Total premiums exceed 700 billion yuan, with multiple core indicators reaching new highs. China Life Insurance aims to achieve a "full house" of performance by 2025.

Standing at the critical juncture of the conclusion of the 14th Five-Year Plan and the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan, China Life Insurance Company Limited (hereinafter referred to as “China Life”) has delivered a performance report full of confidence. As China Life Chairman Cai Xiliang stated at the performance press conference on March 26: “The company has once again achieved a comprehensive success in scale, value, speed, quality, structure, efficiency, and safety.”

Cai Xiliang expressed: “This report card not only reflects economic value but also showcases social value.” He summed up this performance with three “greater” points:

First, broader coverage. By 2025, the number of effective long-term insurance policies at China Life is expected to reach 327 million, providing services to over 3 billion people throughout the year, with claims exceeding 100 billion yuan, fulfilling the promise of protection with the widest coverage and quality service, safeguarding the beautiful lives of the people.

Second, stronger momentum. By 2025, China Life will continue its strong growth trend on a high platform and large scale, achieving record growth rates in total premiums and new business value since 2018, realizing the best investment performance in recent years, reaching new heights in profit levels, continuously consolidating its leading position domestically, and many indicators have entered the ranks of world-class industries.

Third, greater resilience. While rapidly growing its business, China Life has maintained a reasonable and balanced business structure, significantly improved the operating costs across various channels, and continuously enhanced production efficiency, laying a solid foundation for coping with complex situations and achieving long-term stable development.

With balanced development in asset-liability management, channel team building, investment income growth, premium structure optimization, and business value growth, China Life has entered a new stage of high-quality development characterized by higher quality, better structure, and stronger resilience, steadily moving towards becoming a world-class life insurance company with Chinese characteristics.

Solid Foundation in Main Business, Leading in Scale and Value

By 2025, China Life will reach a new milestone in leapfrog development, with total premiums exceeding 700 billion yuan. As of the end of the reporting period, the company’s total premiums reached 729.887 billion yuan, making it the first life insurance company in the country to surpass the 700 billion yuan mark.

The performance report also shows that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China Life’s total assets crossed three trillion yuan thresholds consecutively, reaching 7.59 trillion yuan by the end of 2025; with an embedded value of 1.47 trillion yuan, firmly maintaining its industry-leading position; the new business value for the year was 45.752 billion yuan, a substantial increase of 35.7% year-on-year, continuously consolidating its dual-leading position in scale and value.

This leapfrog development achievement is attributed to the steady enhancement of channel construction and product systems.

In the past year, China Life’s individual insurance channel has fully played its role as the main channel for value contribution. The total premiums of the channel reached 551.79 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.3%, among which renewal premiums were 442.39 billion yuan, an increase of 7.9% year-on-year. The annual business value reached 39.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 25.5%, with a value contribution of 85.9%.

The individual insurance team is accelerating its transformation towards professionalism, specialization, and youthfulness, with further deepening of marketing system reforms. Data shows that by the end of 2025, the individual insurance sales force reached 587,000, with a year-on-year increase of 40%.

The bancassurance channel achieved a significant increase in premium scale, effectively assisting overall performance growth.

By 2025, the total premiums of the bancassurance channel reached 110.87 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45.5%; the new business value from bancassurance and other channels was 6.45 billion yuan, an increase of 169.3%; new policy premiums were 58.51 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 55.7%, contributing 25% to the company’s new policy premiums; renewal premiums increased by 13.1% year-on-year, and first-year regular premiums increased by 41% year-on-year, with significant growth in sales of floating income-type products.

In the bancassurance channel, China Life insists on comprehensive layout, achieving double-digit growth in branch operations, new policy issuance branches, and star-rated branches. At the same time, it focuses on professional construction, with the first-year regular premium capacity of customer managers increasing by 53.7% year-on-year.

According to Hou Jin, Assistant President and Chief Actuary of China Life, by 2025, China Life achieved an upgrade in asset-liability linkage, mainly reflected in four aspects: first, synchronously promoting the transformation of floating income-type businesses, increasing equity investments, and strengthening detailed account management; second, considering the scientific management of liability duration and flexible adjustment of asset duration, with an effective duration gap of less than 1.5 years; third, actively responding to changes in market interest rates, dynamically adjusting product designated interest rates and timing the allocation of fixed-income assets, resulting in a reduction of more than 60 basis points in the cost rate of new business liabilities; fourth, creating and realizing value more steadily, with stronger internal capital creation capacity.

