Interest Rate “Siege”! Insurance sets a record with over 4.3 trillion yuan in annual “cash absorption”—which types of insurance attract the most money?
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2025 has come to a close, and the asset changes in China's insurance industry have drawn attention and reflection.
According to the latest official data: In the full year of 2025, Chinese life insurance companies achieved original insurance premium income exceeding 4.36 trillion yuan, a historic high.
Behind this growth is a major trend in which more and more families, following deposit and government bond interest rates “lying flat” at the bottom, are shifting assets from deposits to insurance products, especially dividend-type policies and other stable financial management tools.
In a rare low interest rate environment in the history of China’s currency, a new major trend of asset flows is quietly forming...
Life Insurance’s “Money-Absorbing” Trend Is Striking
Based on financial regulator data (as of the end of December 2025) disclosed by the National Administration of Financial Regulation, Zishitang breaks down the core data.
As shown in the figure below, as of the end of December 2025, cumulative original insurance premium income for life insurance for the year reached 4.36 trillion yuan, an 8.91% year-on-year increase.
“Original insurance premium income” refers to the premiums collected directly from customers (individuals or enterprises) by insurance companies for purchasing insurance products, such as amounts paid for life, health, or accident insurance policies. It does not include reinsurance premium income or investment returns, but is the actual money received by the insurer from selling policies, and is a key measure of its main business scale.
And at a super-high level above 3 trillion yuan, the figure in 2025 has shown close to double-digit growth once again, making the entire trend impressive.
Which of the Three Mainstream Products Is More Attractive?
On closer analysis, we can see the specific growth of the three main categories of insurance premiums under life insurance.
To highlight the key point: Life insurance = life + health + accident insurance, insuring "people"—the insured’s life, health, and accidental risks.
Life insurance covers “life,” such as term, whole life, and annuity insurance, which can ensure family economic security and also serve as a long-term savings tool. In 2025, life insurance premium income reached 3.56 trillion yuan, accounting for 81.5% of total premiums, firmly holding the largest share.
Health insurance covers the “body,” including major illness, hospitalization, outpatient and other medical expenses. Products like million medical, critical illness, and cancer insurance belong to this category. Annual health insurance premium income was 769.9 billion yuan, its growth rate continually leading, showing that people are increasingly willing to “pre-pay” for health.
Accident insurance covers “sudden incidents,” such as traffic accidents, falls, burns, etc. The premiums are low with high leverage—dozens of yuan can secure hundreds of thousands of yuan in coverage. Annual accident insurance premium income was 36.8 billion yuan. Although the amount is not large, it is one of the most basic and inclusive forms of protection.
The above three types have different focuses—life insurance for “afterlife matters,” health insurance for “medical expenses,” and accident insurance for “emergencies,” together forming a risk protection network for the modern family.
Investment-Linked Insurance Also “Popular”
Besides the growth in traditional premium income, there are two other key indicators revealing new trends in the life insurance industry:
First, the new payments into policyholder investment accounts reached 600.9 billion yuan.
This increase mainly comes from customers’ additional investments into universal and dividend insurance products, reflecting insurance products becoming one of the options for stable investment in a low interest rate environment.
However, this growth mainly relies on structural inflows from existing client funds, rather than the active preference of new investors.
Second, new payments into independent investment-linked accounts totaled 19.5 billion yuan.
As products that combine “protection + investment,” the returns of investment-linked policies are closely related to market fluctuations. Recently, more and more financially sensitive families have included these in their asset allocation.
This trend indicates that more investors are beginning to focus on combining insurance products with investment allocation to adapt to market volatility and achieve asset appreciation.
The growth rate of these two indicators reflects the gradually changing investment direction in the market, as well as the insurance industry’s flexibility and adaptability in coping with economic changes.
Insurance Companies Carefully Manage “Spending”
With premiums coming in, how is the money managed?
By the end of 2025, total assets of life insurance companies reached 36.39 trillion yuan, setting another new record.
