Setting the tone for the next five years, China Life Insurance unveils its "Stepping Up" roadmap

A joint line linking Beijing and Hong Kong, the annual performance briefing for China Life Insurance Company Limited (hereinafter referred to as “China Life”) was held as scheduled on March 26. In the just-completed 2025, this life insurer “leading flagship” turned in a set of results—characterized by its Chairman Cai Xiliang as “a perfect score across the board” (“满堂红”): total premium income crossed the 700 billion yuan mark for the first time, net profit increased by 44.1% on top of a high base, and both total assets and investment assets surpassed 7.4 trillion yuan. This series of figures together sketches China Life’s solid tracks in the closing year of the “14th Five-Year Plan.”

As the spotlight shifts from past achievements toward an unknown road ahead, the market is paying even more attention to how this industry “giant” will plan the next five-year period. Especially in the “15th Five-Year Plan Outline,” the term “insurance” is mentioned 27 times; from commercial health insurance to long-term care insurance, policy dividends and needs of the times intertwine into a vast network. How will China Life “step up”? At the results briefing, a clear roadmap is unfolding—from judgments about development from Cai Xiliang’s “four major dividends,” to President Li Mingguang’s detailed breakdown of growth across various channels, and then to Vice President Liu Hui’s positioning of investment strategy as the “decisive factors.”

The dialectic of “stability” and “progress”: from “a perfect score across the board” to the “golden period”

Cai Xiliang summarized China Life’s 2025 performance with three words—“stability” in terms of the overall framework, “momentum” in terms of progress, and “resilience” in terms of characteristics.

This “quality” is also more intuitively reflected in the data: total premium income of 729.887 billion yuan, making the company the first enterprise in the industry to reach the 700 billion yuan platform; 154.078 billion yuan in net profit attributable to shareholders, achieving strong growth of 44.1% on a high base; and total market value exceeding one trillion yuan, placing it firmly at the top spot globally among life insurers by market cap.

These achievements were not made on easy ground. Cai Xiliang candidly stated at the performance briefing that the past year was “one in which multiple pressures intertwined and stacked,” but the final outcome was a “full-fledged” answer sheet.

The labels of “stability” and “progress” are also particularly evident at the level of channel development. As the “core base” for value creation, the individual insurance channel also delivered a steady set of results in 2025: total premium income of 551.79 billion yuan, up 4.3% year over year; and new business value in one year achieved rapid growth of 25.5%, reaching 39.299 billion yuan.

Behind this is the continuous optimization of team structure. The data shows that in 2025, China Life’s individual insurance channel saw同比 growth in增量人员 (incremental staff) of 40%, and the 13-month retention rate also improved by 2.2 percentage points. This means more high-quality, resilient new forces are flowing in—laying the groundwork for future growth. When discussing channel development, the company’s President Li Mingguang said that among all sales channels, the individual insurance channel gives full play to the role of the main channel, and its sustainable development capability is solid. With the individual insurance channel as its core base, China Life allows multiple channels to flourish—such as bank insurance and group insurance—while continuously improving the level of specialized channel operation, strengthening the ability to provide product and service supply, fully matching and meeting customers’ diverse insurance protection needs for annuities, life insurance, and health insurance, among others, thereby forming a favorable pattern of “multiple points of support and multi-polar driving.”

Looking ahead to the next five years, Cai Xiliang said: “Although the external environment remains complex and changeable, we believe that the next five years will still be a golden strategic opportunity period for China Life.” He summarized this confidence as “four major dividends”: an economic environment dividend, a policy dividend, a demand dividend, and a technology dividend.

Among them, the signal from the policy dividend is the strongest—the “15th Five-Year Plan Outline” devotes extensive coverage to the insurance industry, which the company views as a “major opportunity” for the industry. In response, China Life’s strategic goals are also clearly defined: accelerating the building of a world-class life insurer with Chinese characteristics. To that end, the company will focus on forging three core capabilities: value creation capability to cross cycles over a long duration, digital capability oriented toward the future, and continuously strengthening risk prevention and control capability—so as to ensure it proceeds steadily in a complex and ever-changing environment.

In the view of financial commentator Guo Shiliang, China Life turned in a satisfactory set of results. Whether it is revenue and net profit, or investment return rates, there is growth to varying degrees, especially the total dividend amount of 24.195 billion yuan, up 31.7% year over year. This reflects that China Life has increased the importance it places on shareholders. Behind performance growth at insurance companies, it has begun to further enhance its dividend capacity—boosting investment attractiveness through methods such as increasing cash dividends, and so on.

“The anchor” and the “decisive factors”: the tactics of offense and defense of trillion-yuan capital

For China Life, with its “large scale,” every decision on the investment side tugs at the market’s nerves.

In 2025, the company’s total investment return reached 387.694 billion yuan, up 25.8% year over year. Its total investment return rate was 6.09%, achieving what is among its best investment performance in recent years.

This result comes from precisely grasping the “anchor” and the “decisive factors.”

