Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to CPIC 2025 Interim Results Announcement. I'm Shaojun Su, Board Secretary of CPIC Group. My great pleasure to be here to share with you our CPIC 2025 Half Year Results and also listen to your suggestion about the company's development. We adhere to the two government requirements to conduct this results announcement both online and offline. Also, investors can watch the playback of this event on our official website. Now, first of all, let me introduce the executives for this event. We have Mr. Yonggang Zhao, CPIC Group President, and Mr. Yu Bin, CPIC Life Vice President, and Mr. MA Xin, Vice President of CPIC P&C, and Mr. Su Gang, Vice President, Chief Investment Officer, Chief Financial Officer of CPIC Life, and Mr. Yuanhan Zhang, Chief Actuary of CPIC Life. Our independent directors will attend this event online and offline. Some of our senior managers are also attending the event online and offline. First of all, I'll give the floor to Mr. Zhao, President of CPIC Group, to be followed by a Q and A session. Thank you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's my great pleasure to be here to share some information with you. You see, in 2025, we see a lot of uncertainty in China and the world. Despite all this kind of risk as uncertainties, China's economy held up well, with new quality productive forces gaining momentum. We see a lot of resilience and dynamism in China. In the whole, the Chinese economy is still going well. The insurance industry is also facing a lot of strategic opportunities. Insurance is serving as a cushion of economic shocks and social stabilizers. We have a lot of market potential.
From the regulator's perspective, supervision is focused on quality and profitability. I believe this is going to help long-term healthy development for especially those kind of big players. As a leading insurance Group in China, CPIC pursues high quality development to uphold value and profitability. We see steady growth in our business results and consolidation of market standing. We have made increased contribution to China's socio-economic development and people's well-being. If we look at our results in the first half of this year, the Group operating income amounted to CNY 200.5 billion, up 3.3%. Our Group OPAT was CNY 19.9 billion, up 7.1%. Our net profit was CNY 27.9 billion, up 11%. Our EV was CNY 588 billion, up 4.7%. Our AUM reached CNY 3.8 trillion, up 6.5%.
Under Cross Two, our comprehensive solvency margin was 264% and core solvency margin was 190%, and our subsidiaries' solvency margins are above regulatory levels and higher than levels last year. Going forward, we will maintain a reasonable level of capital cushion to withstand systematic risks in view of regulatory requirements and the need for business development. Under the new accounting standards, net profit is more sensitive to capital market volatility, so OPAT is a more useful measure for underlying business performance. Excluding short-term investment volatility and adjustment of material one-off factors, Group OPAT was CNY 19.9 billion, up 7.1%, and of this, CPIC Life recorded CNY 15 billion, up 5%. To improve stability, sustainability, and predictability of shareholder dividend, our 2024 ASG meeting approved proposal on distribution policy and marked official announcement of our dividend policy, and the policy links the dividend to OPAT.
While considering positive contribution from investment solvency, we have completed the cash payment of DPS CNY 1.08 for fiscal year 2024, up 5.9% and higher than the growth of APAT of last year. Going forward, we will stay committed to stable, prudent business operation so that our shareholders can continue to share in the growth of the company. Our EV maintained steady growth, up by 4.7% from the end of last year. In terms of composition, the in-force business value was CNY 223.4 billion, up 4.9% year-on-year, and our adjusted net worth amounted to CNY 365.5 billion, up 4.6% from the end of last year. In terms of driver of EV movement, positive contribution mainly came from expected return on EV and BEV and operating experience variance. In the first half of this year, we strive to fulfill our responsibility in terms of the five financial priorities.
In terms of the technology insurance, we served 75,000 enterprises through the Kechang WUYU and realized a premium of CNY 5.2 billion, and we strengthened funding with support for strategic emerging sectors and the new quality productive forces. Our investment in technology sector reached CNY 119.7 billion. In green insurance, we achieved the fast growth of green insurance and served or covered 5.3 million in new energy vehicles, and our green investment balance was CNY 280 billion. In terms of inclusive insurance, we launched coverage for terminal illness, long-term care, and Huiminbao programs across 240 cities in China, and we also provided CNY 442 billion in agriculture insurance protection and covered more than 2,700 transactions in domestic and foreign trade by small and micro enterprises. Our CPIC Home have opened 10 such communities in nine cities, and we also have more than 220 brick-and-mortar experience centers for longevity retreat.
In terms of digital finance, we have an interview, roll out digital Malabor, accelerate development of a scenario for AI application, and also multiple AI-enabled solutions in CRM empowerment, operation efficiency, and risk management. Next, let's turn our attention to our core business. In terms of life insurance, we pressed ahead with Changhong transformation, sped up channel diversification, rolled out customer segment, and improved our product mix. We see fast growth of NBV. Of this, our written premium reached CNY 193.5 billion, up 13.1%, and of this, written premium from new policies grew by 28.7%. Of this, regular premium rose 42.5%, and NBV grew by 32%, and NBV margin improved by 0.4 pts. In terms of customer mix and business quality, we also see improvement.
The share of mid-tier customers and above increased by 3.8 percentage points year-on-year for the agency channel, the number of high-net-worth customers from bank channel grew by 75%, and ultra high-net-worth customer by 85%. The 13-month persistency ratio reached 96.6%, and the 25-month ratio rose by 2.8 pts to 94.5%. For agency channel, we improved the distribution of agents, stepped up capacity building and digital empowerment, continued to diversify products and service offering to meet customer needs. We focused on key regions and accelerated high-quality recruitment, enhanced basic management, and agent training. In the first half of this year, total premium was CNY 137 billion, up 0.9%, and the share of variable products rose gradually, and the PAL business accounted for 51% of regular premium products. Total headcount stabilized and began to recover.
