At the 2026 Lujiazui Forum, CHINA RE Chairman Zhuang Ganzhi participated in a keynote session focused on how technological innovation powers high-quality financial development.

He noted that the evolution of information technology over the past decade, from the internet and mobile internet to big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and now artificial intelligence and large models, has reached a stage of systemic integration. AI represents a disruptive change, fundamentally built upon the foundation of massive computing power, which underpins the evolution of big data and large models.

From an industry perspective, Zhuang Ganzhi stated that reinsurance is the most fiercely competitive sector in the Chinese market and the only financial sub-sector that opened fully after China's WTO accession. Globally, over a thousand insurance institutions participate in the cession of approximately 260 billion yuan in premiums in China, making it a highly competitive, globally operated industry.

He further explained, "Commercial banks and capital markets address financing issues, while insurance and reinsurance tackle risk management. Primary insurers, whether in life, property, or liability insurance, deal with dispersing risks for the public. Risks that cannot be managed by the law of large numbers, such as catastrophe insurance or emerging risks, are ceded to reinsurers. Reinsurers handle the most difficult, challenging tasks that demand the highest standards from us."

Addressing how the reinsurance industry should respond to the development of new-generation information technology and AI, Zhuang Ganzhi indicated that past advantages in capital must now be leveraged into data and technological strengths to solve complex calculation problems that primary insurers find difficult to compute accurately. The core of the reinsurance industry's digital transformation is the shift from a capital-intensive to a technology-intensive industry, a transition he described as both urgent and challenging.