During its 2026 interim results conference held in Beijing on August 27, New China Life Insurance Company Ltd. (SH601336, closing price RMB 60.59, market cap RMB 189 billion) unveiled an impressive financial scorecard that captured the attention of attendees. The company reported net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 22.79 billion for the first half, a robust 54% increase year-on-year, while its annualized total investment return reached 6.7%, up 0.8 percentage points from the prior year. Achieving steady growth on top of two consecutive years of high earnings benchmarks makes this interim report particularly substantial.
Behind these strong figures, artificial intelligence emerged as a recurring theme highlighted by management. "Over the past six months, across our insurance, investment, and service operations, we have been closely leveraging technology-driven forces, particularly AI, to advance our business," stated Vice President Qin Hongbo during the conference.
The interim results, released on the evening of August 26, showed total revenue of RMB 83.26 billion, up 18.9% year-on-year, with original insurance premium income reaching RMB 129.57 billion, a 6.9% increase. Compared to end-2025 levels, the company expanded its allocations to bonds, equities, and funds within financial investments, each rising by one to three percentage points.
"In the first half of 2026, the domestic economy maintained stable operations, laying a solid foundation for the full year. Long-term interest rates continued to fluctuate within a low range, while the stock market experienced extreme style divergence and heightened volatility," the company noted. NCI has been refining its investment research framework, strengthening macroeconomic analysis, and optimizing allocation timing. With strategic asset allocation remaining stable under medium-to-long-term guidance, the company flexibly executed tactical adjustments to capture investment opportunities and delivered positive outcomes.
Mr. Qin added that, given the strong first-half performance, the company is aligning with regulatory requirements on long-cycle assessments by improving its investment evaluation mechanism from three perspectives: enhancing cycle adaptability, emphasizing value orientation, and pursuing dynamic optimization. The overall investment assessment system is designed to build a long-term framework that matches insurance capital characteristics, aligns with national strategic direction, and supports the company's high-quality development goals.
Looking ahead to the second half, Chen Yijiang, President of New China Asset Management, expressed confidence: "Short-term volatility does not alter the long-term trajectory of China's capital markets, and we firmly believe in their growth prospects. From a fundamental standpoint, China's macroeconomy is in a phase of transformation and upgrading, with growth rates outpacing major global economies and corporate profitability stabilizing—all of which reinforce the foundation for the long-term healthy development of the capital markets."
Beyond investments, AI's application and its role in driving business efficiency were frequent talking points at the conference. According to the interim report, NCI has been actively unleashing AI-driven productivity gains: its marketing intelligent assistant has automatically generated over four million proposals; the claims digital employee's intelligent application module processes more than 30,000 image files daily with recognition accuracy exceeding 99%; the group insurance bidding digital employee's recommendation hit rate improved from 60% to 90%, providing precise support for business operations; the HR recruitment digital employee's AI interviews have covered over 3,000 candidates, enhancing talent selection efficiency; and the 95567 official digital ambassador can deliver explanations of 16 insurance product categories and step-by-step guidance for 16 online services through multimodal video interactions.
"AI represents the primary driver of NCI's future competitive edge. As we pursue modern marketing concepts, we have positioned technology as a key competitive factor. Over the past six months, our insurance, investment, and service arms have all relied heavily on AI-driven technological momentum to advance development," Mr. Qin explained. He noted that technology's impact on the life insurance industry and NCI's own competitiveness manifests in three areas: customer management, reshaping operational service chains, and redefining risk management paradigms. On the latter, insurers can leverage big data modeling and machine learning to achieve more precise pricing and earlier risk identification, with the industry shifting from post-claim payouts to preemptive prevention and health management, thereby reducing costs on the liability side.
Mr. Qin also shared a revealing anecdote from recent discussions with young employees: when asked about their most urgent resource needs, the response was, "We hope to be allocated more tokens."
"Going forward, we will continue to increase investment in technology and AI, accelerating the full deployment of artificial intelligence and big data across teams, products, services, investments, operations, and risk control to comprehensively build a digital, intelligent, and innovative NCI," said Chairman Yang Yucheng.
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