“Equity investment is the decisive factor for increasing returns; fixed-income investment is the anchor for stable returns; and alternative investment is the growth engine for enriching returns.” At the performance briefing, Liu Hui distilled the company’s “investment philosophy” into a single sentence like this. When it comes to the 2025 operations in particular, she revealed that the company actively promoted mid- to long-term funds entering the market, strategically increased its equity investment proportion by 5 percentage points, and focused on new quality productive forces and high-dividend-quality assets. The result of this strategy is that, as of the end of 2025, the size of the company’s equity investments in the public market already exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan—up 450 billion yuan from the beginning of the year—becoming a key engine behind the sharp rise in investment returns.

At the same time, fixed-income investments continued to play the role of a stabilizer. Over the years, the company has kept allocating to long-duration bonds and high-quality alternative assets, building a solid “base holding.” In a low interest rate environment, it further strengthened strategic allocation and active management, and liability-asset matching continued to be optimized—making the fixed-income base holding increasingly solid. In addition, by fully leveraging the advantages of long-term capital and patient capital, increasing product innovation and strategy innovation, and building an alternative investment ecosystem across all product types and all life-cycle stages, its overall alternative investment scale exceeded one trillion yuan, opening up space for long-term growth.

Facing fluctuations in global geopolitical risk, Liu Hui said that at present China Life has a very small exposure to overseas investments; it accounts for less than 0.89% of total assets, and the company has not participated in investments in private credit bonds. As insurance funds that cross cycles, she emphasized that “the flow doesn’t fight for a moment; what it fights for is an unceasing, surging flow.” The company will dynamically adjust its asset allocation strategy, seize opportunities amid market volatility, and allocate to high-quality core assets to achieve long-term, steady investment performance.

In the eyes of industry insiders, this kind of resolve to “respond to changing circumstances without changing principles” is precisely the confidence behind patient capital in crossing cycles. Regarding China Life’s investment performance over the past year, Jiang Han, a senior research fellow at Pangu Think Tank, said: First, the total investment return rate increased to 6.09%, which is truly remarkable in a complex and changeable market environment; this benefits from its commitment to long-term investing and value investing, as well as professional capabilities to dynamically optimize broad asset allocation. Second, the size of equity investment exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan not only thickened returns, but also played a demonstration effect of long-term funds entering the market, reflecting the responsibility and担当 of a central state-owned enterprise.

A new track for the “silver-haired” population: China Life’s practice in long-term care insurance

When the “silver-haired wave” intersects with “Healthy China,” retirement and health become era-defining issues that the insurance industry must answer.

On March 25, the General Offices of the CPC and the State Council issued the “Opinions on Accelerating the Establishment of a Long-Term Care Insurance System,” which mentions that within about three years, arrangements for a system spanning urban and rural areas will basically be established; mechanisms for sharing responsibilities in funding-raising and mechanisms for fair and appropriately balanced benefit protection will be gradually improved; scientific and standardized management and operating mechanisms will basically take shape; and a long-term care insurance system suited to China’s basic national conditions will be basically established.

At the performance briefing, China Life responded to this national-level “task sheet” with a set of data.

“Since 2016, the company has actively participated in pilot projects for more than 70 long-term care insurance programs.” China Life’s Assistant President and Chief Actuary Hou Jin disclosed the company’s long-term deep cultivation in the long-term care insurance field.

She explained that the company has accumulated professional capabilities and rich experience. First, the company has the ability to undertake long-term care insurance work across the full chain, forming a management and operation system that covers services comprehensively and is professionally sound. Second, by leveraging the advantages of institutions and branch outlets, it has assembled professional service teams with wide coverage, high quality, and strong capabilities, enabling it to provide insured people with high-quality long-term care insurance service experiences. Third, through digital empowerment, it has built China Life’s smart long-term care insurance management information system, which can provide technical solutions for long-term care insurance that support full-process, multi-business scenarios.

This accumulation gives China Life strong confidence when facing new policy opportunities. At the meeting, Hou Jin said that the company will, with a responsible corporate attitude, high-quality service supply, and professional operational management, actively contribute China Life’s strength to ensure that long-term care insurance is implemented in a sound, orderly manner.

In the view of industry insiders, this is not only a response to policy calls, but also a natural extension of its big health and big elderly-care sector.

It is understood that in the “insurance + elderly care” segment, the company has already laid out 20 institutional elderly-care projects in 16 cities including Beijing, Tianjin, and Chengdu, and has launched China Life’s “Suixinju” (Find Your Ease) first batch of four travel-and-care elderly-care products. It is actively exploring the establishment of home-based elderly-care service systems to meet customers’ diverse elderly-care needs and empower the development of its insurance core business.

As Cai Xiliang said, China’s insurance depth and density are only about 60% of the global average; the proportion of insurance industry total assets in the financial industry’s total assets is less than 10%; and the development of the third pillar is still at the starting stage, with scale share and replacement rates still lower than those in developed markets. There is also substantial room for improvement in the share of commercial health insurance claims in total healthcare expenditures. People’s needs for high-quality health, elderly care, and wealth management are becoming more urgent, providing broad space for industry development. This is both a “demand dividend” and the responsibility of China Life. From participating and piloting more than 70 long-term care insurance projects to refocusing strategically after total premiums surpassed 700 billion yuan, China Life is trying to transform its insight into the “silver-haired” issue into a solid force that serves the overall interests of the country, enhances people’s well-being, and lays a layer of warm undertone for its path to “step up” under the “15th Five-Year Plan.”

Beijing Business Daily reporter Hu Yongxin