I'm Liu Zhiyong, Assistant President and Board Secretary. I'm honored to be today's host. First of all, I'd like to introduce to you the senior management attending today. They are Chairman Yang Yucheng. President and Financial Principal Gong Xingfeng. We are also honored to have independent directors to join us online. Today's conference consists of business presentation and a Q&A. Now let's start the presentation. Let's welcome Mr. Yang Yucheng.
You distinguished investors, analysts, and media friends. Welcome to the sixth anniversary announcement. We are grateful for your long-standing attention and support for our company. In the first half of 2026, we carried out solid earning and education on upholding a correct outlook on political performance.
Bearing in mind the original mission of finance serving the nation and the people, we proactively integrated into the broader national development agenda, followed a path of intensive high-quality development, deep encoding the development of reinsurance service and investment, and advanced professional market-oriented and systematic reforms. With concentrated efforts on consolidating development foundation, forging core competitiveness, executing strategic key tasks, we achieved sustained improvement in operations and efficiency. Market competitiveness and comprehensive strength were further enhanced. Multiple core indicators sustained sound growth on a high base. The company showed multiple progress with more concrete base, consolidated foundation, optimized structure, greater momentum, and increasing efficiency. The outcome of dual advancement of volume and value and the dual optimization of structure and profitability were further highlighted. In the first half of the year, the GWP reached RMB 129.57 b illion, up by 6.9%. Operating revenue amounted to RMB 83.26 billion, up by 18.9%.
NBV reached RMB 6.9 billion, up by 11.9%. Embedded value reached RMB 310.4 billion, growing by 7.8%. Total assets amounted to RMB 1.96 trillion, increasing by 3.1%. Net assets reached RMB 123.6 billion, up by 10.8%. Investment withstood the test of capital market volatility and delivered solid results. Annualized total investment yield stood at 6.7%, up by 0.8 percentage points. Driven by the dual momentum from core life insurance business and investment, our value creation capacity improved greatly. The net profit hit a new high of RMB 22.8 billion, surging 54% year-on-year. Committed to sharing operation gains with investors, we propose to distribute an interim cash dividend at RMB 0.73 per share, representing a 9% year-on-year increase. In terms of overall performance, we achieved all front growth in business scale and value. FYRP for our long-term insurance growth by 27.7%, among which the ten-year and above premium jumped.
In our comprehensive growth, our NBV and EV also increased a lot. For business structure, we concentrated our efforts on regular premium and the long-term business, delivering continuous structure improvement. The proportion of regular premium business increased substantially. FYRP for our long-term insurance accounted for 85.2%, up by 20.8 percentage points. The share of ten-year and above regular premium rose by 3.9 percentage points. We step up transformation for participating insurance, and our product mix has further optimized and has won greater recognition from customers. We strengthen institutional-based operation, refined close-loop management, and consolidated the long-term mechanism for quality management. Our 13-month persistency ratio reached 97.5%. 25-month persistency ratio hit 93.6%. The surrender rate came in at 0.7%, down by 0.1 percentage point.
In the first half of the year, we thoroughly upheld the political nature and people-centered. We stayed committed to enduring difficult risings and secured new breakthroughs in serving national strategies, institutional reform, and key strategic priorities. Our work mainly falls into five areas. One, we continued to play the role of two instruments and three nets. Practically guaranteed and improved people's livelihoods, served the real economy, and it delivered a solid progress. Investment balance serving the real economy exceeded RMB 1.4 trillion, up by 15%. Investment balance under the five priorities in finance surpassed RMB 500 billion, rising by 40%. In technology finance, drawing on the long-term natures of insurance capital, we scaled up long-term investment in tech innovation. Investment in relevant sectors exceeded RMB 220 billion and provided protection of sum assured over RMB 1 trillion for nearly 12,000 companies.
For green finance, we actively built a service system of green insurance, green investment, and green operations, and participated in green projects covering clean energy, green consumption, and other fields. With an investment balance exceeding RMB 110 billion. We offered protection of sum assured of more than RMB 310 billion to 6,700 green enterprises. In inclusive finance, focusing on the protected groups and SME development, our investment stood at nearly RMB 46 billion and underwrote 26 welfare projects. Total sum assured exceeded RMB 1 trillion. In pension finance, we promoted deep integration between healthcare and elderly care services. Investment in old age care and the healthcare industry surpassed RMB 26 billion. And the scale of enterprise and occupational annuities under management further expanded. FYP from commercial pension, annuity, individual pension and other business reached nearly RMB 8.7 billion.
In digital finance, we stepped up efforts to build infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation. Investment exceeded RMB 100 billion. We fostered the growth of online insurance and provided protection sum assured over RMB 420 billion. Also, we strengthened digital risk prevention and control. Second, we continued to practice the customer-centric strategy on all fronts, devoted to fulfilling our commitments for customers and provide enduring protection, greater health, and a better life. Enduring protection lies in our commitment to long-termism and endeavor to consolidate the foundation for lifetime protection. We worked to strengthen product innovation, improve product competitiveness, diversify product supplies, and build a multilevel and multifunction product system. Flexible combination enables us to satisfy customers' full life cycle needs. Also, we improved the product structure longer and the health protection products, and established a diversified and balanced mix driven by the synergy of participating annuities, participating in incremental life insurance.
