China's insurance industry saw a sharp rise in profits in 2025, according to the annual performance reports of five major listed companies on the domestic A-share market.
The five listed major companies are Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, China Life, China Pacific Insurance, People's Insurance Company (Group) of China (PICC), and New China Life Insurance.
Reflecting the industry's consistent growth in recent years, data showed that the five insurers achieved a combined net profit attributable to shareholders of 425.3 billion yuan (about 61.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2025, marking a year-on-year increase of 22.4 percent.
Respectively, the net profits for PICC, China Life, CPIC, Ping An, and New China Life reached 46.6 billion yuan, 154 billion yuan, 53.5 billion yuan, 134.7 billion yuan, and 36.2 billion yuan.The figures are up 8.8 percent, 44.1 percent, 19 percent, 6.5 percent and 38.3 percent respectively year on year.
"Key development indicators, including premium income, revenue, net profit, and investment returns, have reached record highs. The original premium income for the whole year reached 738.3 billion yuan. The property and casualty insurance segment achieved an underwriting profit of 12.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 75.6 percent, with a combined ratio of 97.6 percent, the best level in recent years," said Ding Xiangqun, Chairman of PICC.
The sustained profit growth is closely linked to a significant boost in investment returns. Benefiting from a recovery in the capital markets last year, several insurers reported their highest total investment yield in a decade for 2025. China Life's total investment yield reached 6.09 percent, New China Life's hit 6.6 percent, while PICC and CPIC both achieved a total investment yield of 5.7 percent.
"Leveraging the inherent long-term nature and scale advantage of insurance funds, we actively promoted the entry of medium- and long-term capital into the market. In 2025, we strategically increased our equity investment allocation by nearly 5 percentage points. The overall investment scale exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, with a particular focus on technology stocks, which represent China's new quality productive forces," noted Liu Hui, Vice President of China Life.
During the earnings conferences, several insurers announced plans to increase dividend payouts.
"The company highly values shareholder returns and actively shares operational development achievements with investors. The total cash dividends for the interim and final distributions in 2025 will reach 2.73 yuan per share, totaling 8.5 billion yuan, an increase of over 600 million yuan or 7.9 percent compared to last year," said Yang Yucheng, Chairman at New China Life Insurance.
"For the full year, we plan to distribute dividends of 48.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent. Our dividend payouts have been growing consistently over the past decade, with cumulative dividends exceeding 370 billion yuan in the last ten years," said Fu Xin, Deputy General Manager of Ping An.
The insurance industry is currently in a critical period of business value transformation. Multiple insurers, noting that 2026 marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), said they plan to advance an development model that integrates insurance, services, and investment during the period.
"We will fully dedicate our efforts to serving the national development agenda, connect with diverse financing channels, and precisely support the construction of a modern industrial system. We aim to build a closed-loop for pension financial services and establish a comprehensive, high-quality, and sustainable ecosystem for health and elderly care services," said Fu Fan, Chairman of CPIC.
Five Chinese insurance giants post profit rise in 2025
