Ping An of China Vice Chief Investment Officer Lu Haoyang: Continue to steadily increase the proportion of equity allocation and optimize the fixed income fundamentals

Securities Times reporter Yang Qingwan

In a low-interest-rate environment, insurance funds with a large scale have actively entered the market, delivering solid investment returns last year. Taking China Ping An as an example, the company proactively increased its allocation to equity investments; in 2025, its total comprehensive investment return rate was 6.3%, up 0.5 percentage points year over year. In addition, OCI (other comprehensive income) stocks worth over 90 billion yuan were in a paper gain position, recorded in net assets and not reflected in net profit.

With volatility in the capital markets intensifying recently, while increasing the allocation proportion to equity assets, how should investors optimize and adjust their investment strategy? Do dividend-style assets such as those in banking, insurance, power, and utilities still have allocation value? For the fixed-income investment “core base” that accounts for about 70% of total assets, how should investors balance duration and returns?

With these questions in mind, Securities Times reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Lu Haoyang, deputy chief investment officer of China Ping An. Lu Haoyang said that short-term market volatility will not change the long-term trend. In the future, while optimizing the fixed-income core base, China Ping An will continue to steadily increase the equity allocation ratio, adopting a barbell-style structure that allocates stable, high-dividend stocks and growth stocks in the new-quality productive forces sector.

Short-term volatility won’t change the long-term trend

Data show that at the end of 2025, China Ping An’s investment balance in stocks and equity funds reached 1.24 trillion yuan, accounting for 19.2% of its investment assets, up 9.3 percentage points from 2024.

In an interview with Securities Times reporter, Lu Haoyang said that in an environment of long-term low interest rates and insufficient high-quality assets, increasing the allocation of equity assets by insurance funds is the inevitable path to achieve asset-liability duration matching and alleviate the pressure from spread losses.

“Market short-term volatility doesn’t change the long-term trend. We will still steadily increase the equity allocation ratio.” Lu Haoyang said. He noted that the capital market is in an important stage of deepening reforms and development. Strategic initiatives such as economic structure transformation and upgrading, and cultivating new-quality productive forces, are continuing to advance, laying a solid foundation for the stock market’s long-term positive outlook.

He mentioned three key structural directions to focus on: first, hard technology and high-end manufacturing sectors, including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and machinery and equipment; second, areas related to green low-carbon and energy security, including traditional energy, new energy, and power equipment; third, sectors for consumption upgrading and people’s livelihood services, with additional investment in the services consumption space. In the future, the company will follow its main planning line, dynamically evaluate the timing of policy implementation and the industry’s execution level, prudently explore high-quality assets with technological barriers and potential for growth, and balance returns and risks.

“Although the capital market performed well last year, when broken down by each quarter, investment styles and theme preferences in the market differ. That really tests investors’ allocation and execution capabilities.” Lu Haoyang said.

“Insurance stocks are still undervalued”

A barbell-style allocation strategy of stable high-dividend stocks plus growth stocks in the new-quality productive forces direction is the approach adopted by insurance funds such as China Ping An. However, as trading crowding in dividend-style assets increases, dividend yields will correspondingly compress. In actual investing, how should investors view the value of these assets?

In response, Lu Haoyang said that China Ping An allocated to dividend-style assets relatively early. About ten years ago, it treated dividend assets as the “ballast” to help it weather cycles. At that time, bank stocks’ price-to-book ratio (PB) was at a relatively low level. He explained that on the one hand, by allocating to traditional high-dividend stocks such as bank and insurance shares, the purchase cost was very low; on the other hand, it also identified targets that combine growth potential with high-dividend characteristics—companies whose future profits can continue growing while maintaining a stable dividend payout ratio. The company will increase its allocation to such targets going forward.

Lu Haoyang also said: “From a long-term perspective, individual stocks in the insurance industry are still undervalued.” China Ping An has taken stakes in multiple peer insurance companies. On the one hand, the insurance industry will still have strong growth potential in the future. Under the strategy of building a strong financial country, improving the quality and efficiency of the financial sector is receiving attention, and insurance is also one of the financially favorable sectors under policy support. On the other hand, changes in China’s population structure, consumption habits, and investment concepts will also benefit the development of the insurance industry.

From the allocation ratio perspective, more than half of China Ping An’s equity assets are high-dividend assets, while the rest mainly focus on growth stocks related to new-quality productive forces, including sectors such as technology, high-end manufacturing, and resources.

Lu Haoyang disclosed that China Ping An’s overall investment strategy is to balance the scale with “fixed income as the foundation for solidity, and equities to enhance returns”: on the one hand, it sticks to the fixed-income core base, serving as the “ballast” in allocation—by increasing long-duration interest-rate government bonds and high-quality credit bonds, matching liability characteristics and easing reinvestment pressure; on the other hand, under the premise of controllable risk, it steadily increases its allocation to equity assets, using a barbell-style structure strategy. One end is stable, high-dividend, high-quality stocks, and the other end is growth stocks in the direction of new-quality productive forces.

Optimize fixed-income strategies

China has entered a low-interest-rate era, and insurance capital has moved away from the past approach of heavily allocating to bond-type assets. Taking China Ping An as an example, at the end of 2025, the fixed-income assets and debt-type financial assets it allocated to accounted for about 70%, down clearly from roughly 80% at the peak.

Among them, its bond investment balance was 3.57 trillion yuan, accounting for 55% of the total value of its investment assets, down 6.7 percentage points year over year. Meanwhile, at the end of 2025, China Ping An’s insurance fund investment portfolio size reached 6.49 trillion yuan, up 13.2% from the beginning of the year.

Regarding optimization of the fixed-income investment strategy, Lu Haoyang told Securities Times reporter that on the one hand, it adheres to the asset-liability duration matching principle and reasonably allocates long-duration interest-rate bonds to manage duration gaps and respond to potential changes in interest rates in the future. On the other hand, it strengthens the construction of bond trading capabilities, and appropriately participates in products such as “fixed income plus” to enhance the return level of fixed-income assets.