For improving claim settlement and fulfilling insurance responsibilities, we provided efficient whole process operation and services, upgraded the self-service claim function, enabling immediate claim settlement and instant arrival of compensation. Special services including advanced payments, medical expense, early compensation for critical illness, and coverage for advanced therapies were provided. Total compensation reached RMB 7.29 billion, with daily average amounting to RMB 40 million, which manifested the protection function of insurance. We empowered the frontline agents with digital tools and tap into AI and digital technologies to support business expansion. The digital showcasing platform presented our comprehensive service system and increased customer recognition and brand credibility. To build an NCI for greater health, we deepened the coordination of medical and old age care resources and built an integrated health security system. We advanced the innovative integration of health insurance and health management.
The core of life insurance pension finance lies in the deep integration of long-term capital management with medical care and old age care service ecosystem. We offered customers one-stop solution of insurance, old age care, and medical services. We actively explored the integrated growth model and created a second growth curve, expanded the boundaries of healthcare services, and facilitate the front-loading of health management. We continued to cultivate service brands, including excellent medical care, healthcare, and old age care. Excellent medical care provides customers with prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. The excellent healthcare promotes deep integration of insurance products and services, and forms a service system covering treatment, medicine, recovery, and care. To forge NCA for a better life, we diversified the ecosystem supply to meet various demands for high-quality life.
We upgraded the customer service and the management system, expanded the layout of the old age care service ecosystem, enriched full life cycle service, and established competitiveness with differentiated customer service. We upgraded the five major service brands. The service ecosystem covers five major sectors and the 16 core services. We have deployed 61 health and old age care communities and 83 travel-based projects at home and abroad to provide diversified choices for our customers.
Thirdly, we prioritize top driver design, deepen the system and mechanism reform, remain committed to laying a solid foundation, ensuring long-term benefits, and boosting future momentum. Unleashing internal development momentum. Enhanced planning. Since the beginning of this year, we benchmark against the national 15th Five-Year Plan and the higher level requirements. Consider the reality of the company, accelerating the formulation of our own 15th Five-Year Plan through multiple discussions and a scientific analysis. We developed and improved a strategic planning system of one overall plan, plus multiple sub-plans based on the version of building a first-class Chinese financial service group centered on insurance. The strategic direction of practicing big insurance philosophy and building a strong NCI. We implemented a customer-centric, team-based, and employee partnership strategy, advancing high quality development through professional and sound planning and strong execution. Strong headquarters.
Adhere to the strategy of strengthening the HQ, reinforcing the middle tier, and stabilizing the grassroots. Build a strong headquarters, strengthen the middle tier branch companies, and stabilize and consolidate grassroots. A third and fourth tier institution forge a powerful NCI. Full of vitality. We enhance the headquarters' core functions in policy making, technology construction, and talent deployment. Guided by the position of headquarter for priming, institutions for implementation, we have targeted measures to drive institutional strength through strong headquarters. Robust branches. We upgraded the Strong Foundation Project to version 3.0 with a focus on empowering agents through office staff office. Raising grassroot competitive effectiveness through improved incentive, team building, operational financial management, and targeted investments. We boosted branch level growth momentum. Elite talents. We optimized structural talents and refined incentive mechanisms. If we pull and keep our staff at all levels, deepen the talent rejuvenation initiative.
We further sharpen our market awareness, foster a corporate culture that embraces competition and strive for excellence, build enduring vitality for the company's growth. Effective synergies. We established a once-a-year business empowerment mechanism that provides company-wide support across all key business milestones. In the past, only channel departments deliver strategic briefings. Instead, we now have channel product training, service ecosystem, operation, and branding teams act coordinatively and empower the grassroots. This leverages the coordinated strength of one NCI. Optimal efficiency. We optimize financial resource allocation mechanism, strengthen the input-output efficiency, refine resource deployment in line with strategic priorities. The resource for long-term regular premium products and health insurance. We introduced a nonprofit evaluation system centered on profit-based performance to guide branches to improve their efficiency. Cut costs and improve efficiency through refined cost management, while leveraging high quality products as cost-effective ecosystem service.
A competitive base cloud and intelligent tech enable the operational tools to boost business growth and keep development. First, we focused on strategic priorities and drove new results in key areas. Deepen organizational development and quality recruitment. Adhere to a strategic priority of putting the team first. Establish a routine organizational development framework anchored on the base cloud, supported by a series of targeted programs for quality recruitment. Optimize team structure and solidified team agent basis. Formulated a three-year plan for individual channel development, and provide guidance for team building and store units. We launched a Lighting 30 Cities for the 30th Anniversary national talent program. Provides customized growth environment and dedicated support for talents, helping them build a cause of great love and realize entrepreneurialship dreams. We strengthen the organizational talent and the capacity building in third and fourth tier institutions to enhance their combined effectiveness.
