At the critical point following the beginning of the “1455” intake and the “155” opening, china life insurance inc. (hereinafter referred to as “chinese life”), submitted a full-fledged performance response. As china's life director, zheilian, said at a performance release on 26 march: “the company has once again achieved its full scope, value, speed, quality, structure, efficiency, safety and security”
Cai shirang said: “this report card reflects not only economic but also social values.” this performance is summarized in three “more” terms:
One is wider coverage. In 2025, the number of effective life insurance policies in china reached 327 million, provided more than 3 billion services throughout the year, awarded more than hundreds of billions of yuan, delivered the broadest coverage and quality of services, and protected people's lives。
The second is the momentum. In 2025, chinese lives continued to grow strongly on high platforms and in broad terms, with total premiums and new business values rising at a high rate in the same period since 2018, achieving the best investment performance in recent years, a new level of profitability, a strong domestic lead, and a number of indicators that have become world-class。
Three is more resilient. While china's operations are growing rapidly, the structure of its operations is fairly balanced, the cost of operating from all sources has improved significantly, and the efficiency of its production continues to improve。
With balanced growth in the management of assets, the building of a network of channels, the surge in investment earnings, the optimization of the premium structure and the multi-dimensional growth of business values, china’s life has embarked on a new stage of high-quality development of higher quality, better-structured and more resilient quality, moving steadily towards a world-class life insurance company with a chinese identity。
There's a solid foundation for the business
In 2025, a new milestone in cross-cutting development was achieved in chinese life, with a total premium of over 700 billion yuan. At the end of the reporting period, the company's insurance premiums totalled $729,887 million and became the country's first life insurance company to reach a 700 billion-dollar platform。
The performance report also shows that during the “1455” period, china's total life assets spanned three trillions of major tariffs, reaching 7. 59 trillion yuan by the end of 2025; that it contained a value of 1. 47 trillion yuan, which was first in the industry; and that a year's new business value of 45,752 million yuan, a significant increase of 35. 7 per cent over the same period, a growth rate of 35. 7 per cent over the same period since 2018, with a steady consolidation of both size and value。
This cross-cutting development has benefited from the steady growth of channels and product systems。
Over the past year, the chinese life-risk channel has been fully utilized as the main channel for value contributions. The total contribution from the channel amounted to 55,179 million yuan, an increase of 4. 3 per cent over the same period, of which 4,42. 39 billion yuan were renewed, an increase of 7. 9 per cent over the same period. The value of the year's operations amounted to $39. 3 billion, an increase of 25. 5 per cent over the previous year and a value contribution of 85. 9 per cent。
The transformation of the individual workforce towards professionalization, specialization and rejuvenation has accelerated and the reform of the marketing system has deepened. The data show that, by the end of 2025, there was 587,000 personnel for each venture, an increase of 40 per cent over the same period。
Silver insurance channels have significantly increased the size of premiums, effectively contributing to overall performance growth。
In 2025, the total premium on the silver-sourced insurance system was $11. 87 billion, an increase of 45. 5 per cent over the same period; the value of the new business was $6. 45 billion a year, an increase of 169. 3 per cent; the premium on the new policy was $58. 51 billion, an increase of 55. 7 per cent over the same period, and the contribution to the company's new policy premiums was 25 per cent; and the premium on renewal increased by 13. 1 per cent each year, an increase of 41 per cent from the first-year contribution and a significant increase in the sale of floating-yield products。
China's life expectancy is set in full, with double-digit growth in net operations, new single-source networks and star-level networks. At the same time, the focus was on professionalization, with the client manager increasing his first delivery capacity by 53. 7 per cent over the previous year。
According to the presentation by the assistant president and general actuary of china, the upgrading of china's assets and liabilities over the life of china in 2025 was achieved in four main areas: the simultaneous advancement of the floating-income business transformation, increased equity investment and improved account refinement; the integrated consideration of long-term scientific management of liabilities and long-term flexibility in asset management, with a gap of less than 1. 5 years; and the active response to changes in market interest rates, the co-generation of planned interest rate adjustments in products and the placement of assets on the basis of merit, and the reduction of the guaranteed cost of new business liabilities by more than 60 basis points; and the consolidation and stabilization of value creation and internal capital creation capacity。
