Chubb's control over Huatai Life Insurance's stabilization moment

The first "Chinese-funded to foreign-funded" life insurance company has emerged from its performance low.

Recently, Huatai Life Insurance released its second-quarter solvency report, disclosing that the company achieved insurance business revenue of 6.372 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 9.51%; it turned a profit with a net profit of 118 million yuan.

This marks a turnaround that has taken four years.

After 2020, Huatai Life Insurance fell into nearly four years of performance lows, with significant fluctuations in revenue and profit;

Now, the growth in these two indicators signifies that Huatai Life Insurance's performance adjustment has begun to stabilize.

Almost simultaneously with the performance turnaround, the management reshuffle at Huatai Life Insurance has been completed.

Since July, the Financial Regulatory Administration has approved the promotion of Niu Zengliang, the deputy general manager, chief actuary, and chief risk officer of Huatai Life Insurance, to the position of general manager, filling a three-year vacancy;

On the same day, its sister institution, Chubb Life, announced that Zheng Shaowei, the deputy general manager of Huatai Life Insurance, would serve as the regional president of Chubb Life, responsible for promoting strategic collaboration between the two institutions.

Behind the personnel changes at Chubb and Huatai is the footnote of Chubb Insurance Group (hereinafter referred to as "Chubb"), a global insurance leader with a market value exceeding 100 billion dollars, expanding its presence in China.

In recent years, Chubb has increased its investment in the mainland insurance market, holding 87% of Huatai Insurance Group (hereinafter referred to as "Huatai") and over 99% of Huatai Life Insurance.

With the promotion of Niu Zengliang, one-third of the 12 executive positions at Huatai Life Insurance have been replaced, marking a pause in the personnel adjustments following Chubb's takeover.

With performance stabilizing and personnel settled, Huatai Life Insurance, which has experienced a long downturn, may be on the path to normalization.

Multiple Indicators Stabilizing

The period from 2020 to 2024 has been a challenging adjustment phase for Huatai Life Insurance.

After breaking free from the initial stage of "seven stable, eight profitable" from 2005 to 2013, Huatai Life Insurance maintained profitability for a long time, with fluctuating profit figures but an overall upward trend.

In 2019, Huatai Life Insurance achieved a record profit of 500 million yuan, ranking 19th among over 70 non-listed life insurance companies, placing it in the upper tier of the industry.

However, the glory did not last long; after 2020, the company's revenue and net profit growth rates both declined.

In 2023, Huatai Life Insurance's revenue growth rate narrowed from over 20% four years ago to 0.28%, and the loss amount expanded fourfold to 893 million yuan, marking the largest annual loss since its establishment;

Even in the first three quarters of 2024, it had not turned a profit, accumulating a loss of 754 million yuan.

It wasn't until the "924 market" outbreak that the equity market continued to warm up, revealing a "dual bull" pattern in stocks and bonds;

In the fourth quarter of that year, Huatai Life Insurance's return on equity increased by nearly 20 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, driving an annual profit of 92 million yuan, ranking 35th among non-listed life insurance companies It is not uncommon for life insurance companies to be in a performance downturn for nearly four years.

After the pandemic in 2020, life insurance companies faced challenges from the contraction of channels due to the high attrition of agents, as well as the "asset shortage" caused by falling interest rates and a weak equity market.

During this difficult period of performance stabilization, all companies are seeking change. From the phase results, Huatai Life Insurance has begun to show signs of stabilization:

In the first half of 2025, insurance business revenue increased by nearly 10% year-on-year, and the cumulative investment return rate increased by 0.76 percentage points year-on-year, achieving synchronized growth in liabilities and investments.

The growth rate of life insurance premiums was 4.13 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of original insurance premiums in the life insurance sector;

In the first quarter, the investment return rate ranked 23rd among more than 70 life insurance companies.

Beyond revenue and profit, the previously criticized surrender rate is also returning to normal levels.

After 2020, Huatai Life Insurance's surrender expenses continued to rise, becoming one of the main sources of the company's losses; by the end of 2024, the comprehensive surrender rate had reached 3.21%, which was 1.45 percentage points higher than the industry median.

The surrender rate serves as a "litmus test" for the quality of life insurance and is also related to profit loss and cash flow.

For example, a surge in cash outflows caused by concentrated surrenders may trigger a short-term payment crisis; surrender payments counted as expenses not only dilute profits but may also lead to unrecoverable upfront costs such as commissions and management fees, lowering the value of new business and intrinsic value.

In 2024, Huatai Life Insurance's surrender expenses reached 700 million yuan. Although the core and comprehensive solvency adequacy ratios were far above regulatory standards, the annual cumulative net cash outflow was -633 million yuan.

However, by the end of the second quarter of 2025, Huatai Life Insurance's comprehensive surrender rate had decreased by 0.54 percentage points year-on-year to 1.25%;

As the product with the highest surrender amount in the first half of the year, the surrender rate of the "Huatai Life Wealth Gold Account Annuity Insurance (Universal Type)" decreased by 3.48 percentage points.

Chubb's Maneuvering

With the confirmation of General Manager Niu Zengliang's qualifications in early July, Huatai's controlling shareholder Chubb finally completed its full grasp of Huatai Life Insurance through a reshuffle of the management team.

