Strengthen cost control measures and close all loopholes for disguised payments. The new regulations for the bancassurance channel will reshape the industry's competitive landscape.

Our Reporter Leng Cuihua

Regulators have once again stepped in to standardize the bank-insurance (bank distribution) channel. Reportedly from industry insiders, the National Financial Regulatory Administration’s Life Insurance Supervision Division has recently issued the “Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Fees Paid Through Bank Agency Channels” (hereinafter referred to as the “Notice”), along with supporting Q&A implementation rules. The new rules focus on long-standing fee irregularities in bank-insurance channels, strengthening fee control across the entire process and across all categories.

Judging from the development of insurers’ bank-insurance channels, in 2025, many A-share listed insurers saw both their bank-insurance channel premium and new business value rise significantly year over year. Industry insiders believe that with the implementation of these new rules, the bank-insurance segment will be further pushed to shift from rough competition driven by fee levels and market-share grabbing toward higher-quality development driven by products and services. In the short term, it may slightly suppress the business growth rate of some insurers; in the long term, it will lay a solid foundation for the industry’s stable and sustainable development.

Shutting Off Fee Loopholes

Compared with prior regulatory requirements, the new rules are more detailed and stricter, with the core focus on full-cost closed-loop management.

“The new rules bring into the filing-and-supervisory oversight all-encompassing costs, including commissions that insurance companies pay to banks, incentive compensation for bank-insurance sales specialists, training and customer service fees, and allocated fixed expenses, plugging every back door for disguised fee payments. More importantly, responsibility is specified down to the chief actuary, the finance负责人, and the head of each branch—whoever violates the rules will be held responsible.” Longge, co-founder and general manager of Tongzhibang, said to Securities Daily.

The Notice requires that insurance companies implement their fee policies according to the actuarial product reports that have been filed. It also calls for strengthening the authenticity, compliance, and fine-grained management of fees, and incorporating “report-to-bank, pay-to-bank” compliance management into internal performance appraisal and accountability mechanisms. Meanwhile, each financial regulatory bureau continues to carry out on-site inspections of “report-to-bank, pay-to-bank.” Regulatory authorities also establish an industry notification mechanism for “report-to-bank, pay-to-bank” violations and typical cases.

Wang Guojun, a professor at the School of Insurance at University of International Business and Economics, said to Securities Daily that the implementation of the new regulatory rules will have a clear impact on bank-insurance business. When selecting partners, banks will no longer focus only on who offers higher手续费; instead they will place more weight on whether an insurance company’s products are easy to sell, whether services are in place, and whether the brand has appeal. Cooperation will shift from “competing on price” to “competing on strength.” At the same time, it is expected that the “Matthew effect” will be intensified. Leading large insurers, backed by brand, product, and service advantages, are more likely to gain favor from banks and will be able to capture more market share.

Double Growth in Scale and Value

In fact, large insurers represented by A-share listed insurers have already achieved double growth in both scale and value in 2025, breaking the long-held impression that bank-insurance business has relatively low value. With the implementation of the new regulatory rules, bank-insurance business across the industry is expected to develop in a healthier way.

In terms of premium scale, last year, many leading insurers’ bank-insurance channel premiums achieved double-digit growth. Overall performance was impressive. Among them, Taiping Life’s bank-insurance channel premium income was 61.62B yuan, up 46.4% year over year; China Life’s various core indicators improved comprehensively, with total premium surpassing the one-trillion-yuan mark to 110.87B yuan, up 45.5%; New China Life’s bank-insurance channel total premium was 72.1B yuan, up 39.5%; and PICC Life’s bank-insurance channel premium income was 68.28B yuan, up 33.5%.

More noteworthy is that the value creation capability of the bank-insurance channels achieved a qualitative leap. The growth rate of new business value far exceeded that of premiums, becoming the core engine driving overall value growth for insurers. For example, in 2025, PICC Life’s bank-insurance channel realized new business value of 4.67B yuan, up 102.3% year over year on a comparable basis; New China Life’s bank-insurance channel realized new business value of 5.27B yuan, up 110.2% year over year, surging sharply and setting a record high for the company in its history.

For bank-insurance channels, leading insurers continued to increase resource投入 and intensify their布局. China Life’s assistant to the president, Lan Yonghong, recently said that individual insurance is the company’s core channel and fundamental base, while bank-insurance is a strategic development channel. China Life will fully leverage its advantages in areas such as its brand, network coverage, and salesforce, seize current development opportunities, and support better growth of its bank-insurance business.

“We will elevate the bank-insurance channel to a strategic height, seize the policy opportunity of ‘report-to-bank, pay-to-bank,’ optimize channel layout, strengthen fine-grained management of grassroots outlets, and continuously deepen product transformation and salesforce building.” Yang Yucheng, chairman of New China Life, said.

When discussing bank-insurance market trends in 2026, Wang Lianwen, vice president of New China Life, believed that three major characteristics are expected to emerge: first, the total market scale of bank-insurance will continue to grow steadily; second, demands from multiple parties to improve significantly— as the “report-to-bank, pay-to-bank” policy is pushed deeper, bank-insurance business should seek development through compliance and create value through development; third, the market structure will accelerate in differentiation. The “Matthew effect” will become increasingly prominent, and insurers with a high level of specialization and strong asset-liability management capabilities will further seize early market opportunities, leading the industry toward high-quality development.

Longge believes that with the implementation of the new regulatory rules, in the short term, the practice of insurance companies previously using high fees to drive scale will be stopped. The premium growth rate in bank-insurance channels may slow down, but the fee structure will be more transparent—there will be no space for the old “small ledgers” and “hidden accounts.” In the long term, competition will shift from “competing on fees” to “competing on products, investment, and services.” The value contribution of bank-insurance channels will keep improving, truly achieving coordinated development across compliance, scale, and value.

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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