Practice the modern marketing philosophy. Improve the three-tier ecosystem management at the head office, branch office, and agent level to drive deeper integration of product + service + scenario + technology. Guides agents to transform from single product sellers to providers of full-life cycle services, achieving new improvements in customer scale and business value. We made full efforts to strengthen the bank corporate channel, positioning it as one of our two core channels and two core drivers. Strengthen top-level design, improve institutional mechanism, enhance empowerment of the bank channel across products, training, operation, and technology to form a full chain support system. Deepen cooperation with banks and focus on improving both the quality and scale of team. In the first half of this year, regular premium from the bank channel reached a record high, contributing nearly half of the total value, with sound growth in both team size and productivity.
Accelerate the development of core competitiveness in technology. Establish data for transformation as a strategic and foundational priority during the 15th Five-Year Plan. Aligning technology strategy with corporate development. Continue to increase resource in the technology. Build a special group for IT application innovation. Accelerate the implementation of innovative IT applications. Promote cloud-based center construction. Advance AI Plus strategy. Accelerate application AI large models across business areas. Drive the acceleration of digital intelligence transformation. Fifth, continuously enhance business resilience and long-term investment momentum. Strengthen investment capabilities and diversify the strategies to solidify robust long-term investment strength. We pay attention to asset liability matching, pursuing dynamic balance in duration structure, cash return, and cash flow. Consolidate the foundation for long-term health and sustainable development. Strengthen the research and investment capabilities of our team, deepen macro strategy and industry research to improve accuracy and foresight on market judgments.
Talent is key to investment. During the first half of the year, we recruited investment research professionals, strengthened our core team, and explored AI empowerment to inject fresh thinking and professional strength into the decision-making. Optimize asset allocation structure. Increase allocation to long-duration bonds, OCR holdings, and high-quality alternative assets. Adjust the ratio of GPL and the right mix of dividend and tech sectors based on market conditions. Enrich diversified investment strategies for the fixed income assets, raising allocation to bank loans, portfolio term asset management products, and REITs to diversify return sources and improve investment returns. We actively increase investment in high-tech and new productive forces in both primary and secondary markets. Focus on semiconductor, new energy, and bio medicines to support the real economy and grow with enterprises.
In the first half of the year, we navigated severe global capital market volatility with solid professional capability and improved investment strategies. Our investment yield has ranked among the top in the industry for three years. 2026 marks the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, the 30th anniversary of our company. All staff have strived with determination and hard work, delivering an outstanding and hard-won performance, achieving a strong start of the 15th Five-Year Plan and laying a solid foundation and accumulating stronger momentum for the company's further growth. Looking ahead, we'll continue to forge our competitiveness in the following aspects. First, stressing the guiding role of party-building and the party's prominence to foster a clear and upright political ecosystem. Keep the spirit of NCI's professional iron army alignment thriving.
We will lead high-quality development with high-quality party-building and give full play to the role of party committee in setting directions, managing the overall situation, and ensuring implementation. We will continue to improve the political judgment, political understanding, and political execution employed at all levels, transform the party's political and organizational strengths into advantages for reform and development. We will uphold the culture at the soul of the company. Foster a corporate culture that values customer, hard work, openness, inclusiveness, and ability to execute. We will practice the spirit of NCI professional iron army and forge the new era of corporate culture into NCI's deepest and most enduring competitiveness and driving force. Second, adhere to strategic planning, deepen institutional reform, and optimize resource allocation. We will remain grounded in the present while planning for the future, strengthen internal strength, and enhance our strategic leadership.
Promote the formulation of the company's one plus 15 Five-Year Plan. Carry the blueprint into the end. We will closely align with strategic task, business development needs, and market changes. We will advance professional market orient and systematic reform. Through the difficult, by rising, break down institutional barriers that hinder development, optimize incentive and constraint mechanism and performance evaluation system. We will leverage the strong synergy of One NCI and continue to deepen the coordinated development of insurance plus service plus investment to enhance the company's comprehensive strengths. Leverage the synergy of One NCI, driving the company's transformation from individual efforts to coordinated cooperation. We will deepen our customer service and improve, solidify the due core channel and due core drivers of bank and individual insurance. Consolidate the foundation with traditional business while expanding insurance and government-subsidized insurance and internet business. We will enhance comprehensive customer service and management capabilities.
On the investment front, we will continue to strengthen investment research capabilities and diversify investment strategies. Build an investment ecosystem, enhance asset liability coordination, create long-term stable value. Focus on strategic key areas, increase investments, establish and consolidate new advantages, and achieve breakthroughs and leaps in development. We will continue to deepen the strong headquarter strategy, leveraging a strong headquarter to drive the excellence of institutions. We will keep advancing the Strong Foundation Project, strengthen organizational talent and capability development, as well as resource investment in grassroots. We will continue to deepen service ecosystem, open up space for the layout across light, medium, and heavy asset models in health and eldercare. Keep increased investment in technology and AI, accelerating the comprehensive application of AI, big data, and other technologies. Across talent products, service investment is there to build a digital, intelligent, and innovative NCI.