With the leap in premium scale and the effectiveness of professional construction, China Life’s overall operational quality continues to improve, and its solvency capacity and global market position are continuously consolidated. The comprehensive solvency adequacy ratio reached 174.01%, and the core solvency adequacy ratio reached 128.77%, maintaining an adequate level. The total market value, life insurance, and health insurance reserve scales rank first among global life insurance companies.

Multiple Investment Efforts, Patient Capital Shows Results

Currently, with the capital market stabilizing and improving, China Life fully leverages the advantages of insurance capital as long-term and patient capital, actively practicing mid- to long-term investments. By the end of 2025, the company’s public market equity investment scale exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of over 450 billion yuan from the beginning of the year.

By aligning with national strategic directions, seizing capital market opportunities, and flexibly adjusting asset allocation, China Life achieved the best investment performance in recent years: total investment income reached 387.694 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.8%; total investment return rate was 6.09%, a year-on-year increase of 59 basis points. The dual growth of the main and investment businesses drove the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company to reach 154.078 billion yuan, a strong growth of 44.1% based on a high base.

Regarding the strategic line of China Life’s investment business, Liu Hui, Vice President and Secretary of the Board, summarized it as: “Equity investment is the decisive factor for increasing returns, fixed-income investment is the ballast for stable returns, and alternative investments are the growth poles for enriching returns.”

He explained that China Life strategically increases the proportion of equity assets, accumulates high-quality ultra-long-term fixed-income assets, and explores the deep potential of alternative investments, solidifying the ballast for asset allocation in a volatile market environment.

By 2025, China Life strategically increased the proportion of equity investments by nearly 5 percentage points, with total equity asset investments reaching 1.2 trillion yuan, focusing on technology stocks representing China’s new productivity direction. It has increased long-term bond allocations across cycles, currently accumulating 30 trillion yuan in long-term bonds, promoting a good level of asset-liability duration matching, and employing quasi-fixed income strategies to hedge against interest rate declines. A comprehensive alternative investment ecosystem covering all varieties and life cycles has been established, with the overall scale of alternative investments exceeding 1 trillion yuan, opening up long-term space for production and value growth while responding to a low-interest-rate environment.

As Liu Hui stated: “Insurance investments need to span 20, 30, or even 50 years; it’s not about being the fastest, but about being continuous. Long-term capital and patient capital will transcend cycles in this steady, long-term persistence.”

On the other hand, as a typical representative of patient capital, China Life continuously injects patient capital into innovative enterprises. The main methods include direct equity investments focused on core assets, PE funds to layout emerging industries, and innovative tools to assist in industrial upgrades, focusing on investment opportunities in three major areas: artificial intelligence and semiconductors, big health and biotechnology, and green energy and new infrastructure.

“The 15th Five-Year Plan opens up a broad strategic space for insurance capital equity investment. The nine strategic emerging industries and six future industries represent the core direction of China’s economic transformation and are also where core assets will be nurtured in the future. Wherever represents China’s future, our long-term capital will flow there,” Liu Hui said. “In 2026 and during the 15th Five-Year Plan, China Life will continue to focus on the country’s efforts to cultivate and strengthen emerging industries and strategically layout future industries, utilizing various tools such as merger funds, S funds, and PE funds to contribute to the development of new productivity. China Life will create sustainable long-term value for shareholders and clients while serving China’s economy in its transition to a new and improved development path.”

Aligning with Policy Directions, Writing a New Chapter in Development

From “investing in things” to “investing in people,” the concept of insurance is undergoing a profound shift. This transformation has also been clearly echoed at the policy level.

On March 25, 2025, the Central Office and the State Council released the “Opinions on Accelerating the Establishment of a Long-Term Care Insurance System,” heralding broad development space for long-term care insurance. At the performance press conference, Hou Jin stated: “In the process of promoting the system, China Life will take on the responsibilities of a central enterprise, play a leading role, actively participate in system promotion, and strive to serve social livelihood security well.”

