Insurers are up and down

China Life Insurance (2628) said its first-half net profit fell 18.8 percent to 30.54 billion yuan (HK$34.36 billion) while ZhongAn Online P & C Insurance (6060) saw first-half net profit surge 4.19 times to 490 million yuan.

Earnings per share of China Life were 1.07 yuan. The company did not declare an interim dividend.

The decline in net profit was mainly affected by the update of discount rate assumptions for reserves of traditional insurance contracts, the adjustment of the pre-tax deduction policy of underwriting and policy acquisition costs adopted in the corresponding period of 2019 and the change in gross investment income, the insurer said.

Its total revenue rose 12.5 percent from a year ago to 504.43 billion yuan during the first six months with new business value growing 6.7 percent to 36.89 billion yuan.

The embedded value of the insurer, representing the sum of the present value of future profits and adjusted net asset value, exceeded 1 trillion yuan for the first time, up by 7.8 percent year-on-year to 1.02 trillion yuan as of the end of June.

ZhongAn's basic profit per share was 33 fen and no interim dividend was declared. The insurer's total income grew 24.4 percent to 8.59 billion yuan.

However, losses from its virtual banking segment widened nearly 50 percent to 111 million yuan. ZA Bank has attracted HK$2.4 billion of savings as of the end of June and recorded a revenue of 19.01 million yuan.