BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The five largest listed insurers in China earned in total 973.178 billion yuan of premium incomes in the first quarter, up 2.64 percent year on year, reported Xinhua-run Xinhua Finance Friday.
In the first quarter, they, namely China Life Insurance Company Limited (601628.SH), the People's Insurance Company (Group) of China Limited (601319.SH), Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (601318.SH), China Pacific Insurance (group) Co., Ltd. (601601.SH) and New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. (601336.SH) made 323.9 billion yuan, 203.40 billion yuan, 243.78 billion yuan, 138.71 billion yuan and 63.39 billion yuan of premium incomes.
Except for Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd., others all saw their quarterly premium incomes increase from the first quarter of 2020, with respective rises at 5.23 percent, 4.97 percent, 6.27 percent and 8.84 percent.
Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. reported for the first quarter 5.45 percent year-on-year decline in its premium incomes due to the slowdown of renewal premium income growth.
Market watchers said that the good start for the four large listed insurers was resulted from their upsized inputs and benefits from the changed definition of critical illness and apart from China Life Insurance Company Limited, the other four all embraced hefty growths in new business.
For Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd., new contract premiums from its individual life insurance and health insurance business grew 19 percent year on year to 51.2 billion yuan.
According to the non-banking financial research team of China Merchants Securities, market players remained currently relatively pessimistic over the future growth of insurers because mainly of the slack sales in February and March.
However, the research team attributed the bad February-March sales to short-term factors such as changes in the strategies of insurers and working paces of insurance agents. As these factors are digested gradually, the listed insurers are still likely to realize U-shaped rebounding in this year. (Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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