year over year and continuously improving business quality. First-year premiums for 10-year terms and above were 521.48 billion yuan, and their share of first-year premiums for individual insurance increased to 58.48%. The share of long-term protection-oriented business continued to rise steadily, demonstrating long-term competitive strength.

The bancassurance channel became a key highlight for performance growth. For the full year, total premiums were 1108.74 billion yuan, up 45.5% year over year. New single premiums increased 95.7% year over year. Under the guidance of the regulatory policy of “same rules for selling and reporting,” the channel achieved breakthroughs in both scale and quality. As the number of partner banks exceeded 100 and the number of new-policy issuance outlets reached 77,000, bancassurance, leveraging its scenario advantages and fee-control capabilities, became an important growth engine during the industry’s transformation period—aligning with market demand for dividend-type products in a low-interest-rate environment.

Product strategy precisely matched the transformation direction. Under the trend of falling interest rates, the company increased its allocation of floating-rate earnings businesses. The share of this type of business in first-year premiums was close to 50%, effectively adapting to changes in the market environment. Among them, dividend insurance business grew rapidly, and its share of first-year premiums in the individual insurance channel increased to nearly 60%, becoming a core support for new business premiums. At the same time, the company continued to optimize its product system. For the full year, it launched more than 170 products. The shares of new single premiums for life insurance, annuity insurance, and health insurance were 31.75%, 32.11%, and 31.23%, respectively—achieving balanced development and meeting diverse protection needs of different customer groups. However, growth in traditional long-term protection-oriented business faced pressure. In new business, first-year premiums for 10-year terms and above fell 7.78% year over year, reflecting the challenge of structural adjustment under industry-wide common pressures.

China Life takes digital transformation as a lever to comprehensively upgrade business processes, customer service, and risk prevention and control, injecting technological momentum into high-quality development.

Technology empowers the entire business lifecycle, significantly improving operational efficiency. Relying on intelligent technologies to reshape underwriting processes for group insurance and bancassurance business, and with AI-assisted agents’ work widely adopted, the digital underwriting agent operation rate in 2025 exceeded 24%. The intelligent review rate for policy-service claims support reached 99%, and in some regions, the end-to-end processing without manual intervention exceeded 60%. This substantially shortened the business handling cycle and improved the customer experience. Data-and-intelligence-enabled services continued to iterate: the proportion of claims cases handled through “smart claims” exceeded 75%, and one-stop claim direct payment exceeded 5.30 million cases. Proactive claims services identified and prompted 680,000 customers, achieving double improvements in claims efficiency and service quality.

Risk prevention and control was upgraded across the full domain, laying a solid bottom line for safe development. The company conducted full-domain risk monitoring using technologies such as AI anti-fraud, AI anti-money laundering, and AI anti-misleading sales, accurately identifying risks and blocking them in real time. It deployed digital auditors to enhance the intelligence level of audit supervision. At the same time, the company strengthened customer data protection. It successfully obtained ISO27701 privacy information management system certification. Data security reached international high standards, building a solid barrier for stable business operations and protection of customer rights and interests.

Guided by a people-centered value orientation, China Life deepened the “big consumer protection” ecosystem, and built the “Guo Life Good Service” brand featuring “simple, high quality, and warm” service, earnestly fulfilling the social responsibilities of a financial central state-owned enterprise.

Service experience was comprehensively optimized, and reach continued to expand. The company built a complementary service matrix integrating “online + offline.” The life insurance app accumulated 170 million users. It continued to optimize the “one-click direct access” experience online; its respect-for-the-elderly mode and intelligent voice services were continuously upgraded; and customer service response efficiency improved significantly. In nearly 2,500 offline counters across the country, services are available in both urban and rural areas, making financial services feel more accessible and reachable. For the full year, the company provided services to more than 3.0 billion person-times, fully meeting the service needs of different customer groups.

Social responsibility was practiced in depth, and people’s livelihood protection continued to be strengthened. Focusing on pain points in people’s livelihood, the company opened a “one-day expedited claim for critical illness” green channel, serving 230,000 customers and providing timely financial support to critical illness patients. Around scenarios such as parenting, health, and retirement, it carried out themed service activities reaching 58.31 million person-times, and built the “Art Returns to the Mountains” youth arts education public welfare project covering 20 provinces, helping revitalize rural culture. It provided accessibility services for 27.78 million person-times for seniors, participated in drafting the industry standard 《Insurance Institution Service Standards for Elderly Customers》, and promoted standardized upgrading of industry services. Consumer protection work delivered strong results. For the full year, it listened to the “voices of customers” more than 20 million person-times. The reach of focused education and publicity campaigns to consumers increased by 31.4% year over year. It helped build a new ecosystem for financial education and earnestly protected consumers’ lawful rights and interests.

In 2026, the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan,” China Life clarified its core development thinking, focusing on the “three commitments,” “three improvements,” and “three breakthroughs,” and targeting key areas such as intelligent and data-driven transformation, upgrading of business management models, and coordinated development across all channels, to push for a comprehensive deepening of reform.

The company will continue to consolidate its vanguard position, further optimize its business structure, improve investment capability and customer management level, and accelerate the building of a “modern governance, prominent functions, outstanding development, advanced management, innovation-driven, and safe and sound” world-class life insurer with Chinese characteristics. At the same time, tightly aligning with the “five major articles” of finance, it will deepen asset-liability linkage, prevent and control all kinds of risks, promote steady growth in scale and value, cultivate new growth engines, achieve new excellence in the modernization drive with Chinese characteristics, and continue to play the role of the insurance industry as an economic shock absorber and a social stability stabilizer.

Overall, China Life’s 2025 performance demonstrates the steady strength and transformation determination of an industry leader. Scale breakthroughs, profit improvement, channel optimization, technology empowerment, and service upgrades worked together to lay a solid foundation for high-quality development. Facing common challenges during the industry’s transformation and tough-fight period, the company will uphold a long-term orientation and a value-driven approach, and solve development difficulties through reform and innovation. On the new journey of the “15th Five-Year Plan,” it is expected to continue releasing development vitality, strengthen its leading position in the industry, and contribute more to the high-quality development of the industry.