Live from the earnings conference | New China Insurance President Gong Xingfeng: Will continue to firmly promote the transformation of dividend insurance business

Every Daily reporter | Yuan Yuan Every Daily editor | Wei Guanhong

On March 30, Xinhua Life Insurance held its 2025 annual performance briefing. Company management responded to hot-button questions from the market regarding transformation of its dividend insurance business and development of business channels.

The annual report shows that in 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance achieved total premium income of nearly RMB 195.9 billion, up 14.9%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of about RMB 36.3 billion, up sharply 38.3%; the total investment yield reached 6.6%, up 0.8 percentage points year over year, the highest in recent years; and full-year investment income of about RMB 104.3 billion, up 30.9% year over year.

“Multiple key indicators for Xinhua Life Insurance in 2025—total assets, embedded value of total premiums, net profit, shareholder returns, total market value, and more—reached record highs, delivering the most impressive performance since the company was founded.” Yang Yucheng, Chairman of Xinhua Life Insurance, said that the company’s operations have shown the characteristics of strong performance, better structure, rising value, stable returns, strong vitality, and resilience.

Channel premiums for dividend insurance: first-year premium deposits of RMB 11.9 billion, nearly a 40% year-over-year increase

In 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance achieved operating revenue of RMB 157.745 billion, up 19%; total premium income of RMB 195.871 billion, up 14.9%. By channel, while the individual agency (direct-sales) channel remains the main source of Xinhua Life Insurance’s premiums, the embedded value contribution from new business in the bank-insurance channel has already surpassed that of the individual agency channel.

Specifically, the annual report shows that in 2025, Xinhua’s individual agency channel generated premium income of RMB 120.6 billion. Of this, first-year regular premium deposits for long-term insurance were about RMB 19.0 billion, up 43.8%; the embedded value of new business one year later grew 19.4% year over year. In the bank-insurance channel, in 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance upgraded its channel strategy positioning, achieving premium income of RMB 72.1 billion, up 39.5%. Of this, first-year premiums for long-term insurance were about RMB 37.9 billion, up 52.3%; first-year premium deposits for long-term insurance were about RMB 18.0 billion, up 29.6%; the embedded value of new business one year later was nearly RMB 5.3 billion, up 110.2%, with all reaching record highs.

“The individual agency team are Xinhua Life Insurance’s partners—entrepreneurs. In the services they provide between them and customers, they have unique advantages. The customer stickiness is only natural. They also have irreplaceable unique strengths in selling complex products with long-term, high-guarantee premium payment terms. They are also a core pillar for the company to navigate long-term economic cycles.” G ong Xingfeng, President of Xinhua Life Insurance, said that the individual agency channel is still the company’s most important core channel. Xinhua will, as always, increase resources and investment, cultivating and leading the development of the individual agency sales team and a transformation to modern marketing new models.

It is understood that to drive the individual agency channel into a new era of “professional elites,” Xinhua Life Insurance has built a training and enablement system supported by policies such as the Basic Law (in training), the Yuying Engineering program, Dragon Soaring and Phoenix Dancing, and the WLP Entrepreneurship Support Plan, among others, attracting a large number of high-education, high-quality talent to join.

“We believe that the development characteristics of China’s bank-insurance market in 2026 will also be steady with progress.” Wang Lianwen, Vice President of Xinhua Life Insurance, said that in 2026, the bank-insurance channel will feature three characteristics: steady and healthy growth in scale and total volume, the deep implementation of the “report and pay as one” (reporting and payment unified) policy, and an acceleration in the differentiation of the market landscape. Xinhua Life Insurance’s bank-insurance channel will seize market opportunities, continuously promote the three-part coordinated model of insurance + services + investment, face competition bravely, operate steadily and in compliance. It hopes to achieve results of steady progress through a strategy of promoting stability through advancement.

First-year premium deposits for dividend insurance: RMB 11.9 billion

The high growth in channel premiums cannot be achieved without product support. According to the annual report, in 2025 Xinhua Life Insurance launched a total of 95 new products. As of the end of 2025, there were 211 products still on sale. Meanwhile, since the second quarter of 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance has firmly promoted the transformation of dividend insurance and made it a key focus for business development across all channels. Full-year first-year premium deposits for dividend insurance reached RMB 11.9 billion, and accumulated premiums for third-pillar commercial pension annuities exceeded RMB 60 billion.

“In 2025, the company firmly advanced the transformation of dividend insurance. This is mainly reflected in a breakthrough in sales. We sold dividend insurance of about RMB 12.0 billion throughout the year. Considering the background that these dividend insurance products had not been the main product for sale for many years, such performance is truly remarkable.” Gong Xingfeng said that last year, in the second and third quarters, the company devoted great resources to increase the transformation efforts, and it also achieved the expected results. On the other hand, the company’s prior risk-control management system has initially taken shape. It effectively integrated resources across front, mid, and back offices, and issued a series of measures in a targeted manner, including assessment and traction, product supply, team training, ecosystem coordination, promotional support, compliance guidance, and payment matching.

Gong Xingfeng said that 2025 is only a starting point. In 2026, the company will continue to deepen the transformation, focusing on expanding product types—such as increasing the sales of dividend insurance and annuities, strengthening product innovation—while capturing the dividends from dividend insurance and health insurance policies. The company will increase management of product appropriateness, selling the right products to the right customers, and avoiding sales misguidance.

Worth noting is that performance on the investment side also provided Xinhua Life Insurance with additional capacity to expand dividend insurance. In 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance’s total investment yield was 6.6%, and its average total investment yield over the past decade was over 5.1%. Benefiting from China’s capital markets recovering and improving in 2025, Xinhua Life Insurance’s investment returns for 2025 continued to grow significantly year over year on top of the strong year-on-year growth in the same period of 2024, reaching RMB 104.3 billion, up 30.9% year over year.

From a strategic asset allocation perspective, Xinhua Life Insurance actively seized opportunities for staged allocations in fixed income, moderately extended asset duration and narrowed the duration gap between assets and liabilities, and strengthened the base holdings of fixed-income assets. At the same time, it opportunistically allocated to fixed-income enhancement products with stable performance and moderately increased the yield’s upside/downside flexibility. The annual report shows that in 2025, among Xinhua Life Insurance’s investment assets, the allocation share of time deposits and bonds and debts reached 65.6%.

“In 2025, we made great efforts to optimize the structure of our asset allocation and our equity portfolios. By increasing the allocation ratio of long-held equity investments in unlisted equity, we addressed the previous shortcomings of having a base of bonds but no base of equities in fixed-income portfolios. On the basis of doing a good job in allocating to interest-rate government bonds, we also actively allocated to diversified assets such as convertible bonds and bond funds, effectively reducing the loss from credit spread differences and the risks of reinvestment.” Yang Yucheng said that in 2026, Xinhua Life Insurance will continue to optimize its asset structure, improve the development of its investment research and management system, and build a multi-layered investment portfolio and returns system.

Cover image source: Kong Zesi