The total assets of Chinese insurance companies reached 3.03 trillion yuan (US$436.4 billion) by the end of April this year, said Thursday's Shanghai Securities News, citing latest statistics from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

Hao Yansu, director of the insurance school of the Central University of Finance and Economics, said that this showed the development of Chinese insurance industry was gaining greater momentum.

The business scale of the country's insurance was expanding at an annual growth rate of around 16 percent since 2002 and the combined premium income topped 564.1 billion yuan in 2006.

China Life Insurance (Group) Co., China Ping An and China Pacific Insurance are the three biggest players in terms of asset scales.

Total assets of foreign-funded insurers stood at 125.6 billion yuan by the end of last year, but only accounting for 4.33 percent of the industry's total assets.

Experts held that the insurance market pattern dominated by several domestic insurance titans did not change.

Figures showed that insurance companies' monthly investment surpassed 91.4 billion yuan in April, while the newly added bank deposits by the insurers was only 16.4 billion yuan last month, showing that insurance companies were taking a proactive investment attitude.

(Xinhua News Agency May 22, 2008)