Dialogue with Ping An's Fu Xin: The resident asset-liability structure is undergoing reconstruction, and the life insurance industry is entering a golden development period.

Against the backdrop of ongoing low interest rates and heightened volatility in the capital markets, the linkage capability between the investment side and the liability side is becoming an important dimension for assessing insurers’ earnings resilience and the scope for valuation recovery.

Recently, Fu Xin, Deputy General Manager and Chief Financial Officer of Ping An of China, said in an interview with The Paper (澎湃新闻) that in 2025, Ping An’s investment performance—both for the current period and the long term—was strong. It not only effectively supported the Group’s steady growth in profit and net assets, but also demonstrated the company’s capabilities in long-term investing, asset-liability matching, and dynamically adjusting its investment portfolio.

According to Ping An’s annual report, in 2025, the company’s insurance funds investment portfolio achieved a comprehensive investment yield of 6.3%, up 0.5 percentage points year over year, reaching the best level in the past five years. The 10-year average comprehensive investment yield was 4.9%, and the average net investment yield was 4.8%, both exceeding the long-term investment return assumptions embedded in the value.

When discussing its life insurance business, Fu Xin told The Paper that in this round of rising insurance demand, the underlying support still comes from adjustments in residents’ asset-liability structures, as well as the continued recovery in long-term protection needs such as retirement and medical coverage, and stable savings demand. She believes that, against this backdrop, the life insurance industry is entering a golden period of development. Behind this judgment is the ongoing recovery of Ping An Life’s underlying business fundamentals.

In 2025, Ping An’s new business value for personal lines in its life and health insurance business reached RMB 36.9 billion, up 29.3%; the Group’s operating profit attributable to shareholders increased 10.3% from the beginning of the year to RMB 134.4 billion; net assets attributable to shareholders rose 7.7% year over year to RMB 1,000.4 billion, reaching the trillion level.

In Fu Xin’s view, what Ping An needs to do next is to continue enhancing channel, product, and service capabilities through “integrated financial services + medical and retirement services,” further converting “insurance + services” from the conceptual level into operational capabilities that customers can perceive and reuse.

Behind the staged improvement on the investment side: there are both market factors and support from allocation capabilities

Within the current industry context for insurers, the importance of investment-side performance is not only reflected in the income statement, but also in net asset stability and expectations for valuation recovery.

In an interview with The Paper, Fu Xin said that, looking at its 2025 performance, Ping An’s investment side provided solid support for the Group’s revenue, profit, and net assets. However, she also emphasized that the strong performance in this cycle should not be attributed solely to the market rebound. More importantly, it lies in the company’s strategic asset allocation capabilities for surviving across cycles and its disciplined tactical asset allocation capabilities.

Looking over a longer horizon, from 2016 to 2025, Ping An’s average net investment yield was 4.8%, and its average comprehensive investment yield was 4.9%, both exceeding the long-term investment return assumptions embedded in value.

Fu Xin told The Paper that while there are of course cyclical factors—2025 saw strong performance in equity markets, providing some pull to investment returns—on the capabilities side, Ping An has adhered to the principles of long-term investing and asset-liability matching. In the earlier period, it accumulated relatively high-yield long-duration bonds, and at the same time increased allocation in equities on a forward-looking basis, allowing it to better capture opportunities arising from market structure. She noted that long-duration assets on the fixed-income side are the “stabilizing ballast” for steady returns, while the equity side also balances high-dividend-value stocks with growth segments. The company also actively increased allocations to high-quality alternative assets, expanded its source of projects, and helped make asset allocation more diversified.

Judging from performance, the improvement on the investment side has indeed become an important support for net asset growth. In 2025, Ping An’s net assets attributable to shareholders increased 7.7% from the beginning of the year to RMB 1,000.4 billion, reaching the trillion level. Among them, the contribution of unrealized gains in OCI-type stocks to net asset accretion was particularly notable. Fu Xin said directly that a relatively high proportion of FVOCI stock allocations, although the unrealized gains do not flow into the income statement, will directly add to net assets, helping to enhance the stability of the financial statements.

Regarding future sustainability, Fu Xin told The Paper that Ping An will continue to adhere to a prudent investment strategy, coordinate the effective execution of strategic asset allocation, tactical asset allocation, and investments across different asset categories, and pursue steady mid-to-long-term returns across cycles.

