Deconstructing the underlying logic of the "golden period" of insurance industry development

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■ Leng Cuihua

Recently, A-share listed insurers have successively submitted their 2025 operating scorecards. Impressive data shows the industry’s resilience in development. But in this year’s first quarter, the A-share insurance sector has continued to face pressure, indicating that the market still has concerns about the future performance of listed insurers.

In fact, the insurance industry is now standing at the starting point of high-quality development. At the 2025 annual performance briefing held recently, executives from leading insurers such as China Life and China PICC Life all made forecasts that during the “15th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after” (the “14th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after”), the insurance industry will enter a “golden period” of development.

In this author’s view, those forecasts do not come from a coincidental overlap of short-term market tailwinds, but rather from four core underlying logics: the macroeconomic situation, market demand, policy support, and technological change.

A stable and improving macroeconomic environment helps lay a solid foundation for industry development. Our economy’s fundamentals remain steady, with strong development resilience and enormous growth potential. The outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after” explicitly states that during this period, economic and social high-quality development should achieve notable results—“laying the groundwork for doubling per capita GDP from 2020 to reach the level of a moderately developed country by 2035.” Steady long-term growth of the economy not only provides a stable environment for the insurance industry, but will also drive continuous upgrading of market demand.

Policy support delivers precise empowerment and helps the industry develop with confidence. The outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after” mentions “insurance” 27 times, incorporating insurance as a core component in building a multi-level social security system. On the investment side, regulators continue to optimize policy guidance, encouraging insurers’ capital to leverage the advantages of “patient capital,” providing in-depth services for the development of new quality productive forces, and supporting stable returns on the assets side. This is conducive to high-quality development of the insurance industry.

Continuous upgrading of demand structure opens up new growth space for the industry. Currently, China’s GDP per capita has exceeded $13k for 3 consecutive years, and residents’ wealth levels are rising steadily. However, there remains a noticeable gap in insurance penetration and density compared with developed countries, leaving huge room for releasing demand for protection. At the same time, China’s aging population continues to deepen, and demand for people’s livelihoods such as pension, health, and long-term care continues to grow. Moreover, as residents’ wealth management concepts strengthen, investment demand is shifting from single savings toward a dual-core model of “protection + wealth appreciation.”

Technology empowers and reshapes the industry’s operating model. Data-and-intelligence technologies represented by artificial intelligence are deeply penetrating the entire insurance business operation lifecycle, helping the industry achieve cost reduction and efficiency gains as well as model innovation. Technology not only optimizes traditional processes such as pricing, underwriting, and claims, but also expands the scope of insurance customer groups and insurable boundaries, driving a deep transformation of the industry’s operating model from a “product sales-oriented” approach to a “risk management + integrated services-oriented” approach.

The “golden period” of development has already arrived. Only by taking initiative and focusing accurately can the insurance industry turn enormous market potential into tangible operating performance.

In this author’s view, insurers should first anchor on national strategies and achieve synchronized development with the real economy. Insurers can move beyond thinking focused solely on business operations, and instead find development opportunities in serving national strategies to enhance value. Of note is that during the “15th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after,” China’s modern industrial system will accelerate construction, and the cultivation and growth of emerging industries and future industries will provide broad room for business expansion in the insurance industry. For example, as emerging industries such as aviation and aerospace and the low-altitude economy develop at scale, insurance can both play a risk protection role and tap long-term investment opportunities.

Second, strengthen asset-liability coordination to build a solid bottom line for stable operations. While seizing industry opportunities, insurers must clearly recognize potential challenges such as the downward shift in the market interest rate center. They should further strengthen asset-liability matching management. On the liability side, optimize product structure with value at the core and strictly prevent the risk of loss from interest rate spreads. On the asset side, adhere to the concept of “long-term money, long-term investing,” increase allocations to equity-based assets and alternative assets, and enhance the stability of long-term returns.

Finally, deepen innovation-driven development to release long-term growth momentum. At present, many insurers have increased technology investment and have explicitly proposed strategies such as “All in AI” or “AI in All.” In the future, insurers need to deepen the integration of technology with insurance business: use AI to optimize the end-to-end business processes, innovate product forms, explore service model innovation, and promote the transformation of risk management from “after-the-fact claims” to “prevention before the event and reduction during the event.” This will ensure that technology truly becomes the core engine of the industry’s high-quality development.

Starting from a new baseline and looking ahead to the “15th Five-Year Plan period and the 5 years after,” insurers can only achieve the leap from “premium growth” to “value growth” by proactively embracing national development strategies, strengthening asset-liability coordination management, and deepening the integration of technological innovation with business—contributing more solid financial strength to China’s modernization drive.

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