I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.China Life actively responds to the impact assessment of overseas investments
China Life recently disclosed its 2025 performance: net profit attributable to parent company shareholders reached 154.078 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.1%. As of the end of 2025, China Life's total assets reached 7.59 trillion yuan, and net assets reached 608.393 billion yuan, an increase of 16.7% year-on-year.
On March 25th, China Life's senior management appeared at the annual performance briefing, responding to numerous questions of concern to investors. Among them, detailed answers were given regarding the asset allocation of insurance funds.
Zishi Tang has summarized the key points of this briefing (from a first-person perspective) for readers.
A Combination of Long-term Bonds and High Dividends
Investment in 2025 achieved the best results in recent years, with a total investment return rate of 6.09%, achieving high growth on a high base.
Such investment performance is attributed to the high-quality development of the Chinese economy, the stabilization and warming of the capital market, the company's long-term adherence to value investment and stable investment philosophy in its strategic layout, and our correct analysis and judgment of the 2025 market, as well as flexible tactical operations.
Specifically, first, we seized the opportunity and firmly bet on Chinese assets, capturing the "alpha" of the new productive forces era. With the unique long-term attributes and scale advantages of insurance funds, we actively promoted the entry of medium and long-term funds into the market, and made strategic investments against market downturns.
In 2025, we strategically increased our equity proportion by nearly 5 percentage points, with the overall scale of equity investments exceeding 1.2 trillion yuan. In particular, we focused on investing in technology stocks representing China's new productive forces, which aligns with historical trends and is the primary reason for the performance improvement.
Based on strategic layout and long-term allocation, the company has always adhered to allocation-driven planning. For example, in the past few years, we seized the opportunity of high interest rates and large-scale issuance of long-term bonds, increasing our long-term bond allocation across cycles. We have now accumulated 3 trillion yuan in long-term bonds, also promoting a good balance in the duration matching of assets and liabilities.
During the interest rate decline, we appropriately increased the allocation of high-dividend stocks, building a diversified dividend portfolio, and simultaneously adopted fixed-income strategies to cope with the declining interest rates. The company's investments always revolve around a clear strategic asset allocation center, without deviating from the liability line, which is the foundation for sustained performance.
Seizing Growth Investment Opportunities
In the equity investments of 2025, we seized market structural opportunities and rode the main upward trend of growth styles.
In fixed-income investments, we increased active management to enhance returns. In alternative investments, we intensified innovation, conducted the insurance industry's first gold inquiry transaction, and created new strategies such as S-funds and M&A funds to enhance long-term return potential.
The company's equity investments focus on several areas:
First, through direct equity investment, we focus on core assets and invest in green and dual-carbon assets with stable cash flow.
Second, we invest in emerging industries through PE funds. In the health sector, we launched the "Great Health" series of funds in 2016, with an investment of nearly 20 billion yuan, cultivating 22 listed companies with a total market value exceeding 1 trillion yuan, effectively supporting specialized, refined, unique, and new "little giant" enterprises. In the science and technology sector, we issued a 5 billion yuan Sci-Tech Innovation Fund in 2021, mainly focusing on technology tracks such as artificial intelligence and integrated circuits.
Third, we use innovative tools to facilitate industrial upgrading. In 2023, we invested 11.7 billion yuan in the S-share of the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, pioneering a relay investment model between insurance funds and government industrial funds. In 2024, we invested 4.1 billion yuan in the S-share of the Beijing Sci-Tech Innovation Fund, covering 1,500 sci-tech enterprises, some of which have already been listed.
Equity investments primarily focus on a few directions: one is artificial intelligence and semiconductors, closely following the main themes of technological iteration and domestic substitution, exploring targets with explosive growth opportunities across the entire AI industry chain. The second is great health and biotechnology, focusing on innovative drugs and medical devices, intelligent diagnosis and treatment, and chronic disease management, driven by population aging and consumption upgrades in healthcare. The third is green energy and new infrastructure, continuing to deepen investment in clean energy industries such as wind and nuclear power around the dual-carbon goals, while also paying attention to opportunities in new energy storage and computing power synergy.
Proportion of Alternative Investments Slightly Decreased
The company has always attached great importance to alternative investments. Currently, both China Life Asset Management Company and CGL Investment Company have the capability to allocate alternative investments. Although the proportion of alternative investments slightly decreased last year, the overall allocation scale remained largely the same as in the previous two years.
In the past two years, our alternative investments have mainly concentrated on debt-type financial products, and the allocation scale of such assets remained close to 100 billion yuan last year. We also participated in equity and equity fund investments, as well as investments in products like Reits and ABS.
Overall, alternative investments are an important means for China Life to cope with the low-interest-rate environment. The company will continue to enhance its related allocation capabilities to play a greater role in its investment portfolio.
Response to Whether Overseas Investments Are Affected
China Life's allocation of overseas assets is relatively small, and its impact on overall assets is minor.
We are also closely monitoring the global geopolitical risks brought about by the US-Iran conflict. The current trends and impacts are uncertain and require continuous attention. However, in the long term, we will continue to monitor the impact of geopolitics on energy prices, inflation expectations, and the pricing of global asset classes.
