Tracking the transformation of Xinhua dividend insurance: Premium growth slowed in October, and "New Year opening" pressure remains

On November 12th, NCI disclosed that the company achieved a cumulative premium of 181.973 billion yuan in the first 10 months, with a year-on-year growth rate of 17%; Xinfeng's calculations found that NCI's quarterly premium year-on-year growth rates for the first to third quarters were 28.02%, 15.38%, and 9.89%, respectively, while the monthly premium growth rate for October was -7.21%. The product transformation oriented towards participating insurance is the focus of NCI's liability side. In the first quarter of this year, NCI outperformed its listed peers with a premium growth rate of 28%, but there were also doubts at that time, arguing that its main short-term guaranteed return products were not suitable for the downward trend of interest rates, contradicting the purpose of asset-liability matching. Starting in April, NCI fully promoted participating insurance with a lower guaranteed return ratio, focusing on enhancing the team's understanding and communication skills, while the bancassurance channel implemented differentiated supply based on bank outlet needs; Management disclosed that from April to July, the proportion of regular premiums from participating insurance in the individual insurance and bancassurance channels was over 70% and 30%, respectively; Starting in September, NCI launched multiple new participating insurance products and included some key products in the personal pension list. On one hand, there is a continuous increase in new product supply, and on the other hand, there is a gradually declining premium growth... NCI still faces many challenges in its product transformation. In recent years, under the backdrop of declining interest rates, insurance companies tend to reduce the proportion of guaranteed return products on the liability side to loosen restrictions on the investment side; Several leading insurance companies have expressed support for floating income products this year, and participating insurance frequently occupies the "C position" in recommendations. The challenge of floating products lies in both agents' understanding and expression of participating insurance and customers' shift in risk preference towards certainty. Because of this, insurance companies often experience fluctuations in new premium income at the beginning of product transformation, and NCI is one of the listed insurance companies that started its transformation relatively late. At this year's interim performance meeting, NCI Chairman Yang Yucheng emphasized that the company has not had sales experience in participating insurance for seven years, and the current transformation is both successful and difficult; President and CFO Gong Xingfeng stated that to promote the transformation of participating insurance, the company has established a leadership group and created an integrated mechanism for promoting participating insurance sales and managing participating accounts through payment linkage and front-backline collaboration. Gong Xingfeng revealed that in the first half of the year, the transformation of participating insurance has achieved good results in three aspects: First, clarifying the positioning and function of participating insurance in the customer’s full lifecycle product system; Second, building the sales team's knowledge reserve and sales skills for participating insurance, and re-planning the training system for participating insurance; Third, forming a new model for the combined sales and three-dimensional promotion of participating insurance. It is worth noting that NCI needs to face not only the internal sales system's adaptation to participating insurance but also the increasingly heated competitive environment. Xinfeng noted that many life insurance companies have already started the "New Year" battle for 2026, among which small and medium-sized insurance companies have more diverse product strategies, offering both participating insurance and ordinary life insurance; However, leading insurance companies have unambiguously chosen dividend insurance as their main product, including dividend-type pension plans and dividend-type increasing whole life insurance products. Benefiting from the capital market performance on the investment side, NCI achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 32.857 billion yuan in the first three quarters, setting a new record for the same period, with an annualized total investment return rate of 8.6% and total assets exceeding 1.8 trillion yuan; In the future, whether the company can achieve more breakthroughs on the liability side remains to be seen. The market has risks, and investments should be made cautiously. 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