Several listed insurance companies announce their 2025 performance: increasing allocation to equity assets, with total investment returns growing by nearly 60% at most.

The annual report season has begun, with three Hong Kong-listed insurance companies—Sunshine Insurance, AIA Group, and ZhongAn Online—already releasing their 2025 performance results. According to the summaries, all three insurers achieved steady growth in core metrics in 2025. Benefiting from a rebound in the capital markets, their investment returns were impressive, with ZhongAn Online leading with a 59.1% year-over-year increase in total investment income.

“2025’s combined underwriting cost ratio was 95.8%, marking the fifth consecutive year of underwriting profit. Additionally, benefiting from the market recovery, total investment income increased in 2025, and the bank segment turned profitable,” ZhongAn Online disclosed. The company reported an adjusted net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of RMB 1.8 billion in 2025, a roughly 198.3% increase from RMB 603 million in 2024.

In terms of investment performance, the annual report shows that in 2025, ZhongAn Online’s domestic insurance asset total investment income was RMB 2.124 billion, up 59.1% from 2024. The total investment yield was approximately 5.3%, an increase of 1.9 percentage points year-over-year.

As the first Hong Kong-listed insurer to release its annual report, Sunshine Insurance achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 6.31 billion in 2025, a 15.7% increase year-over-year. Its investment income also grew by double digits. By the end of 2025, Sunshine Insurance’s total investment assets reached RMB 640.2 billion, a 16.7% increase from the previous year; total investment income was RMB 25.23 billion, up 27.1%; comprehensive investment income was RMB 32.44 billion, an 8.9% increase; the total investment yield was 4.8%, up 0.5 percentage points; and the comprehensive investment yield was 6.1%.

According to AIA Group’s disclosures, the company’s after-tax operating profit surged to USD 7.136 billion in 2025, a 12% increase per share. One of the main components of operating profit is net investment income. In 2025, AIA’s investment returns on non-dividend and surplus assets grew by 4% to USD 6.104 billion from 2024. AIA explained that further share repurchases led to a reduction in investment returns on surplus assets, and lower interest rates moderated the growth of investment income.

Notably, all three insurers increased their allocations to equity assets in their asset portfolios.

By the end of 2025, ZhongAn Online’s insurance fund investment portfolio included RMB 9.345 billion in equities, equity funds, and unlisted company shares, accounting for 23.3% of total investments—up 2.6 percentage points from 2024. Stock investments increased from 4.3% to 7.6%.

ZhongAn Online stated in its annual report that 2025’s capital markets experienced volatile yet upward trends, with the Shanghai Composite Index rising about 18.4% for the year, reaching a near ten-year high. In equity investments, the company maintained a prudent investment approach, dynamically adjusting its secondary market equity investment ratio based on macroeconomic and asset return-risk assessments. It seized trading opportunities in the equity market, increasing its allocation, with the proportion of secondary stocks and stock funds rising by 3.1 percentage points to 9.1% as of December 31, 2025.

Sunshine Insurance also disclosed its equity investment strategy in the annual report—continuing to strengthen holdings in high-dividend, fundamentally sound value stocks in the secondary market to secure stable returns, while balancing the proportion of Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) and profit and loss (PL) assets to diversify market, industry, and style risks. In the primary market, the company focused on high-quality projects with stable returns and sound operations, actively expanding investment opportunities around national strategic emerging industries, and exploring innovations in product structures and cooperation models.

The report shows that by the end of 2025, Sunshine Insurance’s holdings of financial assets in equities amounted to RMB 1.3643 trillion, accounting for 21.4% of total investments—up 1.4 percentage points from the previous year. Stocks and equity funds accounted for 14.9% of total investments, an increase of 1.6 percentage points.

According to research from Dongwu Securities, AIA’s investment strategy in 2025 also shifted towards “reducing fixed income and increasing equities.” By the end of 2025, fixed income assets made up 67.5% of total investments, down 3.6 percentage points; equity assets accounted for 26.2%, up 3.8 percentage points. The overall investment yield reached 6.7%, an increase of 1.8 percentage points year-over-year.

Editor: Qian Xiaorui, Wang Xinyu

(Compiled from ZhongAn Online, Sunshine Insurance, AIA Group, Dongwu Securities)