Jiali Digital Intelligence Transformation, Listed Insurance Companies' AI Competition Enters Deep Water Zone

The insurance industry is undergoing an AI-led “smart reconfiguration.” Recently, China Life, China Ping An, China Taiping, China Pacific Insurance, New China Life, and Ping An Property & Casualty have all released their 2025 performance reports in succession. On April 1, Beijing Business Today’s reporter reviewed and found that “digital and intelligent transformation” has moved from a strategic slogan to real operational investment by publicly listed insurers. In an era when artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing, many insurers have discussed the construction of financial technology capabilities in annual reports, earnings briefings, and other events, including topics related to AI technology development and its applications. Unlike technology digitization of single business segments in the past, today’s “AI+” now covers end-to-end business processes, including the C-side and internal employees of insurers.

AI penetrates end-to-end business processes

According to annual report data, in their top-level design, multiple leading insurers have increased the strategic weight of AI. At the same time, AI technology is breaking through traditional process bottlenecks, enabling a shift from “human-led” to “intelligent-driven,” significantly improving service efficiency and customer experience, and becoming the core engine for “efficiency gains.”

Since 2025, the application of AI in China’s insurance industry has entered a new stage of large-scale implementation. Publicly listed insurers have repeatedly made AI a core strategic lever and increased resource investment. According to China Ping An, the group adheres to the principle of “AI in ALL,” is customer-demand oriented with empowering the core business as the center, continues to invest in R&D, and builds leading technology capabilities based on four elements of artificial intelligence (algorithms, data, scenarios, and computing power). In 2025, more than 230k employees at China Ping An used an internal intelligent agent platform to develop more than 70k intelligent agent applications, with 3.65 billion model calls throughout the year.

China Life also uses AI to improve quality and efficiency. In its annual report, it states that it proactively aligns with the national “Artificial Intelligence+” action plan deployment and builds an AI capability system in an all-round way, covering every link of the company’s business and management; it also builds a data space of “one billion-level data—ten thousand-plus features—hundreds of dimensions of tags.”

When AI becomes “infrastructure,” what it brings is not only cost reduction, but more importantly “efficiency improvement + quality improvement,” penetrating end-to-end business processes. For example, China Life mentions that large models empower agents for more professionalized and personalized business development, improving customer outreach efficiency, with year-on-year growth of more than 15% in customer annual visits. Allianz Insurance states that AI technology has been deeply integrated into the full chain of product design, marketing, underwriting, service, claims, and quality control. In private-domain scenarios, AI customer service helps a single seat serve more than 100k end users. In health insurance claims, the proportion of automated audit exceeds 45%, enabling claims settlement in as fast as 15 seconds, and more than 76% of customers receive claim payouts within one working day. In the auto ecosystem, more than 50% of claims achieve “instant contact, instant review, instant payout” through video; the fastest AI-based damage assessment shortens the processing time to 116 seconds.

As Wang Peng, a deputy research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, analyzes, against the backdrop of fluctuations in industry labor scale, AI can significantly improve total factor productivity. Through tools such as intelligent underwriting and instant claims settlement, insurers achieve second-level claim closure and high automation rates, greatly reducing operating costs and improving customer experience.

From auxiliary tools to a strategic engine

Looking at future development, multiple publicly listed insurers have clearly set AI as a long-term strategic direction. At a key stage in the industry’s digital transformation, AI is no longer merely an auxiliary tool for improving efficiency; instead, it has become a core strategic engine driving business growth and reshaping competitive dynamics.

“AI is not a multiple-choice question; it is a question with an answer that must be provided,” Guo Xiaotao, Co-CEO of China Ping An, stated clearly at the company’s earnings briefing. China Ping An is advancing the “Comprehensive Finance: 99 Integration” plan, aiming to use AI-driven consolidation to integrate more than 700 million internet registered users into a unified super entry point, achieving comprehensive aggregation of traffic, entry points, and backend data, so that customers can complete a closed loop of medical, elderly-care, and comprehensive financial services within a one-stop entry point.

Regarding expanding AI application across more areas, Qin Hongbo, Deputy General Manager of New China Life, said that to “let robots do what robots should do, and let employees do what is more valuable.” With the arrival of the AI era, technology empowerment at New China Life has already penetrated every link of business and management, becoming a core engine for New China Life’s high-quality development. New China Life will continue to maintain strategic resilience, investing both in people and in things, and under the guidance of the new “15th Five-Year Plan and 5-year onward” technology blueprint, strive to enable AI to generate greater effectiveness at New China Life.

At an earnings briefing, Ding Xiangqun, Chairman of PICC Insurance, stated clearly that the technology line will be positioned as an “accelerator,” proposing to “more proactively seize the opportunities presented by the development of artificial intelligence, deepen reforms of the technology system and digital development, accelerate the release of technology productive forces, and capture the commanding heights of smart and digital transformation.”

The implementation of strategy requires guidance from scientific methodologies. Fu Yifu, a special research fellow at Sushang Bank, said that insurers advancing AI capability building should focus on three coordinated dimensions. On the one hand, build an integrated foundation of data and computing power. The effectiveness of AI depends on data quality; insurers need to break through internal “data silos” that have long existed, and simultaneously build hybrid cloud and private computing power infrastructure that complies with regulatory requirements, ensuring centralized and intensive use of data assets under a compliance premise. On the other hand, balance efficiency improvements with risk control. The financial industry has extremely high requirements for accuracy and explainability; AI applications need to establish a supporting model governance system, including algorithm audits, an human-in-the-loop fallback mechanism, and ethical standards, to prevent compliance risks caused by “black-box” operations. In addition, it is necessary to reshape the organizational capability for human-machine collaboration. Deep technology penetration requires redefining job responsibilities, focusing on cultivating the ability of front-line employees to collaborate with AI tools, not simply replacing them. Through ongoing skills reshaping, the organization’s overall cognitive level can be upgraded.

Beijing Business Today reporter: Li Xiumei

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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