Made a killing off the stock market! Five major insurers are expected to rake in 425.2 billion yuan in 2025, smashing the previous historical record.

Ask AI · How do insurance companies balance high returns and high volatility challenges under the new accounting standards?

“China Life, Ping An, PICC, China Pacific Insurance, and New China Insurance collectively achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 425.29B yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 22.4%, setting a new record again.”

In 2025, the annual reports of the five major listed insurance companies in A-shares have all been released. China Life, Ping An, PICC, China Pacific Insurance, and New China Insurance collectively achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 425.29B yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.4%, once again breaking the historical record.

Behind this impressive performance is the active response of insurance funds to policy guidance, significantly increasing the proportion of equity investments, precisely seizing the opportunities of a market rebound, and ultimately reaping substantial returns.

But at the same time, the new accounting standards amplify market fluctuations, with some insurers experiencing losses in the fourth quarter, bringing a new challenge of “high returns, high volatility” to the industry.

01

Profitability All Soars

Investment Side Becomes the Biggest Driver

From individual performance, all five major insurers achieved year-on-year positive growth in net profit, with the industry’s leading effect becoming increasingly prominent.

Among them, China Life leads the industry with a net profit attributable to shareholders of 154.08B yuan, a significant increase of 44.1% year-on-year; Ping An follows closely with a net profit of 134.78B yuan, up 6.5%; China Pacific Insurance, PICC, and New China Insurance achieved net profits of 53.51B yuan, 46.65B yuan, and 36.28B yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth of 19%, 8.8%, and 38.3%, forming a generally positive trend across the board.

The core driver supporting the performance explosion comes from the comprehensive breakout on the investment side.

Several insurers’ total investment returns hit their best levels in recent years: China Life’s total investment income reached 387.69B yuan, up 25.8%, with a total investment yield of 6.09%; New China Insurance’s total investment income was 104.33B yuan, up 30.9%, with a yield of 6.6%; PICC’s total investment income was 92.32B yuan, also hitting a record high.

Against the backdrop of policy encouragement for long-term funds to enter the market, insurers generally increased their holdings of equity assets significantly, which became a key “winning move” to boost investment returns.

By the end of 2025, the combined stock investment amount of the five major insurers reached 2.5 trillion yuan, an increase of over 1 trillion yuan from the previous year, with a growth rate of 75.2%; the proportion of stock investments in investment assets also rose sharply from 7.8% to 12.2%.

Specifically, Ping An’s stock and equity fund investments totaled 1.24 trillion yuan, accounting for 19.2%, up 9.3 percentage points from the previous year; China Life’s public market equity investments exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, with the allocation ratio of stock funds rising to 16.89%; China Pacific Insurance’s equity proportion was 13.4%; PICC’s net addition to A-shares over the year exceeded 40 billion yuan, with the equity ratio rising to 13.3%; New China Insurance’s stock and fund investments accounted for 21.2% of its assets.

02

High Returns Come with High Volatility

New Accounting Standards Amplify Cyclical Impact

While achieving record-high performance, the industry also faced a rare situation for the first time: “annual profit surge, single-quarter significant loss.”

In Q4 2025, China Life reported a loss of 13.7 billion yuan in the quarter, and PICC reported a loss of 25k yuan; Ping An and New China Insurance saw their quarterly profits decline year-on-year, with only China Pacific Insurance achieving positive growth.

Market reactions were extremely sensitive; after some companies disclosed their financial reports, their stock prices did not rise but fell, reflecting the capital market’s high concern over the volatility of insurers’ performance.

The main reasons for increased volatility are twofold. First, the significantly increased equity holdings have greatly heightened insurers’ sensitivity to stock market fluctuations; second, after the implementation of the new accounting standards (including new financial instrument standards and new insurance contract standards), a large number of equity assets are classified as FVTPL (measured at fair value with changes recognized in current profit or loss), so asset value fluctuations are directly and immediately reflected in current profits.

Take China Life as an example: its TPL-type stock holdings exceed 600 billion yuan, and slight market fluctuations can trigger profit changes of hundreds of billions; China PICC’s TPL-type stock holdings also increased sharply from 33 billion to 95.7 billion yuan, with a significant rise in sensitivity to performance.

Industry insiders and company executives generally believe that life insurance operations inherently have long-cycle and cross-cycle characteristics. Short-term fluctuations are normal reflections of the capital market, and should not be over-interpreted based on quarterly data. The long-term value and investment capacity of insurers should be viewed over a longer horizon.

03

Liability Side Also Recovers Simultaneously

High Growth in Life NBV, Cost Optimization in Property & Casualty

In addition to the investment breakout, the liability side also stabilizes and improves simultaneously, forming a “dual-drive” pattern of “assets and liabilities.”

The new business value (NBV) of life insurance achieved double-digit growth across the board, with PICC Life leading with a 64.5% increase; New China Insurance, China Pacific Insurance, China Life, and Ping An achieved growth of 57.4%, 40.1%, 35.7%, and 29.3% respectively.

The core driver of this growth is the explosive growth of bancassurance channels. China Life’s bancassurance total premiums reached 10k yuan, up 45.5% year-on-year, with new single premiums of 12.4k yuan, up 95.7%; the number of customer managers reached 20k, with per-capita productivity up 53.7%; Ping An’s bancassurance new business value increased by 138.0% year-on-year, with the contribution ratio rising to 34%; China Pacific Insurance’s bancassurance premiums grew 46.4%, with new business value up 102.7%; New China Insurance’s bancassurance new business value increased by 137.08%, with channel share surpassing individual insurance for the first time; PICC Life’s bancassurance new business value grew 64.5% year-on-year.

The property & casualty sector shows a good trend of cost optimization and profit improvement. The combined cost ratios of the “big three” property & casualty insurers all fell below 98%, with Ping An Property & Casualty at 96.8%, China Pacific Property & Casualty at 97.5%, and PICC Property & Casualty at 97.6%.

Cost reductions are partly due to fewer natural disasters and reduced claims pressure, and partly thanks to refined management and channel expense controls.

04

Conclusion

2025 is a year of great profitability for listed insurers and a key year for industry transformation.

Increasing equity investments has brought insurers their best investment returns in recent years but also made performance volatility more apparent; under the triple pressures of new accounting standards, low interest rates, and channel transformation, insurers are gradually shifting from “scale-driven” to “value-driven and long-term” development.