Five major insurers saw a surge in investment returns last year!
1.48 trillion yuan in insurance funds’ heavily held stocks revealed, as Ping An Life increased its stake in Bank of Agriculture of China by 946 million shares

This article is sourced from: Times Finance Author: He Xiulan

As the five major listed insurance companies in A-shares complete their 2025 annual report disclosures, the industry’s investment performance and the allocation of heavy holdings by insurance funds are simultaneously revealed.

In 2025, the combined investment assets of the five major insurers reached 20.7 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%, with investment returns soaring across the board. Among them, New China Life Insurance (601336.SH) led the industry with a 6.6% total investment return, followed closely by Ping An of China (601318.SH) and China Life (601628.SH), with 6.3% comprehensive investment return and 6.09% total investment return respectively; China Pacific Insurance (601601.SH) and PICC Property & Casualty (601319.SH) both maintained a 5.7% total investment return, ranking in the second tier.

Under low interest rate environments and policy guidance, insurance companies collectively increased their equity investments. China Life, Ping An, and others have implemented strategic increases in equity assets, leading to significant growth in public market equity holdings.

Meanwhile, the list of heavily held circulating stocks by insurance funds has been released. Based on data from listed companies that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, as of the end of Q4 2025, insurance funds held nearly 200 stocks, with a market value of close to 1.48 trillion yuan, of which bank stocks account for nearly 30%. In Q4 2025, Ping An Life made a large increase of 946 million shares in Agricultural Bank of China (601288.SH), and China Life became a new top ten circulating shareholder in multiple listed companies including Bank of Communications (601328.SH), Ping An of China, and China Aluminum (601600.SH).

                      Image source: TuChong Creative           

Increasing Equity Asset Investments

In 2025, all major insurers achieved year-on-year growth in investment returns, becoming a key driver of their net profit growth. Among them, New China Life Insurance led with a 6.6% total investment return, with a 30.9% increase in total investment income year-on-year; Ping An of China followed with a 6.3% comprehensive investment return, with a 13.5% YoY growth in total investment income; China Life, with an investment asset scale of 74.2 trillion yuan, remained the industry leader, achieving total investment income of 207k yuan, up 25.8% YoY, with a total investment return of 6.09%, placing these three companies in the top tier for investment returns.

China Pacific Insurance and PICC Property & Casualty both posted a 5.7% total investment return, ranking in the second tier, with total investment incomes of 14.8k yuan and 74.2k yuan respectively, up 17.6% and 12.4%, maintaining good stability. Regarding the increase in total investment income, China Pacific Insurance stated in its annual report that the main reason was a significant rise in gains and losses from securities trading.

In 2025, against the backdrop of low interest rates and policy-driven market entry by insurance funds, insurers actively optimized their asset allocation structures and increased equity investments, becoming the core driving force behind the improvement in investment returns.

By the end of 2025, China Life’s stock and fund holdings (excluding money market funds) increased their allocation ratio from 12.18% at the end of 2024 to 16.89%. The main reason was the company’s decisive increase in equity investments to seize market opportunities, significantly expanding the scale of equity investments. In 2025, China Life’s public market equity investments exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of over 450 billion yuan from the beginning of the year.

Recently, Liu Hui, Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of China Life, stated at the earnings conference that equity investment in 2025 is the “key to success or failure” for boosting returns. China Life actively promoted the entry of medium- and long-term funds into the market, strategically increasing the equity ratio by nearly 5 percentage points.

By the end of 2025, in China Ping An’s equity assets, the proportion of stocks rose to 14.8%, and funds accounted for 4.4%. Ping An of China stated in its annual report that the company adheres to a long-term investment philosophy, increasing balanced allocations of dividend-yielding and technology-growth-oriented equities, aiming for long-term, market-beating, stable investment returns.

Meanwhile, New China Life’s stock and fund investments totaled 387.69B yuan, increasing their share of investment assets by 2.4 percentage points to 21.2%; China Pacific Insurance’s stock and equity fund investments totaled 141.63B yuan, accounting for 13.4%, up 2.2 percentage points from the previous year; China People’s Insurance increased its stock investment proportion by 5 percentage points to 8.7%.

Heavy Holdings in Bank Stocks

As a representative of long-term patient capital in the market, stock holdings within insurance equity investments, especially heavily held circulating stocks, have always attracted market attention.

According to data from A-share listed companies that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, as of the end of Q4 2025, insurance funds held nearly 200 stocks, with a total market value of close to 1.48 trillion yuan.

From an industry allocation perspective, insurance funds show a dominant preference for banking stocks, with more dispersed holdings in manufacturing. The funds continue to favor low-risk, high-dividend assets, with bank stocks being the core allocation area. As of Q4 2025, insurance funds held 16 bank stocks, with a total holding value of 92.32B yuan, accounting for nearly 30% of total insurance fund holdings, far exceeding other industries. Major banks such as Ping An Bank (000001.SZ), China Merchants Bank (600036.SH), and Agricultural Bank of China are heavily held by multiple insurers.

Manufacturing holdings are more dispersed, with many stocks held but a proportion of less than 4% of total holdings, characterized by “many stocks, small individual holdings.”

In terms of changes in holdings, insurance funds overall showed active increases. In Q4 2025, holdings of Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398.SH), and China CITIC Bank (601998.SH) increased by over 100 million shares each, with Ping An Life increasing its holdings of Agricultural Bank by 946 million shares, and China Life increasing holdings of ICBC by 402 million shares and CITIC Bank by 195 million shares. Additionally, holdings of stocks such as Sinopec (600028.SH), China Telecom (601728.SH), Sinotrans (601598.SH), Hualing Steel (000932.SZ), and Industrial Bank (601166.SH) increased by over 10 million shares each. However, some stocks were also reduced; for example, Hesheng Health reduced its holdings of Goldwind Science & Technology (002202.SZ) by over 133 million shares, and China Life reduced its holdings of Bank of China (601988.SH) by over 57.98 million shares.

Notably, in Q4 2025, insurance funds became new top ten circulating shareholders in over 80 listed companies, mainly in the financial, transportation, nonferrous metals, and electrical equipment sectors.

Among them, China Life became a new top ten shareholder in Bank of Communications, Ping An of China, and China Aluminum, with increases of 670 million shares, 206 million shares, and 131 million shares respectively in Q4 2025, with market values of 12k yuan, 389.03B yuan, and 1.6 billion yuan at the end of the period. Additionally, New China Life increased its holdings of China People’s Insurance by 159 million shares, with a market value of 1.421 billion yuan; Taiping Life and Taiping Asset jointly increased holdings of Hualing Steel by 127 million yuan, with a market value of 711 million yuan at the end of the period.

Yang Delong, Chief Economist and Fund Manager at Qianhai Open Source Fund, told Times Finance that in the 2025 A-share market split trend, a “dumbbell strategy” focusing on “technology + undervalued dividend stocks” is quite effective, with bank stocks repeatedly reaching new highs. This strategy will still be applicable in 2026, with one end remaining in the technology innovation sector, while the other gradually shifting from dividend stocks to resource stocks and some traditional blue-chip heavy assets.

Yang Delong pointed out that under the current fourth technological revolution, the extensive use of artificial intelligence is a defining feature. Investment should focus on two types of targets: one is areas where AI cannot easily replace humans, such as heavy assets and low-elimination industries mentioned by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, including power equipment, nonferrous metals, and railway logistics infrastructure; the other is industries accelerated by AI development, aligned with key directions in the “14th Five-Year Plan,” such as humanoid robots, chips and semiconductors, computing algorithms, energy storage, and biomedicine.