Annual salary over 200,000! Insurance companies' spring recruitment "competing for talent": over 10,000 positions released, with AI and healthcare becoming the hottest fields

Ask AI · Why did insurance companies significantly increase the proportion of AI jobs in their spring campus recruiting?

Source: Times Weekly, authored by Wang Miaomiao and Lu Yongzhi

Image source: TuChong Creative

During the “Golden March and Silver April” recruiting season, momentum is building. Insurance firms’ 2026 spring campus recruitment has been fully rolled out.

According to an incomplete count by reporters from Times Weekly, as of March 25, more than 15 insurance companies in China—including China Life, China Ping An, PICC P&C, CPIC, Taiping, New China Life, Sun Life Insurance Group, Great Wealth Insurance Group, Allianz (Dazhong) Insurance, Harmonious Health, Fosun United Health, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China-AIA Life, Jintai Insurance, Zhejiang Business Insurance, Fuze Life, and Lian’an Life—have successively launched 2026 spring campus recruitment, releasing total headcount of over 10,000 positions.

Compared with previous years, this year’s spring campus recruitment by insurers shows a distinct structural shift.

On the one hand, top institutions continue to release large volumes of positions. For example, China Ping An offers more than 3,000 campus recruitment roles and 1,500 internship positions globally, while PICC P&C, through more than a dozen subsidiary companies under it, launches over 2,000 segmented job openings. On the other hand, insurers’ recruitment focus is accelerating its shift from traditional “financial management trainee” roles to “technology-combined” profiles. The share of “hardcore” positions such as artificial intelligence, large models, algorithm engineering, medical and eldercare, and so on has risen significantly; for some leading insurers, technology-related roles already account for nearly 30%.

Under the policy guidance of the “five major initiatives,” insurers’ hiring logic is being reshaped. Technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension/eldercare finance, and digital finance are no longer just strategic slogans—they are being translated into specific job requirements.

From nearly 30% of technology medical-eldercare positions under Ping An Group’s “integrated finance + medical eldercare” dual-engine drive, to cutting-edge roles added by PICC P&C such as artificial intelligence development and data security offense/defense, and to Taikang Insurance’s “AI Star Program,” leading insurers are trying to secure the commanding heights of future competition by optimizing their talent structure.

Yang Fan, General Manager of Beijing Paipaiwang Insurance Brokerage Co., Ltd., told Times Weekly reporters that this year’s spring recruitment job-structure changes clearly reflect that insurers’ business logic is shifting from a single “product sales orientation” toward a deeper “customer service and value-creation orientation.” Deep integration of technology and the service ecosystem has become the fundamental path for insurers to break through in a stock/slow-growth market.

Recruitment scale holds steady or increases, and “AI content” is the biggest highlight of the spring recruiting

In terms of overall recruitment numbers, in 2026 the campus recruitment scale of leading insurers generally stays at a relatively high level, and some companies have even set new records.

Taking China Ping An as an example, this year, with more than 10 member companies including its life insurance, property & casualty, banking, health insurance, technology, Good Doctors, and Peking University Medical, it opens to colleges and universities worldwide more than 3,000 campus recruitment positions and 1,500 intern positions, for a total of over 4,500 roles. Recruitment cities cover over 300 cities nationwide, and overall recruitment scale has further expanded compared with last year.

China PICC also maintains large-scale hiring, providing over 2,000 positions, covering more than a dozen subsidiaries such as PICC P&C, PICC Life, and PICC Health. Job categories span multiple areas including insurance, technology, investment, and more. China Life Group opens up ten categories of roles, including management trainees, financial technology, legal risk control, and medical and health, fully covering talent needs across various specialties. In addition, organizations such as Taikang Insurance Group and Sun Life Insurance Group also keep a steady recruiting cadence.

Looking across 2026 insurers’ spring campus recruitment, the most striking feature is the sharp increase in the “AI content” within the job openings.