According to Hou Jin, since 2016, China Life has participated in over 70 pilot projects for long-term care insurance, accumulating rich experience and professional capabilities: first, it has the ability to handle the entire chain, forming a comprehensive and professionally competent management system; second, relying on institutional and branch advantages, it has established a professional service team with wide coverage, high quality, and strong capabilities; third, it has created a smart long-term care insurance management information system through digital empowerment, providing technical solutions for full-process and multi-business scenarios.

While deeply participating in long-term care insurance pilot projects, China Life continues to focus on the big health sector, promoting stable growth in health insurance business. By 2025, the company achieved health insurance premium income exceeding 120 billion yuan through diversified business layouts and refined service offerings, with medical insurance dominating.

For the future development of commercial health insurance, Hou Jin clarified four core focus areas: first, continuously enriching diverse product offerings to meet the differentiated protection needs of the public throughout their life cycle while optimizing risk control and broadening coverage; second, deepening the integration of insurance and services, consolidating health management resources, promoting the upgrade of “insurance + service” functionality, and building a full-process health management ecosystem; third, leveraging the advantages of omni-channel sales and comprehensive layout to enhance product service outreach and precise matching capabilities; fourth, strengthening digital empowerment to optimize operational efficiency and upgrade service quality, providing warmer health protection services to the public.

In the health and wellness service sector, China Life is also accelerating its layout. Assistant President Zhang Xinyu reported that by 2025, the company will continue to enrich diverse offerings around the construction of a wellness ecosystem, creating distinctive health and wellness services, mainly reflected in two aspects:

First, “insurance + elderly care,” leveraging the long-term stable advantages of insurance capital, actively promoting CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Communities) urban elderly care, travel elderly care, and other service models, cumulatively laying out 20 institutional elderly care projects in 16 cities, and launching the “Flexible Living” travel elderly care product, exploring the construction of home care service systems, actively serving the silver economy.

Second, “insurance + health,” integrating internal and external resources to build a health service system covering pre-event prevention, mid-event management, and post-event protection, providing diversified services from health check-ups to rehabilitation based on customer health needs.

On this basis, Hou Jin further added three key work areas: first, accelerating the development of elderly care financial products targeted at the elderly and pre-elderly populations, providing multi-term and multi-form elderly financial products to meet the full life cycle elderly care protection needs while enhancing the level of elderly risk protection, developing health insurance and accident insurance suitable for the elderly, improving insurance accessibility and coverage; second, optimizing the elderly care service system, launching a senior mode on the App, opening a “one-click call for seniors” phone service, equipping offline counters with age-friendly facilities, providing priority processing and dedicated accompanying services, and comprehensively optimizing age-friendly services next; third, deeply cultivating the “insurance + wellness” ecosystem, leveraging the long-term stable advantages of insurance capital, promoting quality project investments in wellness projects, silver economy industries, medical health, and emerging medical and health technologies, and collaborating with main businesses.

Looking ahead, “2026 marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan. We are confident and capable of maintaining a steady development speed based on multiple indicators reaching historical highs, pushing for continuous optimization of the business structure, further enhancing value creation capabilities, and raising the quality, structure, and sustainability of growth to a new level,” Cai Xiliang said.

He believes that the next five years will still be a golden strategic opportunity period for China Life, containing four major dividends: economic environment dividends, policy dividends, demand dividends, and technological dividends.

“During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China Life’s strategic goal is to accelerate the establishment of a world-class life insurance company with Chinese characteristics,” Cai Xiliang stated. “To achieve this goal, we will continue to focus on three major areas: first, strengthen value creation capabilities across cycles; second, forge a future-oriented intelligent capability; third, continuously enhance risk prevention and control capabilities.”

China Life President Li Mingguang added that in the future, the focus will be on advancing digital transformation, upgrading operational management models, promoting omni-channel coordinated development, deeply advancing customer operations, and building investment capabilities, pushing the company’s services for the economy and society to new heights, solidifying its leading position, ensuring steady growth in scale and value, and building a solid safety development barrier, accelerating the advancement towards a world-class life insurance company with Chinese characteristics.

By Wang Xinyu Edited by Xu Nan