With the scaling-up of premiums and the effectiveness of professionalization, the overall operational effectiveness of life in china has steadily increased, and solvency and global market position have been steadily consolidated. The combined solvency adequacy rate was 174. 01 per cent and the core solvency rate was 128. 77 per cent, with continued adequacy. Total market value, life insurance and health insurance reserves are ranked first among global life insurance companies。
Investing in more patient capital makes a difference
At present, capital markets are stable, and chinese people live their lives with the full advantage of venture capital as long-term capital and patient capital, and actively pursue medium- and long-term capital entry. By the end of 2025, the company had invested more than rmb 1. 2 trillion in open market equity, an increase of over rmb 45 billion over the beginning of the year。
By responding to the country's strategic direction, taking advantage of capital market opportunities and flexible asset allocation, china has achieved its best investment performance in recent years: total investment returns amounted to $38,764 million, an increase of 25. 8 per cent over the same period; total investment returns were 6. 09 per cent, an increase of 59 basis points over the same period. The two-way growth of the main business and investment business led to a net profit of rmb 14. 778 billion attributable to the shareholders of the parent company, with a strong growth of 44. 1 per cent based on a high base figure。
Turning to the strategic thrust of the chinese life investment business, liu qian, vice president of china and secretary of the board of directors, summarized it as follows: “the winner of the increase in returns on equity investments, the solid collection of investments is the ballast stone of stable returns, and the alternative investment is the growth pole of the abundant returns.”
According to his presentation, life in china was built by strategically increasing the proportion of equity assets, accumulating solid harvests of super-long-term high-quality assets, and exploiting the potential of alternative investment depths, in a volatile market environment。
In 2025, china's share of investment in life-related strategic equity promotion was nearly 5 percentage points, and total equity investment in assets was 1. 2 trillion yuan. The multi-cyclical increase in long-term debt allocation has now accumulated 3 trillion long-term bonds, pushing the negative-term matching to a better level and down to the interest-disbursing category with a consolidation strategy. The construction of a full life cycle alternative investment ecology, with alternative investment on a total scale of more than trillion yuan, opens the long-term space for value-added while coping with low interest rate environments。
As liu said, “insurance investments need to span 20, 30, or even 50 years, and the water flows ahead of us, and the battle is endless. Long-term finance, patient capital will pass the cycle in such deep, long-term persistence.”
On the other hand, as a typical representative of patient capital, life in china continues to inject patient capital into creative enterprises. The main instruments include direct equity investments focused on core assets, pe funds to map emerging industries, innovative tools to help upgrade industries, focusing on investment opportunities in three main directions: artificial intelligence and semiconductors, greater health and biotechnology, and green energy and new infrastructure。
“the `fifty-five' plan opens up broad strategic space for equity investment in insurance funds. The nine strategic new industries, the six future industries, represent the core direction of china’s economy’s new and old dynamic energy transformation, and the breeding ground for future core assets. Wherever the future of china is represented, our long-term funding will flow.” according to liu, “in 2026 and `155, the life of china will continue to contribute to the growth of new and emerging industries around the country, as well as to the deployment of prospective industries, using diversified instruments such as m & as funds, s funds and pe funds. Life in china will serve china's economy in a new and positive direction, creating sustainable long-term value for shareholders and customers.”
It's policy-oriented
From “investment” to “investment in people”, the concept of insurance is undergoing a profound shift. This shift is also clearly echoed at the policy level。
On 25 march 2025, the nco issued its opinions on accelerating the establishment of a long-term care insurance system, which offers broad development space. In his presentation on performance, he said: “in the process of promoting the system, chinese life will take on the responsibility of promoting it, playing its role as a geese, actively participating in its promotion and striving to serve the well-being of society.”
