China's Ping An Insurance (2318) reported a 27.3 percent year-on-year fall in net profit in the first nine months of 2026, as investment income fell amid a volatile stock market.
The insurance company posted 96.65 billion yuan (HK$113.71 billion) in net profit in the nine months ended September 30, according to a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
Operating profit, which strips out short-term investment volatility and one-time items, rose 8.3 percent year-on-year.
A weak stock market in China has weighed on Chinese insurers' investment returns as they have increased their equity holdings in response to Beijing's call to support the market.
Ping An's investment income dropped 68.6 percent year-on-year to 49.49 billion yuan in the first nine months of this year.
The new business value in its life and health insurance segment, which measures the profitability of new policies sold, fell 13.3 percent year-on-year to 30.99 billion yuan.
Policy sales at Chinese insurers slowed in the third quarter as regulators tightened scrutiny of the bancassurance channel and as insurers faced competition from bank deposits, Goldman Sachs said in a research note.
The number of retail customers rose 1.9 percent from the end of last year to 255.8 million at end-September, the filing showed.
Banking unit Ping An Bank last week reported its third-quarter net profit rose 0.2 percent year-on-year.
China in September announced a capital injection of up to 70 billion yuan into five state-owned insurers, in an effort to ease pressure on insurers' core solvency ratios from falling long-term government bond yields.
Reuters
