Research Report on Asia’s Largest Property Insurance Giant: Systematic Deployment in Investment in Sci-Tech Enterprises

As the core asset management platform of the largest property insurance group in Asia—the People’s Insurance Company of China (PICC) Group—PICC Asset Management Co., Ltd. (PICC Asset Management) has long ranked among the industry’s leaders in asset management scale, and its investment trends are regarded as a "weathervane" for insurance fund allocation.

Recently, the internal research report "Pathways and Challenges of Insurance Funds Supporting Technological Innovation," co-authored by Zhang Tao, PhD from the company's postdoctoral workstation, and Zhang Tong, senior manager of the Strategic Management/Financial Management Department, systematically analyzed for the first time how over 37 trillion yuan of insurance funds can be safely and effectively invested into the hard technology sector.

This paper not only discloses PICC Asset Management's latest layout in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedicine, and integrated circuits, but also directly confronts deep-rooted issues such as solvency constraints and the lack of exit mechanisms, proposing actionable and forward-thinking solutions.

Given that insurance funds have become one of the most important sources of long-term capital in China's capital markets, this in-depth analysis from an industry leader is of significant reference value for understanding how "patient capital" truly empowers new productive forces.

Below, Zishitang has summarized the core points of the report for readers.

Natural Synergy Between Insurance Funds and Technological Innovation

The report by PICC Asset Management points out that insurance funds have three major advantages—long duration, large scale, and stable sources—making them highly suitable for the financing needs of technological innovation.

In 2024, the average liability duration in China’s life insurance industry is about 16 years, far exceeding the usual 5 to 10 year cycle required for technological R&D. As of the third quarter of 2025, the balance of funds utilized by insurance companies nationwide has reached 37.46 trillion yuan, making it an important source of "patient capital" in the capital market. Especially during market downturns, insurance funds can provide counter-cyclical support, filling the gap left by venture capital.

For insurance institutions themselves, the high growth potential of technology companies offers new solutions to the dilemma of low interest rates—not only sharing the dividends of industrial transformation, but also driving the upgrade of insurance technology systems in collaboration with tech companies, thus perfecting products and services.

From Debt Investment to Full-Cycle Empowerment

As the core asset management platform of Asia’s largest property insurance group, PICC Asset Management has built a tech-finance system covering debt, equity, asset securitization, and themed products.

In March 2025, the company registered the "PICC Asset-Hefei Construction Investment Infrastructure Debt Investment Plan," raising 11.1 billion yuan;

In April of the same year, launched the "Zhongguancun Technology Leasing No.1 Asset Support Plan," revitalizing technology leasing assets through a cyclical purchase structure;

In May, created the "Jurui Technology Portfolio Asset Management Product," focusing on the Hang Seng Tech Index and independent innovation index constituent stocks, targeting frontier areas such as integrated circuits and artificial intelligence.

By the end of 2024, insurance funds invested in tech companies had totaled over 600 billion yuan, and as of the end of June 2025, PICC Asset Management’s tech-finance investment scale had increased by about 30% year-on-year, leading the industry.

Real Challenges: Triple Constraints of Regulation, Logic, and Exit

The report points out that insurance funds investing in technological innovation still face systemic obstacles. The "C-ROSS Phase II" rules raised the risk factor for unlisted equity investments to 0.41, about four times that of bonds, significantly suppressing allocation willingness.

Moreover, insurance funds emphasize current income and low volatility, while tech investments follow a "20-80" return distribution—early-stage projects often lack cash flow and show large valuation fluctuations, resulting in obvious logic conflicts.

Furthermore, most institutions lack professional capability to assess technological barriers and team potential, and over-rely on traditional financial models that make it “hard to understand and hard to invest.” Performance evaluation mechanisms are also misaligned: 7-10 year investment cycles vs. annual assessments discourage long-term behaviors.

Most crucially, exit channels are overly dependent on IPOs, while M&A and S-fund paths are immature, leading to significant liquidity risks.

Breaking the Deadlock: Drawing on International Experience and Building a Controllable Innovation Mechanism

The report suggests that China could learn from the U.S. “Small Business Investment Company” (SBIC) model—in which the government provides partial guarantees and low-cost leveraged capital for qualified investment institutions, guiding long-term capital including insurance funds towards startups, thereby sharing national risk and amplifying social capital efficiency.

Based on this, PICC Asset Management is exploring localized approaches: First, expand the "debt-to-equity + co-investment" model, intervening with debt financing in early or mid-stage and transitioning to equity later to balance safety and growth;

Second, jointly invest along the industrial supply chain with industrial capital;

Third, establish stratified and categorized risk control systems with differentiated risk tolerance according to the enterprise’s development stage; Fourth, plan diversified exit strategies in advance.

The study calls for improved information disclosure standards for technology enterprises at the regulatory level, and for building a multi-layered capital market to provide institutional guarantees for insurance funds to "dare to invest and be able to exit."

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