In 2025, new energy vehicle insurance premiums rose 34.8% year-on-year, and underwriting losses fell to 56 billion yuan.

Reporter Yang Xiaohan

Recently, the China Association of Actuaries and China Banking and Insurance Information Technology Management Co., Ltd. jointly released the relevant claims payment information for our country’s new energy vehicle insurance in 2025.

According to the data, in 2025, China’s insurance industry underwrote 43.58 million new energy vehicles, up by 12.48 million from 2024, a growth of 40.1%. Full-year premium income was RMB 190 billion, up 34.8% year over year, providing risk protection of RMB 159 trillion, up 50%; underwriting losses were RMB 5.6 billion, improving by RMB 0.1 billion year over year; and the combined loss ratio fell by 1.3 percentage points year over year.

Zhou Jin, a partner at Tianzhi International Financial Industry Consulting, said that in 2025, new energy vehicle insurance overall showed a situation of “rapid growth in scale, with underwriting losses clearly improving.” On the one hand, as new energy vehicle sales of new cars and vehicle ownership increased, premium income and underwriting scale grew significantly; on the other hand, as top insurers improved underwriting quality and efficiency and partly achieved underwriting profitability, the industry’s overall underwriting losses decreased to some extent.

The industry’s loss situation in new energy vehicle insurance is driven by multiple factors, including objective factors such as high repair costs for new energy vehicles and a high claim frequency, as well as structural constraints such as insufficient historical data accumulation at the early stage of market development and the fact that risk control models and the vehicle repair ecosystem are not yet sufficiently developed.

Zhang Lei, founder and CEO of Cheche Technology, believes that although the new energy vehicle insurance industry still shows overall losses, to achieve sustained and stable underwriting profitability, the industry currently faces four main challenges: first, repair and claims costs are relatively high. The replacement costs for core components such as the three-electric system in new energy vehicles are high and repair cycles are long. Combined with the fact that the spare parts supply ecosystem for some new models has not yet fully matured and that repair standards are not uniform, the overall loss/claims ratio remains high; second, it is difficult to control risks in commercial operating scenarios, as the claim frequency for commercial vehicles is far higher than for passenger vehicles; third, new energy vehicle insurance started recently, so there is insufficient historical risk data, and risk pricing and data accumulation are still being improved; fourth, the operating capabilities of small and mid-sized insurers are relatively weak.

Although the new energy vehicle insurance industry still exhibits overall losses, based on the disclosed information, several leading insurers have gradually moved into the profit-making range through methods such as data accumulation and fine-grained pricing capability.

For example, Ping An’s 2025 annual report shows that it underwrote 12.84 million new energy vehicles, up 44.8%; original insurance premium income for new energy vehicle insurance was RMB 1.59M, up 39.0%; and across the year, its new energy vehicle insurance business achieved underwriting profit, with profitability improving steadily.

At the performance release conference for China Taiping 2025, management of China Taiping stated that the company’s new energy vehicle insurance has entered a profitability space, and the combined loss ratio after integrating passenger and commercial vehicles is below 100%.

At the performance release conference for PICC 2025, Zhang Daoming, a member of the CPC committee of PICC and the CPC committee secretary of PICC Property and Casualty, stated that in 2024, the company’s new energy vehicle insurance had already reported a decline in the claims ratio. In 2025, based on this, the claims ratio continued to decline, and the overall claims ratio has improved to a certain extent. In particular, the accident/claim frequency of new energy vehicles has continued to fall.

“The improvement in underwriting losses for new energy vehicle insurance is a systematic project that requires the joint participation of the OEM manufacturers, insurers, and consumers.” Zhou Jin said that OEM manufacturers need to改造 manufacturing processes and reduce repair costs, and share data with insurers; insurers need to accumulate data and provide risk control and pricing capabilities, and connect the “data–model–service” closed-loop mode; and consumers need to accept more risk factors based on driver characteristics and pricing models based on driving behavior.

Looking ahead, Zhang Lei said that insurers can, by leveraging intelligent connected vehicle data, build more granular risk profiles and dynamic pricing models, establish a vehicle repair ecosystem with automakers, and strengthen risk prevention and control measures, thereby shifting from passive claims payment to active loss prevention, and achieving cost reduction and efficiency improvement on the claims side.

(Editor: Wen Jing)

Keywords:

                                                            New energy vehicles
                                                            Insurance