This grows the organizational capability building and continue to deepen the development of a learning-oriented, service-empowering, and resource-driven organization. Foster an atmosphere of deeper and lifelong learning. Perceiving, empowering customer teams and employees through service. Establish a professional, standardized, refined, and comprehensive service empowerment system. Encourage branches at all levels to study markets and competition and translate their knowledge into policy tools, methods, and business results. Enhance the company's innovation capabilities, systematic organizational capability, and service support capability. As a new starting point of our 30th anniversary, we pay tribute to history and look forward to the future. After 30 years of development, we have built a stronger foundation, enhanced our strength, improved our point, and achieved small, stable operations.
In this first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, and this milestone year marking the 30th anniversary of our company, we once again delivered outstanding interim results on top of two consecutive years of high growth. This is both a substantial growth, a substantial gift, but a call for progress. Looking ahead, we are full of confidence and drive, guided by a quite real performance. We will continue to carry out the spirit of NCI professional army. We will embark on a new journey of 15th Five-Year Plan with resolve and courage. We will open a new chapter for high-quality development and contribute NCI's strength to serving China's organization and the building of financial power. That is the end of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yang. Now, let's begin the Q&A session. Due to time limits, everyone should ask no more than two questions. Please identify yourself before raising questions. Now, let's welcome the first question.
Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I am with Soochow Securities. First of all, congratulations on your performance, and I have two questions. The first is about the liability side, and the second is about investment. The first question, against the high base built in the previous years, you have made great improvement in your regular premium and NBV. So what do you think are the key drivers behind this performance? The third quarter has passed, and we have a very high base now. What is your outlook for the full-year growth rate and the business structure? The second question about investment.
We see you have made great investment return in the first half of the year, leading industrial peers. Can you elaborate on the investment assessment mechanism, especially the regulatory requirements for long-term assessments on investment? How do you seek your mid to long-term return?
Mr. Gong will answer your first question.
Thank you for your question. In the first half of the year, we focused on life insurance investments and services, improved our customer-centric cooperation and service capacity. In life insurance main business, the regular premiums, 10-year and above premiums, all sustained good growth momentum. These results are hard-won, and at this standing point of our 30th anniversary, we are grateful for our customers. To pay back our customers, we will continue to build up on this performance. I'd like to share with you my views on this. One, we increased through our team building. In the first half of the year, our team building has increased its quality and quantity.
No matter in the high-performing team, in the individual team, or the performing team in the bank insurance channel, our productivity also improved. The team base has contributed to our business performance. The second is our channels. On our growing investment in our individual channel, we also elevated the strategic level of the bank insurance channel and formed a dual-core channel and dual-core driver strategy. This strategy has delivered solid results. The individual and the bank insurance channels recorded RMB 17.7 billion and RMB 14.6 billion, up by 24% and 32% respectively. The third is management empowerment. We strengthened diversified product supply, improved our structure, and based on the Strong Foundation Initiative 3.0, we improved our capabilities and strengthened both the office team and the agent team to build strong teams with strong units.
Through this improvement of management, how time flies, and this we have now at the end of August. We are confident that we can fulfill the full year plan and the tasks for our growth. We will keep following the path of dual increase of volume and value, and the improvement of structure and quality, and focus on the key drivers of productivity. Follow the product + service + technology modern marketing concept, continue to improve our product structure, improve team productivity, and focus our efforts more on long-term and high-value business. Through these efforts, we are confident that we can sustain this good growth momentum and consolidate our past achievements.
Thank you, Mr. Gong.
First, I'd like to thank you for your question. Thank you for your recognition for NCAM. In the first half of the year, we delivered a strong performance. We stick to long-term investment philosophy and upgraded our evaluation mechanism from three points of view. First, we align our evaluation with longer-term cycles from multiple evaluation indicators, make our investment decisions more forward-looking. We have multiple indicators. We have one-year, three-year, and five-year metrics. Second, we focus on value. When designing the evaluation indicators, we balance the absolute returns, relative performance, and risk control with strong emphasis on sustainable profitability, and stable operations. Third, we keep our framework dynamic. We track policy shifts and the market changes by driving assessment criteria as needed for multiple strategy investment. We make the evaluation dynamic. This is very important for us to achieve the annual goal and long-term goal.
To sum it up, the evaluation system of NCI is in line with the national strategies and our high-quality development goals.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now let's welcome the next questions.
Thank you. I'm with China Banking and Insurance News. Since the implementation of the report contract alignment policy in 2024, we have seen that the NBV of the channel has been growing, but the industrial competition has also been getting more fierce. The regulators issued the new rules to strengthen refined cost management of the channel. What impacts do you think will the new rules bring to your company? What are the development strategies of our bank insurance channel against this background?
Mr. Gong, will you answer this question?
The document number 65 focuses on refined fee management, and holds every link accountable. It emphasizes on the authenticity and compliance of fee utilization, and drives more standard and organized bancassurance competition. The new rules set higher standards for the cost of control, professional service, and the compliance operation for insurance companies.
The new rules specified the regulatory bottom line. It will be an important measure to advance the high-quality development of China's bancassurance market. The impacts on our company are as follows. The first is, it will create a key opportunity for us to improve quality and efficiency. To comply with the rules, we need to strengthen our refined fee management, which will increase the value contribution of the channel, and further promote cross-departmental synergy, and guide towards customer needs in terms of our product innovation. It will build up differentiated competitiveness, so as to provide a better service and greater value for our customers. The second is, the rules will promote comprehensive upgrade of our operational model. The rules encourage us to Gives us an important opportunity to deepen our development of this channel.