These more than 36 trillion yuan in total assets are not profits for insurance companies, but premium revenues collected from customers over many years, reserves set aside for future claims, and some investment returns.
The core use of these funds is to ensure that when clients make claims or reach maturity in the future, insurance companies can pay out every cent as promised.
Therefore, regulations require that insurers’ funds can’t be invested recklessly. Safety and liquidity must come first, with a focus on steady returns, ensuring that “collected premiums” and “future payouts” match in terms of timing and amount.
This massive pool of funds is mainly invested in high-quality assets such as bonds, stocks, and real estate. As long-term capital, insurance funds steadily increase their allocation to quality assets, and their long-term investment strategy helps strengthen asset-side stability, providing a foundation for policy payouts and dividend/universal policy interest rates.
Premium Inflows “Accelerating” Year by Year
Zishitang has sorted out the operational data of China’s life insurance companies from the end of 2020 to the end of 2025 and found that the growth rate of life insurers’ assets is significantly higher than that of premiums.
(As shown above) In the past five years, the life insurance industry has shown the following trends:
In 2020, total original premium income was 3.17 trillion yuan; by 2025, it grew to 4.36 trillion yuan, a cumulative increase of about 37% over five years.
In the same period, total assets of life insurance companies rose from 19.98 trillion yuan to 36.39 trillion yuan, an increase of 82%.
This gap demonstrates the deepening transformation of China’s insurance industry from “collecting premiums” to “managing money well.”
Most of the premiums collected by insurance companies must be set aside as liability reserves to cover long-term future claims and payout obligations. These funds are continually allocated, within regulatory limits, to assets such as bonds, stocks, and real estate, and generate investment income.
In recent years, insurance funds have also steadily increased their participation in capital markets, and equity asset allocation has gradually increased. As premiums continue to flow in each year, reserves accumulate year by year, and investment income compounds, total assets naturally show a trend of accelerated growth.
Therefore, rapid expansion of asset scale is not due to short-term speculation or external capital injections, but is the inevitable result of the insurance industry’s long-term cycle of “premiums—reserves—investment—income.”
The Trend of Deposits “Moving” to Insurance Will Continue
Many securities firms remain highly optimistic about the insurance industry in 2026, especially focusing on the “opening red” (referring to the sales peak from New Year’s Day to before Spring Festival) as a catalyst.
Guotai Haitong Securities report points out: “We anticipate strong demand for insurance savings among residents will be a driving factor, particularly as bancassurance channels become a significant new increment of value for listed insurers; long-term interest rates are expected to stabilize, and insurers increasing allocation of quality equity assets will benefit stable investment returns.”
Dongwu Securities believes: “The current ‘deposit shift’ trend will continue. Insurance product predetermined rates are still higher than bank deposit rates, making them more attractively positioned. Listed insurers are expected to perform well in the ‘opening red’ period of 2026 and see full-year growth in new policies. Meanwhile, the proportion of dividend insurance in new policies is expected to rise further, benefiting insurers by continually improving liability costs.”
It’s worth noting that dividend-type policies not only provide protection to the insured, but can also share in the insurer’s profits, giving policyholders extra returns.
Caitong Securities calculates: In 2026, the scale of enterprise and resident medium- to long-term deposit maturities is estimated at 57.3 trillion yuan, and resident funds are expected to flow into the market via fixed income wealth management and insurance. Assuming 30% of these funds show willingness to shift, and within fixed income and insurance financial management, 20% needs to be allocated to equities, then following the “enterprise and resident → wealth management/insurance → A-shares” path, this could contribute nearly 3.5 trillion yuan in incremental funds to A-shares.
In short, these sellers forecast that an increasing portion of deposits will flow into insurance products, especially dividend-type policies, and bancassurance channels will also bring more growth to insurers. Together with stable interest rates and quality asset allocation, insurers are expected to achieve better investment results.
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