Recent market volatility in China's A-share market, influenced by multiple factors, has prompted leading listed insurers to voice their confidence. On July 20th, these firms, representing significant long-term capital, issued announcements expressing firm optimism regarding the prospects of China's capital markets, pledging their steadfast support for its development, and outlining multiple initiatives to actively enhance returns for their shareholders.

Increasing Equity Investment Activity

PICC Group stated that China's macroeconomy demonstrates strong resilience and vitality, showing a stable yet progressive new phase characterized by improving industrial profit growth and an optimized export structure. New economic growth drivers, such as high-end manufacturing and the digital economy, are accelerating their development. The dividends from industrial upgrading and technological innovation are continuously being realized at the listed company level, enhancing the growth certainty of emerging sectors and providing solid fundamental support for the stable and healthy development of the capital markets. Concurrently, comprehensive reforms in capital market investment and financing are deepening, the quality of listed companies is steadily improving, and dividend returns are stable with a rising trend, making the value investment attributes increasingly prominent and creating a favorable market environment for long-term investment.

Building on this positive outlook for China's economy and capital markets, the listed insurers collectively stated they would leverage the advantages of insurance capital to support market development.

China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. (CPIC) emphasized its adherence to an investment philosophy of "value investing, long-term investing, prudent investing, and responsible investing," expressing confidence in the long-term allocation value of China's equity market. Since the beginning of the year, the company has continued to utilize the long-term investment strengths of insurance funds to increase its equity allocation ratio. Moving forward, it will continue investing in stocks and ETFs within sectors like technology growth, consumer goods, and new energy, supporting the cultivation and development of new quality productive forces and acting as a true patient capital in the market.

New China Life Insurance Co., Ltd. stated it upholds long-term, value-oriented, and prudent investment principles, actively serves national strategies, supports the real economy, and continuously leverages the advantages of insurance capital as strategic capital, long-term capital, and patient capital. The company plans to intensify investment in equity assets, enhance support for technological innovation and new quality productive forces, continuously optimize its equity asset allocation structure, and firmly support the development of the capital markets.

Similarly, Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (Ping An) indicated it would further leverage the advantages of its large-scale, long-term funds, flexibly utilize various comprehensive financial instruments and investment strategies, and continuously increase investment in strategic emerging industries, advanced manufacturing, new infrastructure, and value-oriented assets. These actions will demonstrate the responsibility expected of patient capital.

PICC Group stated that as a value investor adhering to long-termism and the patient capital philosophy, it actively seizes the dual opportunities of capital market valuation recovery and industrial growth through concrete actions. The company is determined to serve as a value discoverer in China's capital markets, a stabilizing ballast for market stability, and a main force in serving the real economy.

As one of the largest professional institutional investors in China's capital markets, China Life Asset Management Company firmly believes in the bright prospects of the Chinese economy and the long-term positive trend of the capital markets. On July 20th, the company executed net purchases of equity assets exceeding 100 billion yuan in the A-share market and on-exchange/off-exchange fund markets.

An industry expert commented that insurance capital represents genuine "patient capital." It requires asset-liability matching based on the long-term nature of its liability funds, making risk-hedging arrangements at the asset allocation level to ensure absolute returns that cover rigid liability costs. With a stable base of fixed-income assets, equity allocation serves as a supplement, reducing the need for excessive focus on short-term valuation fluctuations. This enables a stronger commitment to value investing principles, allowing it to act as a stabilizing force for market volatility while achieving investment returns that transcend cycles.

In fact, guided by policies encouraging active support for capital markets and the improvement of long-term assessment mechanisms, insurance capital has steadily increased its equity asset investment ratio in recent years. As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, stock assets within insurers' total fund utilization amounted to approximately 3.84 trillion yuan, representing an increase of about 2.7% from the end of 2025.

Multiple Measures to Actively Reward Investors

While fully leveraging their advantages as patient and long-term capital to firmly support capital market development, the listed insurers themselves are also adopting various measures to actively reward their investors.

CPIC stated it will firmly implement its existing profit distribution policy, optimize the frequency of dividends, and continuously reward shareholders. The company's 2025 annual general meeting resolved to distribute an annual cash dividend of 1.15 yuan per share (including tax), totaling approximately 11.063 billion yuan, a 6.5% increase from the previous year. In 2026, the company will optimize its dividend schedule, actively preparing for an interim profit distribution to enhance the stability, continuity, and predictability of dividends, further improving the sense of gain for investors.

New China Life Insurance stated it adheres to a path of high-quality, connotative development, strengthening strategic guidance and focusing on the synergy between "insurance, services, and investment." It continues to deepen professional, market-oriented, and systematic reforms to enhance long-term competitiveness and operational quality and efficiency, creating long-term sustainable returns for shareholders. Since 2024, the company has added interim dividends to its annual dividend distribution, actively rewarding its broad investor base. In 2025, the company's total interim and annual dividends reached 8.516 billion yuan (including tax), a year-on-year increase of 7.9%. In 2026, the company will solidify its earnings foundation through stable operations, continuing to implement a combined approach of interim and annual cash dividends to actively reward investors.

Ping An stated it will maintain a stable and sustainable cash dividend policy, sharing the fruits of high-quality development. From 2011 to 2025, the company's total cash dividends grew for 15 consecutive years, with cumulative cash dividends distributed 31 times, totaling over 400 billion yuan. In 2026, the company will uphold its stable and sustainable cash dividend policy and philosophy unchanged, sharing the outcomes of its high-quality development with investors and tangibly enhancing their sense of gain.

Another expert noted that listed insurers implementing both interim and annual dual dividends enhance the predictability of cash flows. For institutional investors, this strengthens the attractiveness of high-dividend blue-chip stocks for allocation, reduces turnover rates, and guides long-term capital to remain invested. For the insurers' own stock prices, optimizing dividend policies can contribute to valuation recovery over the long term, though insurers must continuously balance dividend payouts with solvency constraints.

Regarding the year-to-date stock performance of listed insurers, in the first half of the year, influenced by factors including market style, the A-share insurance sector underperformed the broader market, with the insurance sector index (Shenwan industry classification) declining cumulatively by 24.2%. However, since the beginning of July, the sector has performed well. As of July 20th, the sector index had risen cumulatively by 12.74%.