Banking and insurance channels contributed significantly to high growth last year; regulators refine the "report and operate as one" requirement

China Securities Journal reporter Cheng Zhu Li Yunqi

In 2025, listed banks and insurers released their annual reports in quick succession. The growth-driving effect of the bancassurance channel on life insurers is particularly prominent. Insurers at the top end have seen rapid growth in bancassurance channel premium income and new business value. Against this backdrop, the regulatory authorities recently issued within the industry the “Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Fees for Bank-Agency Channels” (hereinafter referred to as the “Fee Management Notice”), which further details the requirements for the bancassurance channel’s “report-to-bank and sell” (报行合一) work. It requires insurance companies to incorporate “report-to-bank and sell” compliant management into the company’s assessment and accountability mechanism, and to establish an industry notification mechanism for “report-to-bank and sell” violations and typical cases. This move will promote fair competition in the industry and help drive high-quality industry development.

Bancassurance channel performance draws attention

Judging from the 2025 annual reports of various listed insurers, the bancassurance channels of leading life insurers are broadly surging. Several insurers have achieved growth of more than 30% in bancassurance channel premium income. Among them, China Life’s bancassurance channel total premiums reached RMB 72.1B, breaking through the RMB 100 billion mark and up 45.5%; Xinhua Insurance’s bancassurance channel premium income was RMB 68.28B, up 39.5%; People’s Insurance Life realized bancassurance channel gross premiums of RMB 61.62B, up 33.5%; and Taikang Life’s bancassurance channel scale premiums were RMB 58.51B, up 46.4%.

In addition, the share of new business within the bancassurance channel has also risen significantly, moving from a supporting channel in the past to an industry core growth engine. In 2025, China Life’s bancassurance channel new business premium was RMB 58.506 billion, up 95.7%; Taikang Life’s bancassurance channel proportion of customers in the middle segment and above was 41%, up 1.8 percentage points year over year, with rapid growth in high-net-worth and extremely high-net-worth customer numbers.

New business value is a core metric for measuring an insurer’s future earnings potential. Looking at last year’s new business value from the bancassurance channel, leading insurers all achieved rapid growth. Ping An Life, Xinhua Insurance, and People’s Insurance Life in particular more than doubled, with growth rates of 138.0%, 110.2%, and 102.3% respectively. The value contribution rate of the bancassurance channel has increased significantly.

Sun Ting, chief analyst for non-banking and financial services at Soochow Securities, said that amid the deepening of “report-to-bank and sell” in the bancassurance channel and the relaxation of limits on the number of bank branches and insurance companies collaborating, leading insurers’ competitive advantages and pro-activeness in sales in the bancassurance market have clearly improved.

Regulators strengthen fee management for bancassurance channels

While bancassurance channels are experiencing rapid growth, the regulatory authorities have once again issued guidance to clarify the “report-to-bank and sell” requirements, further detailing fee management requirements for bancassurance channels and supporting high-quality industry development.

Industry insiders believe that compared with the “Notice on Matters Concerning the Business of Bank Agency Channels for Personal Insurance Companies” issued at the beginning of 2024, the “Fee Management Notice” is not simply a restatement, but rather achieves “tightening” and “closing loopholes” across three dimensions. First, the fee scope is comprehensively expanded, from commissions to various types of costs. Second, it clarifies all types of responsibility subjects involved in internal governance and accountability mechanisms. Third, it upgrades regulatory tools and adds regulatory measures of industry notification.

The “Fee Management Notice” specifies that when insurance companies submit to banks for product filing of bank-acting channel products, they should, according to the intelligent verification system requirements for personal insurance products, submit levels for commissions paid to banks, salary incentives for bancassurance specialists, training and customer service fees, the allocation of fixed expenses, and so on. When insurance companies conduct bank-acting channel business, they should implement fee policies executed based on the actuarial reports of the filed products, and any fee expenditures must obtain authentic, lawful, and effective supporting documents.

At the same time, responsibility persons at all levels for “report-to-bank and sell” work are also clarified in the “Fee Management Notice.” The “Fee Management Notice” requires insurance companies to incorporate compliance management for “report-to-bank and sell” into their internal assessment and accountability mechanism. In addition, regulatory authorities establish an industry notification mechanism for “report-to-bank and sell” violations and typical cases, and promptly notify the insurance group’s head office and its regulators at the legal entity level of relevant information.

Xu Yizhou, chief analyst for non-banking at Industrial Securities, said that although the “report-to-bank and sell” policy has somewhat eased fee competition conditions in bancassurance channels, the market has seen multiple types of innovative avoidance measures. This time, the regulator stepped in to curb the involution-like competition within bancassurance channels and plug loopholes that appear in actual implementation, with strong targeting. By clarifying insurers’ management accountability mechanisms and strengthening insurers’ internal conscientiousness in implementing “report-to-bank and sell,” it is expected that insurers’ fee control will become even more standardized.

Promote healthy, sustainable development

In addition to refining the “report-to-bank and sell” work requirements, the “Fee Management Notice” also appends the “Q&A on Matters Concerning Fee Management for Bank-Agency Channels (I),” answering questions such as how insurance companies pay commission fees to bank agency channels, how to strengthen management of salary incentives for bancassurance specialists, how to formulate and manage temporary incentive plans, and how to do business promotion activity management. These detailed provisions help ensure bancassurance channels achieve high-quality development.

Industry insiders believe that the competitive logic of insurers’ bancassurance channels is undergoing a fundamental reversal. The extensive model of the past—“whoever pays higher fees can take over branches”—has completely failed. In the future, what will be compared in bancassurance channels will be product competitiveness, service capability, and the ability to manage detailed and refined costs.

Many insurers attach great importance to the high-quality development of bancassurance channels. For example, in its 2025 annual report, Xinhua Insurance said that its bancassurance channel adheres to a high-quality development orientation, practices a business strategy of giving equal weight to premium scale and value, continues to promote the building of the “strong business units and excellent teams” and the “three-three system” framework, and fully implements the company’s strategic deployments such as the “Strong Foundation Project” and the “XIN Plan.” In its 2025 annual report, Taikang Life said that it adheres to value as the core in its bancassurance channel, improves the channel operation efficiency, optimizes customer network allocation, and advances in-depth cultivation of branches; it focuses on building professional teams, persists in high-quality building, high-quality management, and high-quality training, and the teams’ production capacity continues to improve.

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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