Make every effort to improve the claim payout rate for new energy vehicle insurance and increase the contribution of high-dividend stocks! China People's Insurance Management highlights key points

(Source: Beijing Business Today)

Total premium income has reached a new milestone of 700 billion yuan, the performance of the three major subsidiaries has improved across the board, and multiple key indicators have hit record highs. After submitting its 2025 “report card,” on March 27, China Life & Property Insurance (PICC) held its 2025 annual performance briefing in Beijing.

What plans are in place for the “15th Five-Year Plan and beyond” period? How can the claim loss ratio for new energy vehicle insurance be improved? How should it respond to the low-interest-rate environment? The management team of PICC answered these questions one by one.

Image source: PICC

Focus on core business and develop in a “misaligned” way

The data show that as of December 31, 2025, PICC achieved gross premiums written of 738.33 billion yuan for original insurance, up 6.5%; total premium income reached a new milestone of 700 billion yuan; insurance service income was 570.717 billion yuan, up 6.1%; and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 46.646 billion yuan, up 8.8%.

Based on the above performance, in 2025, PICC declared a full-year dividend per share of 0.22 yuan, up 22.2%. “Making efforts to achieve long-term and steady growth in dividends per share is a goal the company has always pursued. The company will deepen its insurance core business, continuously improve quality and efficiency, strengthen payment management, and enhance performance appraisal. By working in the same direction from both the liability side and the investment side, the company will strive to achieve continuous and steady growth in profitability, thereby repaying the trust and support of the broad investing public.” PICC President Zhao Peng made this commitment.

Against the backdrop of the major trends in the times, the opportunities and the development progress of the insurance industry are in sync. At the performance meeting, PICC Chairman Ding Xiangqun said, “The period of the ‘15th Five-Year Plan and beyond’ is the key period in which our country will consolidate the foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization and fully unleash its efforts, and the insurance industry will usher in a golden era of sustained and rapid growth.”

For this golden growth window, PICC has also set a clear direction. Ding Xiangqun said that PICC will strengthen strategic resolve, firmly and unswervingly follow the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics, and build on serving the development of a strong financial country. It will accelerate the development of a world-class insurance institution with prominent functions, efficient operations, clearly defined core businesses, modern governance, and international competitiveness.

When discussing the thinking behind its specific business layout, Ding Xiangqun said that PICC will focus even more on its core business and develop in a differentiated, misaligned manner. It will give full play to the “keystone” role of the property insurance line, build the “new engine” role of the life and health insurance line, strengthen the “driver” role of the investment line, and activate the “accelerator” role of the technology line—thereby forming a tiered development pattern with a clearer core business, more optimized layout, and a more balanced structure.

Non-auto insurance is expected to underwrite profit

PICC Property & Casualty is both the “elder statesman” of the entire property and casualty insurance market and the “keystone” for PICC’s performance. In 2025, PICC Property & Casualty achieved net profit of 40.307 billion yuan, up 21.4%; the combined ratio was 97.6%, improved by 0.9 percentage points year over year.

Lin Xianping, associate professor at Zhejiang University City College and standing deputy secretary-general of the China City Experts Think Tank Commission, analyzed that PICC Property & Casualty’s business cost optimization benefits from two main factors. On the one hand, the industry’s non-auto insurance “report and filing with uniform compliance” policy has been continuously deepened, effectively curbing malicious fee competition and directly driving the expense ratio down. On the other hand, the company has strengthened refined management and, leveraging digital tools, optimized risk control, underwriting, and claims handling processes. Coupled with the continuous optimization of its business structure, both the scale effect and risk-control capability have been leveraged simultaneously, further solidifying its cost advantages and making its leading position increasingly stable.

It can be said that PICC Property & Casualty’s combined ratio is already at a relatively low level. In the future, will it continue to optimize? Zhang Daoming, a member of the CPC committee of PICC and the temporary head of PICC Property & Casualty, said that it expects that in 2026 the combined ratio for auto insurance will remain basically stable compared with the combined ratio for auto insurance in 2025, while non-auto insurance will achieve underwriting profit.

At present, new energy vehicle insurance is undoubtedly one of the biggest variables in the P&C insurance market. In this regard, Zhang Daoming said the company will take multiple measures to improve the claim loss ratio for new energy vehicle insurance with full effort: first, it will continue to strengthen the team for actuarial pricing talent, innovate pricing factors, optimize risk pricing models, and enhance risk identification and differentiated pricing capabilities for new energy vehicle insurance. Relying on the company’s rich data advantages, it will extract multi-dimensional data on new energy vehicles for risk identification; second, it will focus on promoting cross-industry cooperation to steadily reduce the claim costs for new energy vehicles; third, it will improve personal injury claims handling measures.

“Currently, the proportion of personal injury cases is in a stage of slow increase, mainly related to driving habits of new cars. Based on past experience, the incident rate for personal injury cases will subsequently stabilize. The company will roll out eight types of intelligent tools, such as an intelligent review model for injury and disability, to support special-claims review and strengthen capabilities for preventing personal injury leakage and fraud. It will focus on fields including reviews for injury and disability, litigation, and medical matters, continuously optimize risk early-warning rules, and increase the effectiveness of loss reduction. It will carry out centralized risk control for personal injury, conduct nationwide centralized review of high-risk injury and disability cases, improve cost-control capability, and further promote a decline in personal injury claim payout costs.” Zhang Daoming analyzed.

Increase investment in high-dividend stocks

Insurance funds have long durations and large scale, and they come from an important source of long-term patient capital, supported by rich investment strategies and diversified investment toolkits. In terms of investments, in 2025 PICC’s total investment income was 92.323 billion yuan, up 12.4%; net investment income was 58.747 billion yuan, up 2.5%; total investment yield was 5.7%, and net investment yield was 3.6%.

For insurance companies, equity investments are the “decisive factor” for stabilizing and improving investment performance. Cai Zhiwei, vice president of PICC, said that in 2025, the company’s investment scale in OCI (fair value changes recorded in other comprehensive income) stocks increased by 158% compared with the beginning of 2025. Its share in investment assets rose by two percentage points. The average dividend yield of its OCI stock holdings reached 4.27%, further enhancing the contribution of dividend income to net investment returns.

In the face of investment pressure brought by the ongoing low-interest-rate environment, how to further optimize asset allocation and stabilize investment returns has become an important issue that insurance institutions urgently need to address.

When asked how to respond to the impact of the low-interest-rate environment, Cai Zhiwei said it will approach from three aspects: first, strengthen active management of fixed-income investments, “build a longer plank” and refine it to perfection. It will further enhance its judgment of the trajectory of medium- and long-term interest rates, continuously improve its ability for precise and phased trading to capture interest-rate peaks, increase the allocation to long-duration bonds, and while narrowing the duration gap, obtain stable coupon income to increase the contribution of fixed-income assets to returns; second, increase the contribution of high-dividend stocks to net investment returns; third, drive the transformation of alternative investments and build a new “growth engine” to obtain stable returns. Focusing on making debt investments steady, strengthening equity, optimizing tangible assets, and proactively exploring alternative investment opportunities with stable cash returns.

Li Xiumei, a reporter from Beijing Business Today

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