CHINA LIFE PLANS TO DOUBLE BONUSES ON SOME POLICIES

China’s largest life assurer China Life will be doubling the returns offered on bonus-linked policies to a minimum of 8% (standard dividend plus bonus) for 2007, reports today’s South China Morning Post . The increased return reflects investment gains made by the assurer on the back of a booming domestic equity market. For the first nine months of the year China Life recorded a 46% gain in net assets per share, generating a net profit of 24.69bn yuan ($3.4bn). China Life also said at the weekend that 600m additional shares would be made available for trading on the Shanghai bourse on January 9. Investors who bought shares in last year’s initial public offering will see the end of the 12-month lockdown period, introduced to discourage speculative short-term investment. The shares were sold last year at 18.88 yuan each and have since increased in value by 200%. Meanwhile, China Life (Overseas) has moved its headquarters to Shenzhen from Beijing. It received a local grant of 20m yuan ($2.75m) to do so, reported Sinocast . China Life Insurance (Overseas) has branches in Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore. It is wholly owned by China Life Insurance (Group) Company, and is in charge of promoting the group business development overseas.