During the period of pressure on Huatai Life Insurance's fundamentals from 2020 to 2024, Chubb continued to increase its stake in Huatai Life Insurance through actions.

At this time, among the scattered shareholders of Huatai Life Insurance, private enterprises needed to sell equity to recover funds, while state-owned shareholders focused on their main responsibilities under the "withdrawal of funds" requirement, frequently seeking buyers for their shares;

While various parties were selling, Chubb continued to "bottom-fish" and obtained control of Huatai Life Insurance. On one hand, it continued to accelerate the acquisition pace, even revealing intentions for full ownership; on the other hand, it began to penetrate the management team, leading a new round of reforms at Huatai Life Insurance. In October 2020, Li Cunqiang, the Chief Operating Officer of Chubb Life, who had previously "entered and exited" Huatai Life, once again took over as Chairman of Huatai Life;

After leaving in 2024, he handed over the "steering wheel" to Zhang Bei, Senior Vice President of Chubb China Affairs.

The new General Manager, Niu Zengliang, also comes from the "Chubb system" and was responsible for coordinating the actuarial affairs between Chubb and Huatai Life;

After officially joining Huatai Life in 2024, Niu Zengliang completed a rapid career leap from "Acting Chief Actuary - Chief Actuary - Deputy General Manager" in just one year.

The "Chubb system" team, represented by Li and Zhang, has also recruited many talented individuals from AIA, another foreign-funded company.

Zheng Shaowei, the former General Manager of AIA Life in Jiangsu, served as the acting head of Huatai Life in 2024 and is now the Regional President of Chubb Life, responsible for coordinating between Chubb and Huatai Life, directly reporting to the President of Chubb Life;

Yao Naiwei, the former General Manager of AIA Life in Sichuan, and Wang Wenxu, the former Deputy General Manager of AIA Life in Beijing, have successively joined Huatai Life.

Huatai Life, which frequently absorbs AIA executives, does not hide its intention to emulate AIA's strategy of targeting high-value customers.

In 2024, Huatai Life began a "new five-year" development phase, centering around customer core, establishing strategic pillars of "Elite Marketer 3.0, Health and Wellness 3.0, Digitalization 3.0";

The three pillars correspond to channels, products, and service systems, aiming to provide customers with comprehensive health and wealth management solutions throughout their life cycle.

Huatai Life has now re-initiated the upgrade of its individual insurance team, proposing a new promotion incentive system focused on recruitment, training, and development, aiming to create wealth planning agents that accompany customers throughout their "entire life journey."

Channel Transformation

In the current era of internet proliferation and refined market demand, developing high-performing personnel to penetrate high-net-worth groups is a common choice for leading life insurance companies.

However, Huatai Life, which has seen its agent scale shrink by more than 30% from 2020 to 2024, clearly cannot rely solely on the individual insurance "basket";

After all, even AIA, known for its agent capabilities, has strengthened its bancassurance channel by acquiring a 24.99% stake in China Post Life Insurance.

In fact, Huatai Life is re-embracing the bancassurance channel that was abandoned during the reforms around 2010.

An industry insider close to Huatai Life, who goes by the pseudonym Chen Sha, stated that the biggest difference between "New Huatai" and "Old Huatai" may not lie in the products, but in the channels.

"There are many commonalities in products; they used to offer health and wellness and educational value-added services," Chen Sha said. "But previously, there was no bancassurance department, mainly focusing on individual insurance, while bancassurance only sold property insurance and cross-sold group life insurance."

In 2024, although the income from Huatai Life's bancassurance channel was only half of that from the individual insurance channel, its year-on-year growth rate reached 98.65%, exceeding the growth rate of individual insurance by over 90 percentage points;

The top two products with the highest premium income both had bank agency sales channels.

Chen Sha revealed to Xinfeng that Huatai Life's cooperation with major retail banks like China Merchants Bank has contributed significantly to the growth of the bancassurance channel. "Several products with very good performance are actually customized for China Merchants Bank," Chen Sha said. "Such products are rare in bank-insurance cooperation."

Xinfeng learned that customized products have high requirements for the underlying assets of insurance funds;

Typically, at the beginning of cooperation, insurance companies inform banks about the future underlying assets and expected returns of the products. After reaching a cooperation intention, the insurance company designs suitable product forms specifically for the designated bank.

In the current context of weak credit demand, banks also have a natural demand for high-quality customized products.

Li Pingkun, deputy general manager of Huatai Life Insurance, who is in charge of the bank-insurance channel, recently stated that Huatai Life Insurance positions its bank-insurance channel as "a business contribution channel that is valuable, scalable, and develops steadily in the long term."

Li Pingkun expressed the hope to establish deep cooperation with banks to create a win-win ecosystem, leveraging foreign shareholders and Huatai Group's resources, and enhancing the bank's insurance sales capabilities through professional team building and agile product customization.

Currently, Huatai Life Insurance's bank-insurance channel is showing a development trend after transformation.

However, whether the scale of individual insurance agents can rebound in the future and whether the long-delayed bank-insurance cooperation can take the lead remains to be seen.

Risk Warning and Disclaimer

The market has risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account the specific investment goals, financial situation, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investment based on this is at their own risk