The refined cost management will help us to improve our competitiveness, but will also bring up more competition. Guided by the new rules, we will deepen the coordinated development of insurance, service, and investment. This will bring the bancassurance channel greater growth potential towards a higher level and a higher quality development. In recent years, our bancassurance channel has maintained a robust growth momentum and has become a major engine driving our scale and value growth. In the first half of the year, our company's party committee prioritized long-term investment, long-term development, and established a dual-core channel and a dual-core driver strategy, which elevated a strategic role of the bancassurance channel and turned it into a core channel. The bancassurance channel will follow the strategy of making progress while maintaining stability so as to achieve stable operation with progress. First, the strategic positioning has become more clarified.
We conducted a strategic research on the new roles and held multiple rounds of special sessions. After elevating the channel to a strategic level last year, we further, in the first half of this year, reinforced its position as a core channel. In May, we established a bancassurance channel leading group for the strategic development, and also established leadership on other tiers. We have formed a top-down synergy, which demonstrated our clear strategic resolve. The second is our economic empowerment will be more concrete. We will continue to advance technology, operation, and ecosystem empowerment, continue to improve the service quality, efficiency, and capacity of the channel. Based on the 10 ecosystems covering medical care, healthcare, et cetera. This will satisfy our customers' needs for diversified protection and wealth management across their life cycles. We will continue to forge differentiated competitive advantages to better facilitate the development of the bancassurance channel.
The third is the responsibilities will be informed more effectively. We will strengthen assessment-driven guidance to make sure the provincial branches, the central branches, and the fourth tier outlets will shoulder their responsibilities. We will advance the Strong Foundation Initiative and extend services to lower-tier markets. Through business review, process supervision, and closed-loop management, we will make sure the strategic arrangements are implemented and operational tasks fulfilled. On this basis, we will leverage our advantages in investment, deepen strategic partnership, accelerate deployment in high net worth and private banking. Improve our product supply, sales skills, and service capability to inject more growth momentum. In summary, we will seize opportunities amid market turbulence, forge the NCI brand, stabilize scale, improve structure, upgrade value, and strengthen compliance to make concerted efforts to celebrate the 30th anniversary with outstanding business performance.
Thank you for the opportunity. I am from CITIC Securities. I have two questions. The first, on the asset level. We see an impressive investment performance in Q2. I would like to know how would you see the active market trend in future? In the current low interest rate environment, what are the allocation strategy for fixed income assets and equity? What are your strategies for alternative investments? My second question is about the liability side. I would like to know what are your team-building strategies for individual channel? How would you plan to empower the team and achieve sustainable growth? Thank you.
Please let us welcome Mr. Chen Yijiang to answer the first question.
Thank you. Thank you for your interest in NCI. As to the active market, we believe the short-term volatility won't change the long-term positive trend. We are firmly optimistic about China's capital market. On the fundamental side, our economy is in a phase of transformation, upgrading. Our growth rate still leads among major economies. Corporate earnings are stabilizing and picking up. All of which have provided a solid base for active investment in China. In terms of liquidity and fund flows, our monetary policy remains moderately accommodative. In a low interest rate environment, household wealth is facing reallocation demand, and medium to long-term capital, represented by life insurance capital, are either stable long-term incremental money to the market. To be specific, on one hand, we believe now there are a number of quality high-dividend names are attractive for insurance allocation.
On the other hand, we pay attention to the opportunities brought by new productive forces, especially the new wave led by AI, biotech. For the second, our allocation strategy, we stick to three principles. As our liability mentioned, diversified allocation and absolute return focus. We build a portfolio for fixed income. We increase their long duration with enough cash flow and quality and fixed income assets build a solid return foundation. On the other hand, we are guided by the general direction to increase our flexibility of the portfolios. You just mentioned the alternative. We made concerted efforts in this regard. We are making progress and increase our exposure to alternative. Capture quality assets and gain excessive returns. In the future, we will improve our investment research capabilities and risk control capabilities, improve returns, and reward investors and shareholders with returns.
Mr. Wang will answer the second question.
To summarize our individual channel feature, I would say the team is the foundation. It is not only a slogan. It is our practical implementation, showing our development concept and where our competitiveness lies. Specifically, we are guided by the corporate culture.
To build specialized professional and all-round teams. These are the orientation of our team building. We have established an organizational system to establish a strong team with good service, quality and competence. In the first half of the year, in our individual team building, we have made all-round breakthroughs. In regular recruitment, high-performing team development, and high-performing team with strong units. These are the three priorities of the channel. The channel recorded 20,000 new recruits with monthly new recruits steadily staying above 3,000. High-performing team development delivered notable results with an increase of 16%, and the average productivity increased by 18%. The standard units doubled the number. This shows how we see the team as our foundation to promote our development of the WLP team. This year marks the 30th anniversary of our company.