PICC P&C adds cutting-edge positions such as artificial intelligence development, data security offense/defense, and green insurance products. The proportion of technology-related roles, agriculture insurance special positions, and positions related to inclusive finance exceeds 50%. The combined share of China Ping An’s technology, medical, and eldercare-related roles is approaching 30%. It opens roles including artificial intelligence, big data, algorithm engineering, basic medicine, clinical medicine, and more. Sun Life Insurance Group lists robotics engineering and data engineering as recruiting priorities, and specifically opens technology-line roles such as algorithm recruitment, large-model architecture, and big-data development. Taikang Insurance Group has launched the “Taikang AI Star Program,” focusing on hiring data intelligence and medical technology talent. In addition, CINDA Insurance has launched the LINK IT campus recruitment project, offering IT product manager roles and IT digital intelligence technology roles, targeting composite talent with digital thinking.

Compared with the same period last year, this year insurers’ technology positions not only surged in number, but also saw a substantial increase in professional granularity. High-end tech roles such as large-model architecture, algorithm engineering, and intelligent computing centers have come into view one after another.

Yang Fan told Times Weekly reporters that the surge in demand for technology roles reflects in depth that the insurance industry is accelerating the leap from “digitization” to “digital intelligence.” AI large models are no longer merely auxiliary tools for cost reduction and efficiency improvement; they are the core engines reshaping the insurance value chain. The transformation logic behind this trend lies in the fact that insurers are trying to leverage big data and algorithm advantages to restructure business processes in key areas such as precise marketing, intelligent underwriting, anti-fraud, and personalized product customization—thereby breaking through growth bottlenecks under traditional models. This marks the shift of insurance operation logic from the traditional “experience-driven” approach to the fully “data-driven” model, and technology talent has become a strategic asset for insurers to build differentiated competitive moats.

“Technology + medical eldercare” dual-engine drive, with talent cultivation mechanisms upgraded in parallel

Beyond the surge in technology talent, “medical eldercare” has become another major keyword in this year’s spring recruiting, highlighting insurers’ strategic intent to respond to population aging and build a “insurance + services” ecosystem closed loop.

Under the “integrated finance + medical eldercare” dual-engine strategy, in this spring recruiting cycle, China Ping An’s hiring not only includes a large number of technology roles, but also prioritizes recruiting medical and eldercare-related professionals such as basic medicine, clinical medicine, and health administration. As a pioneer in medical eldercare, Taikang Insurance Group focuses on hiring professionals in geriatric medicine, rehabilitation nursing, and health management, reserving specialized strength for its Taikang Home eldercare communities and medical institutions nationwide.

China Life lists “medical and health” as one of its top ten core hiring categories. PICC P&C also mentions its deployment of the “five major initiatives,” including pension/eldercare finance and inclusive finance. Through its PICC Life 2026 campus recruitment, it releases more than 380 positions, with broad professional needs covering areas such as medicine and actuarial science. For Taiping Ocean (P&C) Insurance’s spring recruitment for 2026, academic backgrounds in science, engineering, medicine, and law are listed as priority conditions.

Yu Fenghui, a senior research fellow at the Pango Think Tank, told Times Weekly reporters that currently the supply of composite talent in healthcare and eldercare services is relatively insufficient and cannot meet insurers’ rapidly growing needs. This kind of talent not only needs professional knowledge, but also must have cross-domain integrated capabilities, which raises the bar for talent cultivation. When attracting such talent, insurers face challenges including offering competitive compensation packages, creating good career development paths, and cultivating a work environment conducive to talent growth. In addition, strengthening school-enterprise cooperation and running customized training programs are also effective ways to increase the talent supply.

From the perspective of talent cultivation mechanisms, this year insurers generally strengthen “all-cycle” care for new employees. Specialized trainee programs such as China Life’s “Wing Yi” program, Ping An Life’s “New Star” program, and Sun Life Insurance’s “Eagle Nest” program help newly graduated students grow quickly into business backbones through three-year systematic training, rotations across multiple positions, and dedicated mentor coaching.

On compensation, multiple insurers offer competitive pay, and for core roles—especially technology, actuarial science, and investment—starting salaries are generally higher than the industry average. For example, for a domestic leading life insurer, the annual salary of management trainees at headquarters can reach 250,000–300,000 RMB. For the master’s-level financial technology role, the first-year salary can reach 220,000–280,000 RMB.

Yu Fenghui said that over the next two to three years, as technology advances and market demand changes, the talent competition landscape in the insurance industry may show several new trends: first, demand for technology talent will continue to rise; second, cross-industry composite talent will be more favored; third, the importance of talent cultivation and retention will be further highlighted. “These changes will drive insurance companies to continuously optimize their human resources strategies to adapt to the new market environment.”