Since 2016, china has been involved in over 70 long-term care insurance pilot projects, with a wealth of experience and professional competence: first, full-chain capacity, resulting in a comprehensive and over-professional business management system; second, relying on institutional and networking advantages, creating a wide-ranging, highly qualified and competent professional service team; and third, providing a technical solution for a full-process, multi-business scenario through the development of an intelligent long-term care insurance management information system。
While deeply involved in the long-term care insurance pilot, china's life expectancy has continued to grow in the area of health, promoting robust growth in health insurance operations. In 2025, companies managed to generate more than rmb 120 billion in health insurance premiums through diversified business layouts and refined service delivery, with health insurance taking the lead。
As a follow-up to the development of the business health risks, he identified four core directions for the future: the first is to diversify the supply of products on a continuous basis, to match the needs of the population for differentiated coverage throughout the life cycle, to optimize risk management in parallel, and to broaden coverage; the second is to deepen the integration of risky clothing, integrate health management resources, advance the upgrading of the “insurance+services” function, and build an ecosystem of the whole-process health management; the third is to leverage the advantages of full-source sales and the layout of the whole area, and to improve the ability of product services to reach and match accuracy; and the fourth is to strengthen the intellectual capacity to optimize the efficiency of operations and upgrade the quality of services and provide the population with better-temperature health security。
In the area of welfare services, life expectancy in china has also accelerated. Zhang xinwoo, assistant to the president, explained that in 2025, the company had been building up an ecological system that would continue to diversify its supply and create a national life-care service in two ways:
The first is “insurance + old age”, which takes advantage of the long-term soundness of insurance funds, actively promotes service models such as old-age care in ccrc cities, and 20 institutional old-age programmes in 16 cities, as well as the introduction of home-based old-age products, the exploration of home-based old-age services and the active provision of services to the cash economy。
The second is “insurance + health”, which integrates internal and external resources and establishes a system of health services covering pre-emptive, in-service and ex-post health care, which provides diversified services ranging from medical examination to rehabilitation, focusing on the health needs of clients。
On that basis, he added three additional priorities: the first is to speed up the development of old-age security services for old-age and old-age age groups, and to provide multi-term and multi-form old-age financial products to meet the need for full life-cycle old-age security, while raising the level of old-age risk protection, developing health insurance, accident insurance and improved accessibility and coverage for older persons; the second is to optimize the system of old-age services, introducing the model of old-age care in app, opening a “one-inch call for older persons” with a telephone service; the next step is to provide priority care and escort services for older persons; and the third is to optimize the service of old-age care through deep cultivation of the “insurance + rehabilitation” ecology, with the long-term advantages of insurance funding, and to promote investment in high-quality projects in such areas as health projects, silver development industries, medical health and emerging medical technologies, in partnership with industry。
Looking to the future, “2026 is the beginning of the `fifty-five' year, and we are confident and capable of maintaining a steady pace of development, building on the record highs of many indicators, contributing to sustained optimization of business structures, further enhancement of value creation capabilities, and a new stage in the quality structure and sustainability of growth.” cai shellan says。
In his view, the next five years would continue to be a promising golden strategic opportunity for chinese life, with an economic environment dividend, a policy dividend, a demand dividend and a “four dividends” for science and technology。
“the strategic objective of chinese life in the `155' period is to accelerate the establishment of a chinese-class world-class life insurance company.” tsai shirang said: “in order to achieve this, we will continue to work in three main areas: the enhancement of value creation capabilities for long-cycle, cross-cycle cycles; the construction of future-oriented digital intellectual capabilities; and the continuous enhancement of risk prevention and control capabilities.”
China's life president li myung-gwang added that in the future he will be able to move forward with the transformation of the digital mind, the upgrading of the business management model, the development of the entire channel of synergy, the further development of customer operations and the building of investment capacity, and the promotion of a new stage in the corporate service economy. The geese are in a more stable position, with steady growth in their scale, and the firm building of a security development barrier that will accelerate progress towards china's leading world life insurance company。
