36 insurers increase capital by nearly $10bn in 2018
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Mar 2019
Thirty six insurance companies in China increased their capital by a combined CNY65bn ($9.6bn) last year, according to data from the Insurance Association of China. Among them, 17 were life insurers, 16 were non-life insurers and three were reinsurers.
Non-life giant PICC Group was among the insurers that expanded capital last year. The company issued 1.8bn new shares in an IPO launched on the Shanghai bourse. The secondary listing raised CNY6.01bn for the insurer which has a primary listing in Hong Kong.
While PICC’s fundraising exercise might have attracted great interest because of its share listing, most of the capital increases last year were by small and medium sized insurers.
Among them, Guohua Life raised CNY9.5bn in October, making it the single largest capital increase exercise last year for an insurance company.
Chongqing-headquartered Liberty Insurance increased its capital three times, the most number of times for an insurer last year. In total, its capital expanded by CNY285m from the three fundraising exercises.
China Post Life pumped in capital twice last year, raising a total of CNY11.5bn. A