Taking this opportunity, we have started an important campaign, themed Lighting 30 Cities for the 30th Anniversary. To date, we have 30 branches that have held their recruitment events, which are widely attracted many talents to join our team. In the future, we will switch focus and extend the events to lower outlets to host this conference in more cities and attract more talents to join our company. You may ask, how will we cultivate these talents and retain them? This is also what we need to answer for the team foundation. For this, we build comprehensive empowerment via four platforms for them to grow and stay. The first is the workplace platform.
We have the best workplace for the agent team, and they established the Xinhua Zun Meeting Place and a series of workplaces to provide our agent team and our customers with a good place to talk face-to-face. The second is the scenario platform. As the insurance business are becoming more complicated, how can we better explain our business to the customers? We have established a set of scenario system to help customers to better understand how insurance companies will provide them with better services in old age care and other services. The third is the training platform. We expanded our classes to our talents and focused on the new recruits, high-performing teams to provide them with a series of growth system. We formalized the standards and enforced strict requirements.
We built a standardized training platform with full coverage so that our customers and agent team can share our resources in this ecosystem. The fourth is the ecosystem platform, which combines the ecosystem of the company and the personal ecosystem, mini ecosystem of the agent teams. This is my answer.
Thank you.
Next question, please.
Thank you. We know NCI adheres to a diversified investment strategy. In the first half of the year, what progress have you made in response to the call for medium and long-term capital to enter the market?
Mr. Chen Yijiang will answer your question.
Thank you for your question. The diversified investment is our firm investment orientation. The strategic emerging industries development created a broad space for our diversified deployment of insurance capital. Taking for the Honghu Fund, we have contributed a total of RMB 46 billion.
It holds the high dividend leading enterprises, including China Telecom. The dividend income has become the cornerstone of this portfolio. It has become an industrial benchmark of medium and long-term capital entering the market. Second, we continued to increase allocation to long-term core holdings, such as high dividend assets. Amid recent market corrections, we proactively added exposure to equity assets oriented towards dividend strategies and new quality productive forces. The third is we kept leveraging the role of long-term capital in the alternative market. We led investments in REITs of JD.com and China Resources. We also participated in the strategic placement of IPOs of HKC and China Resources New Energy. At the same time, we have deployed quality resources of long-term development. About the investment in sci-tech innovation, we advanced efforts on investment research, investment layout, and ecosystem collaboration.
In the investment research system, we set a research team for the strategic emerging industries and built an expert pool to cover the emerging industries, putting research ahead of investment to support investment in the technology sector. On our investment layout, we pursue parallel deployment in the primary and secondary markets. In the secondary markets, we maintain firm exposure to tech growth opportunities. Our capital backed a large model chip R&D, bringing us dual gains from valuation rebound and company growth. In the primary markets, we joined the strategic IPO placement. We acquired stakes from the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund. For ecosystem collaboration, we leveraged the ecosystem resources and explored the insurance capital plus industry leaders in a specialized asset management model and broadened our investment footprint in sci-tech innovation. Thank you.
I'm from People's Daily Online. This year marks this company's 30th anniversary and the third year with the new party committee. Despite the big industry adjustments and market volatility, the company has maintained steady growth, outperforming peers. How would you plan to consolidate your advantages and sustain strong momentum going forward? Thank you.
Please welcome Mr. Yang Yucheng to answer your question.
Thank you for your question. This year is quite exceptional for NCI. It marks the 30th anniversary and the third year of the new party committee. Over the past three years, through the hard work of our staff, and the support of media friends, investors, shareholders, and all sectors, we have delivered our best ever performance. For three consecutive years, we have achieved double-digit growth in FYRP and NBV, steady improvement in business quality, industry-leading investment returns, rapid net profit growth, higher shareholder dividends. We have embarked on an intensive high-quality development path that enhances both scale and value while optimizing structure and efficiency. The reasons are many twofold.
On one hand, we have strengthened party leadership to fulfill our mission of serving the country and the people through finance, and united our people through party building and a new era corporate culture, and driving initiative for activists and creativity with staff, creating a positive environment for reform and development. This is the most important reason. On the other hand, we prioritize strategic planning and top-level design, take measures for reform, enhance mechanisms, enhance our competitiveness. To appeal our competitiveness is from investment service and investment. We carry out the coordinated development, make our insurance stronger, provide whole life cycle services for customers, build and strengthen service ecosystem.
We strengthen our investment, strengthen research capabilities, our strategy is more vivid and detailed, increase competitiveness for the three pillars, and unleash reform dividend and have stronger momentum. At the same time, we pay attention to execution efficiency, advocate a work style for execution, the detail-oriented effort and resilience. We will translate our strategies and reform measures into concrete actions with strong execution and synergy. We are capable of tackling the market changes and gaining the initiative for the development. Today, NCI stands on a stable and growing path, consolidated growth foundations, and have more growth momentum. After 30 years of development, we have accumulated development conditions and core strengths, including strong asset strength and adequate solvency, a nationwide China and institutional network, robust investment management, and also liability coordination, a first-class talent pool, and excellent brand and culture.