Diversification of residents’ asset allocation, with deeper drivers of life insurance growth coming from demand recovery

Compared with the investment side, what the market cares more about regarding Ping An’s life insurance business is whether this round of rising demand is merely a stage substitution under a low-interest-rate environment, or whether it reflects a change in longer-term allocation logic.

Fu Xin said to The Paper that as deposit and wealth management return rates continue to decline, life insurance products that have relatively stable return characteristics and can lock in long-term returns are becoming more attractive to residents’ funds. Fundamentally, this is asset reallocation under a low-interest-rate environment.

However, she pointed out that from a medium- to long-term perspective, this change should not be understood simply as a temporary phenomenon. More importantly, residents’ asset-liability structure is undergoing reconstruction. On the one hand, the traditional allocation model dominated by “property + deposits” is being adjusted; on the other hand, as population aging progresses and expectations for retirement and medical spending rise, residents’ demand for long-term protection and stable savings is gradually increasing. It is precisely for this reason that Ping An’s view on the life insurance industry goes beyond short-term changes in the interest-rate environment, and it sees demand recovery on a longer time horizon.

“Against this backdrop, we believe the life insurance industry is entering a golden period of development.” Fu Xin said. Judging from operating data, Ping An’s life insurance recovery has gone beyond market sentiment. In 2025, the first-year premium for Ping An’s life and health insurance business was RMB 157.9 billion, up 2.5%; the one-year new business value was RMB 36.9 billion, up 29.3%. This means that the rebound in demand is reflected not only in the scale dimension, but also in the value dimension.

Previously, Fu Xin had told The Paper that Ping An’s channel transformation for life insurance is broadly in line with expectations. The growth of non-agent channels such as bancassurance and community finance has been faster, and the “insurance + services” layout will continue to deepen. By 2026, this logic further extends to an emphasis on the “service year,” i.e., taking services that were previously relatively point-based—such as accompanying patients for appointments, medical appointment green channels, and finding doctors—and further refining them into a more complete, more tradable, and more customer-perceivable service loop.

Fu Xin stated that Ping An is capturing this round of growth in life insurance demand primarily through both channel operations and product-service ends. On one hand, it will continue to deepen the “4+3” reform to build multi-channel specialized sales capabilities. On the other hand, relying on the Group’s medical and retirement ecosystem, it will continue to advance the development of an “insurance + services” product system to better meet customer needs with more diverse products and more specific services.

According to her disclosure, since the beginning of 2026, Ping An’s new single premiums in individual insurance (individual direct selling) have grown by approximately 50% year over year, and new single premiums in bancassurance channels have grown by more than 100% year over year, laying a solid foundation for full-year development.

Medical and retirement ecosystem further embedded into the financial main business

Beyond the investment side and changes in life insurance demand, the way the medical and retirement ecosystem drives the financial main business has also become another main line in Ping An’s operating logic in recent years.

Fu Xin said that from the perspective of changes in customer demand, wealth management and healthy retirement are not two independent types of demand; rather, they complement each other across the entire life cycle. Based on this, Ping An continues to advance the “integrated financial services + medical and retirement services” strategy. This is not only about expanding the boundaries of services, but also about strengthening the customer operating capabilities and product delivery capabilities of the financial main business through building medical and retirement service capabilities.

This effect is first reflected in customer value. Fu Xin pointed out that services such as medical and health benefits, at-home retirement care, and high-quality retirement can enhance customer experience and service satisfaction, and also help strengthen customers’ recognition of insurance products and integrated financial services. For the life insurance business, such services are no longer merely ancillary benefits; to a certain extent, they influence customers’ willingness to purchase policies, willingness to increase coverage, and the depth of protection allocation.

The annual report shows that in 2025, the life insurance new single premiums for Ping An’s medical and health benefits customers, at-home retirement benefits customers, and high-quality retirement benefits customers were each up by 1.5 times, 5.2 times, and 23.4 times, respectively. At the same time, Peking University Medical’s operating revenue was RMB 5.72 billion, and Ping An Health’s operating revenue was RMB 5.47 billion. Overall, the medical and retirement ecosystem’s drive to the life insurance core business is no longer just coordination at the strategy level; it has begun to translate into improvements in customer value and business quality.

From the Group’s operating logic, the significance of this segment of business is not only in how much revenue it contributes on its own, but also in that it is becoming an important carrier connecting insurance protection, health management, and retirement arrangements, while continuing to feed back into the development of the financial main business.

Fu Xin said that in the future, Ping An will continue to focus on customers’ needs across the full life cycle and steadily advance the building of channel, product, and service capabilities.

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