As insurance funds, we will fully leverage the advantage of long-term capital stability, dynamically adjust asset allocation strategies, seize opportunities amidst market fluctuations, invest in high-quality core assets, and achieve long-term stable investment performance.
Cumulative Dividends Distributed Exceed 245 Billion Yuan
Regarding dividend distribution, the company has always attached great importance to sharing development achievements with shareholders. For the full year 2025, a dividend of 8.56 yuan per 10 shares is proposed, with a total dividend payout of approximately 24.2 billion yuan, an increase of 32% year-on-year. The company's dividend target is to achieve a relatively stable and improving level, allowing shareholders to fully share in the benefits of long-term stable development.
Since its listing, the company has cumulatively distributed dividends exceeding 245 billion yuan. The company attaches great importance to market value management, enhancing intrinsic value by optimizing fundamentals, strengthening communication with the capital market, and improving information disclosure transparency and effectiveness to showcase the company's value through multiple channels.
In 2025, the company focused on building a diversified elderly care ecosystem. Regarding CGL's characteristic elderly care ecosystem services, first, in terms of "insurance + elderly care," we leverage the long-term stability advantage of insurance funds to promote CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community) and travel-based elderly care services. Currently, we have 20 institutional elderly care projects in 16 cities and have launched the "Suixinju" travel-based elderly care product, while also exploring the development of home-based elderly care service systems.
Second, in terms of "insurance + health," we integrate internal and external resources to enrich health service offerings, gradually building a health service system covering pre-event prevention, mid-event management, and post-event protection, providing diversified services such as medical examinations and rehabilitation to meet customers' health management needs.
Overall, our advantages can be summarized in four aspects: first, the advantage of extensive network and team coverage; second, the long-term scale advantage of insurance funds; third, the brand and stable operation advantage; and fourth, the multi-license synergy advantage within the group, including insurance, banking, and asset management.
Analysis of Quarterly Net Profit Loss
Regarding the net profit loss in the third and fourth quarters, this is a question many are concerned about. This issue also reflects how everyone reads the income statement and balance sheet of life insurance companies.
Most of the investment assets and insurance contract liabilities of life insurance companies are currently measured at current market value. Changes in market value are reflected in the income statement or the balance sheet, so fluctuations in net profit and net assets with changes in market value are normal and common.
The company's negative profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 actually reflects the difference between the full-year result and the results of the first three quarters. The main reason is the structural adjustment in the capital market, where some stocks and funds held by the company experienced a pullback in the fourth quarter of 2025.
We believe that most of these fluctuations are temporary and reflect changes in the capital market, which is a normal phenomenon. Unlike other industries, life insurance companies have cross-cyclical and long-cyclical operating characteristics, which is a unique aspect of the life insurance industry.
Our company's asset-liability management requires cross-cycles and long cycles, and investments are also value and long-term investments. Therefore, we suggest reducing over-interpretation of single-quarter profits. In our operations, we have always adhered to long-termism, asset-liability linkage, continuously improved our cross-cyclical and long-cyclical management capabilities, and strived to create sustainable value for investors.
Overall, we recommend extending the cycle and timeframe when analyzing the income statement and balance sheet of life insurance companies. Only over a longer period will the operating and management effectiveness of life insurance companies be more apparent. The shorter the cycle, the greater the impact of fluctuations, and these fluctuations are common phenomena encountered in operations.
Deployment of Bancassurance and Individual Agent Channels
First, the individual agent channel is the company's core channel, contributing 85% to the new business value, serving as the fundamental base for the company's overall business development.
Bancassurance is an important channel for the company's strategic development. In the current environment of low interest rates and an aging population, customers seek more diversified and stable family wealth allocation. By leveraging the long-term characteristics of life insurance products, the company can offer more choices to customers in the retirement financial sector, while also providing more risk protection for customers in terms of insurance coverage.
In addition, the company will fully leverage its brand advantage, extensive network coverage, team strength, long-term cooperation with banks, and risk control and service advantages to seize current development opportunities and achieve better development.
The second aspect is individual agent reform. The company's individual agent reform achieved good expected results last year. First, this is reflected in team development. The individual agent team is the fundamental base and cornerstone. The company's "optimized recruitment" (优增) efforts have achieved remarkable results, and the "optimized recruitment" capability has significantly improved. In 2025, the "optimized recruitment" capability increased by 40% year-on-year. The productivity of new agents has also significantly improved, with the 13-month retention rate increasing by 2.2 percentage points year-on-year. The proportion of core team members has steadily increased, and the age and educational structure have also improved, with the proportion of individuals under 45 increasing by 2.3 percentage points year-on-year.
Second, this is reflected in business performance. The structure of new business has improved, with rapid growth in dividend-paying policies. The proportion of business with a term of 10 years or more is also relatively high, and new business value has grown rapidly, which are the good results achieved last year.
In 2026, the company's individual agent channel will continue to deepen the reform of the marketing system, adhere to high-quality development, focus on value creation, continuously optimize business structure, and promote a qualitative and effective improvement and stable growth in business for the whole year.