China to remain fastest-growing insurance market

China will remain the world's fastest-growing insurance market in the next 10 years in terms of the scale of insurance premiums, industry experts said at the 2019 Insurance Conference.

"We believe China will still be the fastest-growing insurance market in the world in the coming decade, driven by the high-quality growth of the country's economy, people's ballooning wealth, the market potential and the favorable policies," Yin Zhaojun, vice-president of China Life Insurance (Group) Company, told the conference on Friday.

Held by Insuranceforce, a new media organization targeted at insurance practitioners, the conference addressed the opportunities and challenges facing the insurance industry.

China became the world's second-largest insurance market in 2017, but the insurance depth and density in China represents only 66 percents and 52 percents of the world's average, thus leaving a wide space for development, said Yin, adding that the sector also faces great challenges such as customers' upgraded requirements, the need for innovation promoted by 5G and the downturn in financial markets.

Cao Deyun, secretary of Insurance Asset Management Association of China, said that China's insurance industry is up against "the most dramatic change in a hundred years". Take life insurance for example, the overall performance of life insurance companies remained a negative growth until the end of November in 2018.

The global economy is under the downward pressure caused by factors like Sino-US trade friction and rising debt burden across the globe, said Xu Jinghui, chairman of Pacific Life Insurance. In this context, the life insurance companies are facing the risks of decreasing assets income, increasing volatility in capital markets and frequent events of default, deepened the difficulty of asset-liability matching accordingly.

The chairman of New China Life Insurance Wan Feng said the overall return on insurance investment will keep heading down in 2019, probably no more than 4.5 percent.

Zhang Hanzhi contributed to this story