New trends in insurance asset management ABS business: 3 companies reported 6 new held real estate projects last year

Securities Times Reporter Liu Jingyuan and Deng Xingying

The insurance asset management company’s exchange-traded asset securitization (ABS) business is progressing steadily.

According to Securities Times reporters’ statistics, as of now, five insurance asset management companies participating in the pilot program as ABS managers have applied to the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for a total of 20 exchange ABS transactions, with a scale of 32.053 billion yuan. Looking at data from 2025, insurance asset management companies have submitted 9 ABS applications, of which 6 are emerging market-held real estate ABS.

A total of 9 ABS were filed last year

Since October 2023, when approval was granted for the exchange asset securitization and real estate investment trust fund (REITs) pilot programs, by the end of 2025, five insurance asset management companies—China Life Asset Management, Taikang Asset Management, PICC Asset Management, PICC Property & Casualty, and Ping An Asset Management—had submitted a total of 20 ABS projects to the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, totaling 32.053 billion yuan.

In 2025, a total of 9 insurance asset management ABS projects received approval or feedback from the exchanges, with a combined scale of 12.613 billion yuan. Among them, PICC Property & Casualty filed 5, PICC Asset Management filed 3, and Taikang Asset Management filed 1. The scales of these filings were 6.809 billion yuan, 5.519 billion yuan, and 285 million yuan, respectively. Meanwhile, two other asset management companies, China Life Asset Management and Ping An Asset Management, did not submit new ABS applications.

Compared to previous years, by the end of 2025, among the above ABS projects, PICC Property & Casualty filed 9, with a total scale of 13.014 billion yuan, ranking first in both number and scale; PICC Asset Management filed 5, with a scale of 12.049 billion yuan; Taikang Asset Management filed 3, with 3.754 billion yuan; China Life Asset Management (managed by China Life Wealth) and Ping An Asset Management filed 2 and 1 respectively.

Rise of Hold-Type Real Estate ABS

As of now, insurance asset management companies have filed a total of 7 hold-type real estate ABS, with 6 of these filed in 2025, accounting for two-thirds of the total ABS filings that year, indicating a strong preference for hold-type real estate ABS among insurance asset managers.

Hold-type real estate ABS are positioned as equity-type ABS, an innovative product launched within the asset-backed securities framework, sitting between ABS and public REITs, and are also viewed as “private REITs.” Under the construction of a multi-level REITs market, hold-type real estate ABS is a rapidly expanding innovative category.

According to Securities Times reporters’ statistics, as of February 23, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges had accepted, responded to, and approved 67 hold-type real estate ABS, including 59 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and 8 on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Among these, seven were filed by insurance asset management companies as managers.

The first insurance asset management hold-type real estate ABS in the entire market was the “China Communications Guangming Expressway Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan,” filed in 2024 by PICC Asset Management. This was also the first high-speed road hold-type real estate ABS with distinct equity attributes in the market. The project was accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange on November 21, 2024, received feedback on December 26, 2024, and was successfully established on July 18, 2025, with an issuance scale of 2.53 billion yuan, setting a new record for single-project issuance size in the hold-type real estate ABS market at that time.

In 2025, among the six new hold-type real estate ABS filings by insurance asset management, four were by PICC Property & Casualty, and one each by Taikang Asset Management and PICC Asset Management. Specific projects include: Taikang Asset Management—Century Interconnect Data Center Hold-Type Real Estate Green Asset-Backed Special Plan; Taikang Asset Management—Caitong—Yuanjing New Energy Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan (carbon neutrality); PICC Asset Management—China Railway Norde Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan; Taikang Asset Management—Tianhe Fuhua New Energy Infrastructure Carbon Neutral Green Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan (rural revitalization); Taikang Asset Management—Gonghua Smart New Energy Infrastructure Carbon Neutral Green Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan; Taikang Asset Management—Xuanhuangpu Zhumen City Rental Housing Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan.

The latest hold-type real estate ABS filed by an insurance asset management company is the “Taikang Asset—Xuanhuangpu Zhumen City Rental Housing Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan,” with Taikang Asset Management serving as manager and lead investor. The project was successfully established on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on February 13, 2025, marking a breakthrough in the innovative practice of multi-level REITs in the rental housing market. The issuance scale was 1.1942 billion yuan, with oversubscription multiple, attracting 17 diversified investors including insurance funds, bank wealth management, brokerage proprietary trading, and trust companies.

Taikang Asset Management stated that housing leasing is a livelihood industry. Although profits are modest, as a stable income-generating real estate asset, it has highly predictable cash flows, manageable risks, steady returns, and inflation hedging properties. These features align well with the large scale, long-term, and stable risk-return preferences of insurance funds, and can help reduce risks while leveraging the advantages of long-term capital to serve the real economy.

Previously, several insurance asset management firms revealed to Securities Times that they have reserve projects in new energy and new infrastructure fields, aiming to expand their hold-type real estate ABS business and provide more asset allocation solutions for insurance funds. A relevant person from Taikang Asset Management said that hold-type real estate ABS can often provide long-term, continuous cash flows, fitting the long duration and steady pursuit characteristics of insurance funds.

“Over the next few years, under the policy guidance to activate existing assets, central enterprises and high-quality local state-owned enterprises will still have strong motivation and demand for equity-type asset activation,” PICC Asset Management responded to Securities Times’ interview. For enterprises, equity ABS is a platform to activate existing assets, optimize liabilities, and conduct capital operations; for investors, it offers a channel combining fixed income and equity attributes; for the economy, it improves resource allocation efficiency. Therefore, equity ABS, as an effective tool for activating existing assets, can promote high-quality development and has promising future prospects.

Distinctive Development of Insurance Asset Management

After more than a decade of development, the asset securitization business model has become relatively mature, but homogeneous competition is intense. However, as a new participant in the exchange ABS field, insurance asset management companies have positioned themselves with differentiated development and unique characteristics.

PICC Asset Management told Securities Times that because insurance asset management plays both the role of product manager and insurance asset allocator, it does not view exchange ABS as merely an investment banking activity. Instead, it seeks high-quality issuers and assets that meet insurance investment standards, and through planned governance mechanisms, controls project companies to better participate in the operation of underlying assets and effectively prevent project risks. Given their long-term duration and strict risk control, insurance funds naturally prioritize long-term stable cash flows and mature operational safeguards.

A relevant person from Taikang Asset Management said that after participating in the ABS pilot, the company will leverage its strengths in areas like long-term capital investment and equity products, creating diversified products and forming some distinctive features in the ABS market to better serve insurance funds and other investors.

It is worth noting that the development of ABS business within insurance groups can synergize with other internal businesses. During the ABS process, the insurance asset management acts as the plan manager overseeing the entire process, with insurance funds as cornerstone investors playing a leading role, and insurance companies providing insurance guarantees for underlying assets.

From publicly available information, ABS projects managed by insurance asset management companies often have the advantage of cornerstone investors and management-investment linkage. For example, the “PICC Asset Management—China Communications Guangming Expressway Hold-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan,” with PICC funds as cornerstone investors, and the “Taikang Asset—Century Interconnect Data Center Hold-Type Real Estate Green Asset-Backed Special Plan,” managed and led by Taikang Asset Management. These projects also involve diversified investors beyond insurance funds.