The board of directors of China Life Insurance has announced that the company will apply for the voluntary delisting of its American depositary shares (ADSs) from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the deregistration of such ADSs and underlying overseas listed shares (the H shares).
A new regulation covering insurance asset management firms, when it takes effect on 1 September, will remove a cap on foreign insurers' ownership of such companies. It opens the door to foreign insurers to set up wholly-owned insurance asset management entities.
The Beijing bureau of the CBIRC (CBIRC Beijing) has issued an exposure draft of a work plan to support the development of managing general agents (MGAs), including a pilot programme for such intermediaries.
Under pressure to grow their business, top listed life insurers in China are adjusting their product strategies rapidly. Among several new products launched, incremental wholelife insurance plans have become a large source of revenue for insurance companies.
Life insurers posted health insurance premiums of CNY418.4bn in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 1.21%. This marginal growth, or slower pace of increase, is explained by new critical illness (CI) insurance business that plunged by more than 30% in the first six months.
Some property insurance companies have been disguising the sales of medical drugs as insurance sales, prompting the CBIRC to call a halt to the malpractice.
CITIC Prudential Life (CPL), life insurance giant Prudential's 50-50 joint venture in China, saw annual premium equivalent (APE) sales growth of 13% to $507m in 1H2022 despite headwinds from COVID-19-related restrictions.
Unionlife is exploring ways to resolve the risk it is exposed to in its investments in the financially-stricken property development group Evergrande.
The number of cities carrying out trials on long-term care insurance has increased to 49 at the end of July from 15 when the first national-level pilot programme was launched in 2016.
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, one of the biggest financial services group globally, has announced that its new Ping An Guanlan Data Centre No. 3 has set a benchmark for energy-saving among China's financial data centres, marking another step toward Ping An's goal to achieve operational carbon neutrality by 2030.