By Laurent Doucet and Christophe Angoulvant

Generally speaking, Asia is still a market full of differentiation and the insurance penetration rate in China's non-life insurance market significantly grew.

In the "Asian Top 50" ranking, mainland China has the largest number of insurance companies with 12 insurers, and continues to occupy the top 3 positions (in terms of total premium income).

The average return on equity of mainland Chinese insurance companies exceeds that of Japanese and Korean peers (13% vs. 6% Japan and 5% Korea).

Affected by the impact of the epidemic, in the first half of 2020, most of the insurance market in Asia has seen a significant decline in premium income, while life insurance (calculated by new business premium income) and non-life insurance (calculated by total premium income) in the Chinese market remained positive.

Regarding M&A transaction volume and P/E ratio in the insurance market, the Chinese market is still a hot spot for M&A investment (number and size of deals, PE multiples). Major insurance companies are increasing their investments in the developing Asian InsurTech network.