We are confident and capable of opening a new chapter of high-level development. You just asked how we can sustain strong growth momentum. In my view, the successful experience of reform and transformation over the past three years, together with the profound accumulation of the past 30 years, is the greatest source of confidence for NCI to win the next 30 years. Looking ahead, we will maintain strategic focus, uphold long-termism, stay the course, and prioritize the following strategic long-term initiatives. First, uphold party leadership and corporate culture as the whole of NCI. Keep the company on the right course. We will maintain our position as a state-owned financial enterprise. Practice the people-centered nature of financial work, serve national strategy, and deliver on the five priorities in finance. Guided by the hardworking, open, inclusive, benevolent, and pragmatic corporate culture.
We will focus on work that builds foundation, benefits the future, and strengthens momentum, carry out professional and market-oriented genes, make our professional spirit, the dare to lead and strive for excellence thrive. Make our corporate culture become the deepest competition and soft power. Second, we are guided by the strategic planning for professional, market-oriented, systematic reform, elevate the company's development capability. After multiple discussions, we have formulated the vision that build a first-class financial service group, and the strategy that practice big insurance philosophy and build a stronger NCI. We will issue the plan later. Next steps, we will implement the 15th Five-Year Plan. Practice the three major pillars, that is customer-centric, team-based, and employee partnership. Grasp market opportunities and strengthen our new channel, new driver strategy. Enhance the traditional advantage of individual channels, strengthen bank or growth business.
And emphasize our strong headquarters with robust mid-level branches and stabilize grassroots operations. For stabilizing the mid-tower branches is to ensure their competition. Stabilize the grassroots is improve the comprehensive strength for the 1,700 institutions. Make grassroots institutions have a solid foundation, improve year by year and moving by ranks. We will focus on execution and coordinate operations. We will strengthen the coordinated development and practice our marketing philosophy. Enhance the synergy between headquarters, subsidiaries, and branches, and build an organizational system that connects top to the bottom, standardized. We will have more ecosystem and partnerships, transform our strength in asset service, investment, and brand into the company engagement capabilities and value creation capabilities into our market competitiveness. Build one NCI that empowers and provide long-lasting protection, greater health, and good life to the customers. We will increase targeted investment in key strategic areas to build a strong foundation.
In the future, the key for competition in the life insurance industry will be who invests more precisely and produce more efficiently. We will pay attention to optimizing resource allocation and increase investment in strategic areas such as product competitiveness, digital development, AI, and branding. We will consolidate our competitive edge and have core compatibility. We will drive innovation-driven development as the core engine. Competition demands so as the innovation. We will have innovation in multiple factors. We will build a deep learning, deep empowerment, learning-oriented organization and service empowerment organization, and build a risk-driven organization that grow with the time. Last, I'd like to say that the company with deep heritage, enduring vitality, and a forward-looking vision, we stand on 30 years of solid capability and a profound spirit. On this new starting point, all of us at NCI are highly motivated, energetic, and confident.
We will stay the course, execute our strategy with down-to-earth attitude, transform our 30 years of accumulated strength into a mighty force for the future, drive NCI to greater stability, and further on its path to a high-quality development, and writing the next 30 years of brilliance. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yang. Next question, please.
I am from Zhaoshang Securities. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Congratulations again for your achievements. I have two questions. The first is about the asset liability management new rules. We have seen the regulatory organs have issued new rules. Could you elaborate on the impacts of these new rules on your company, and what is your liability cost profile? How will you comply with the new requirements and strengthen your asset liability matching? The second question is about the SciTech forces represented by AI driving operation transformation across all sectors. How do you look at the impact of SciTech development on the industry, and what is the main focus of your SciTech application and empowerment?
Mr. Gong will answer your first question.
The NFRA released the new measures for asset liability management. On governance structure, measurement mechanisms, and indicators constraints, the new rules have come up with higher and more strict requirements. Compared with the new rules, we have much to do. From the macro level, I think there are three main impacts. The first is we will strengthen our governance foundation. The new rules push us to hold the board and the senior management more accountable and raise requirements for the coordination and the professionalism between asset and the liability sides. It raises more requirements for the two sides. The second is we need to deepen refined management. The new rules lay out detailed standards for our structures, indicators, risk control. They have issued the guidelines.
For these orientations, we will integrate this in our product pricing, business planning, and asset allocation to build a closed-loop framework and to underpin our resilience against the interest rate and market volatility. The third is technical empowerment in decision-making. We deepen stress testing and back testing, improve operational standards. This will give us a better foundation to make decisions to improve our strategy setting and risk evaluation. Asset liability management has always been a top priority in our operations. In the past years, in the asset liability management, we have achieved good results. Across our accounts and the strategy and also asset management level
We have come up with specific requirements. So in the past few years, the results of our ALM management are positive. As of the end of June, our annualized comprehensive investment yields of one-year, three-year, and five-year windows all cover our average liability cost. Also, as the lowering of the assumed interest rates for new policies, our liability cost is on a downward track. This will help us to better prevent risks. Our asset duration and liability duration coordination has also been improved. Next step, we will continue to analyze our weaknesses in ALM management and improve our system to make more detailed policies and upgrade the ALM matching.
Thank you. Mr. Chen will answer your second question.
Thank you for your question. Your question is quite fancy. This represents our core competitiveness as NCI in the future. We practice a modern marketing concept.
Technology is an important part in this concept in the first half of the year. From three pillars, all driven by the growth of AI and the technologies. We believe AI, the tech impact on the industry is reflecting three areas. First, on customer engagement. About the insights to the customers and the marketing campaigns, I'd like to share an event with you. In an important customer event, we used big data to select a very important lecturer. We act accordingly, and the event is a huge success. We believe technology-driven, represented by AI, is quite important for customer engagement. Second, revolutionize operational process. The efficiency and customer service, especially on the internet business, is very important. For example, when working with internet companies, if we can become partners of those big internet companies, our efficiency for underwriting and claim settlement is quite important. AI is important for the operation.
Revise the paradigm of risk management through the data modeling and machine learning. Pricing becomes more accurate, and risk identification happens earlier. The industry is moving from paying claims after events to preventing risks beforehand. Open up new space for improving long-term competitiveness of life insurance business. From service technology and risk management is very important. If you can provide better services, it's important to reduce claim settlement in the future. For the- We will advocate our digital intelligent individual NCI in the future and make breakthroughs in five major areas. Accelerate to build up a digital workforce by rolling out data-driven needs and key functions like customer service, underwriting, and claims. Creating a digital workforce matrix covering front, middle, and back office. Machine will handle the standardized work. People will focus on higher value tasks. We improve both efficiency and the human touch.
Second, unlock the value of data as a core production factor. We believe data is a very important core production factor. Push forward the full domain data ingestion and build a trusted, usable, and manageable data asset system. So data can truly empower precision marketing, smart risk control, and product innovation. Third, make operation service smarter. Roll out intelligent underwriting, smart claim processing, and AI-empowered customer service. Let AI take over routine repetitive tasks so we can improve customer service and cut costs. Fourth, deepen tech-enabled ecosystem building. We will use technology to connect ecosystem with marketing, make our customer feel more satisfied. Fifth, to strengthen our digital foundation, we will focus on building a Xinhua cloud, accelerating one cloud, multiple architectures infrastructure. Provide a flexible, stable, and secure digital backbone for business continuity. I would like to walk you through our AI applications.
I asked one of our young employees, "What is your support amount for the urgent need?" One of them said, "I need more tokens from the company." Thank you.
Due to time limit, let us welcome the last question.
I have two questions. What are the achievements for the ecosystem ability and what value does this service ecosystem bring to customer engagement?
Thank you for your question. Let's have Mr. Qin to answer your question.
Thank you for question from Xinhua News Agency. As Mr. Yang said, in the past year, we have seen growth in ecosystem ability. We stay customer-centric, fully upgrade our five service brands. Refine our service ecosystem covering 10 areas. I think the achievements are reflecting three areas. For some, product innovation. We roll out to service net some very popular products to market it. We have pushed forward e-health insurance product to substandard population, and in collaboration with some external partners, we have rolled out the current wheel product. Second, on customer benefits, we rolled out the new Chongqing Xinhua CF family office dedicated to provide a comprehensive one-stop whole life solution for key family clients. We accelerated our Xinhua brand, Xinhua array. We provide customized service to the clients. We accelerate our layout to benchmark against peers at home and abroad. We connected to hospitals and nursing agencies.
We followed the lead of those advanced peers. We will provide a comprehensive system that is in line with WLP. As Chairman mentioned, we have rolled out a retired ecosystem empowerment mechanism. We focused on a number of sectors on the head office, branch office, and agent level. We will provide agents with technology empowerment and ecosystem empowerment. To sum it all, we will provide a closed-loop system to empower the WLPs and make them professional. We make them can provide a one-stop solution to clients. Solidify the foundation for our customer-centric, team-based, and employee partner strategy. Thank you.
Thank you. Last but not least, we have selected several questions from retail and minority investors. The first is about the dividend distribution policy. We place high priority on shareholder returns. In 2026, we will formulate our dividend proposal by analyzing regulatory guidance, financial sector conditions, financing and capital needs, investor expectations outside our business plans, profits, investment funding, and solvency. Balancing our business expansion and shareholder returns. For the interim dividend, we propose a tax-inclusive cash payout of RMB 0.73 per share, up by 9%. As for the final dividend, we will draw on four-year results, capital and risk metrics, and the interim dividend distribution, and the peer benchmarks, solicit shareholder feedback, and work out the final cash dividend plan. The second question about our outlook for solvency in the coming years and how to maintain adequate solvency. Our solvency position is solid and far above regulatory thresholds.
It has dipped on a face-to-face, mainly dragged down by the falling 750-day moving average Treasury yield curve. Amid volatile markets, we prioritize solvency management with targeted multi-pronged actions. First, strengthen internal capital accumulation, advance product structure transformation, focus on value creation, refine cost control, and lift overall profitability to consolidate capital base. Second, expand external capital resources. We issued 10 billion perpetual AT1 bond to strengthen capital base. Third, optimize assets allocation to balance return, risk, and capital needs. We have full confidence to keep the solvency metrics sound in the long term. Now comes to the end of this announcement. Thank you all for your attention and support for the company. For further questions, feel free to contact us. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you