Our total headcount of agents was 186,000 in the first half of this year, up by 1.6%, and the new recruits was 39,000, up by almost 20%, and the FYP per core agent reached CNY 73,000, up by 12%. We persisted in value-oriented bancassurance to improve product offering and step up channel development, cement partnership with joint stock banks, especially SOE banks, and focused on improving productivity building, professionalism of a sales team, and high-quality team building. During the reporting period, Bank Channel realized CNY 41.7 billion in premiums, up by 82%. Of this, regular premium from new policy reached CNY 8.8 billion, up by 58%. NBV from China totaled CNY 3.6 billion, up 156.056%. A total of 13 bank outlets reported sales of regular premium business, and on a monthly basis the number grew by 70%. Of this, SOE bank outlets grew by 164%.
For P&C business, we see high-quality development. We put flexibility first and achieved continued optimization of business needs. Our premium income was CNY 112.8 billion, up by 0.9%. Auto insurance was CNY 53.6 billion, up by 2.8%, and non-auto CNY 59.8 billion, down by 0.8%. Due to this, our combined ratio stood at 96.3%, down by 0.8 pts year-on-year. Of this, loss ratio stood at 69.5%, down by 0.1 pt. Expense ratio was 26.8%, down by 0.7 pts. Underwriting profit amounted to CNY 3.55 billion, up by CNY 0.309 billion. For auto insurance, we maintained steady development, strengthened the development of channels, and adopted precise management of business quality. In the first half, the combined ratio of auto insurance was 95.3%, down by 1.8 pts.
We continue to deepen presence in NEV business with premiums amounting to CNY 10.6 billion, accounting for 19.8% of total auto premiums, up by 5.7 pts year-on-year. For non-auto business, we step up efforts to optimize business mix, advance the risk reduction system, and we see continued improvement in profitability. In the first half of this year, combined ratio was 97.6%. Excluding the impact of personal credit and guarantee insurance, the ratio was 94.8%, down by 2.3% year-on-year. For our main business lines, health insurance achieved turnaround in profitability and the commercial property gained further improvement in underwriting. Profitability of agricultural insurance, liability insurance, and commercial property insurance maintained steady growth. For asset management, we explored a new approach toward ALM. We developed a new method known as net investment income plus.
We consider multiple factors and established a unified platform and tools to optimize coordination of assets and liabilities. We enhanced ALM system across market cycles and saw steady increase in Group AUM. By the end of the first half of this year, AUM totaled CNY 3.8 trillion, rose by 6.5% from the end of last year. SAA remains stable in terms of investment portfolio. The share of debt accounted for 75%, down by 0.9 pt. The share of equity assets was 14.8%, up by 0.3%, and of this, stocks and equity funds accounted for 11.8%, up by 0.6 pts. Based on our outlook of macroeconomic trends, we followed the dumbbell-shaped asset allocation strategy. Continue to allocate into long-term debonds and also explored opportunity for alternative assets. We conducted disciplined and flexible TAA under guidance of SAA, responded to the dual challenge of equity market volatility and the decline of interest.
Our net investment yield was 1.7%, down by 0.1 pt. That's mainly because of decline of market interest rates. Total investment yield was 2.3% and the comprehensive yield 2.4%, down by 0.4 pt and 0.6 pt respectively. That's mainly because of the reduced gains from fair value movement of fixed income assets through profit and loss. We stack, restore by credit risk management and proactively extend the duration of fixed income assets to lower reinvestment risk. The share of our bond security investments was 60.5%, up by 2.4%.
Of this, treasury bond, local government bonds and financial bonds issued by government-sponsored banks made up 47.4% of total investment assets and the duration of those was 12 years, which extended by 0.6 years, and the underlying projects of our non-public financing instruments spread across sectors like infrastructure, communication, non-bank financial, real estate, et cetera, with a nominal yield of 4.1% and an average duration of 8.4 years. Looking ahead, in the face of opportunities for Chinese insurance industry, we will pursue reform in an all-round way and continue to strengthen our value-creating capabilities and advance the three key strategies of health, elderly care, internationalization and AI, and continue to transform ourselves into a top-notch insurance and financial services Group with market leadership and global competitiveness. That ends my presentation.
Thank you. Thank you Mr. Zhao. Now let's start the Q&A session. First of all, online questions, but first offline questions for those outside. Before you ask question, please identify your employer and yourself. Please do not ask more than two questions for anyone.
Good afternoon, I'm from China Business News. Thank you for the opportunity for asking the question. I have two questions for Mr. Zhao. First of all, how do you comment on your performance for the first half of this year? The second question, you see in terms of the whole industry, there's a lot of new policy, for example, rate filing integrity and also dynamic pricing rate, etc. A lot of new policies, new regulations on the macro side and the Chinese economy is stabilizing. What do you think of the big opportunities or the macro economy or macro environment?
Thank you for your question. The first half of this year, you see China's economy saw stable growth. We see improvement in terms of the income and China's demand, domestic demand, etc. For the insurance industry, we also see a lot of new regulation focusing on risk prevention, high quality growth, etc. As you just mentioned, for example, as you mentioned, rules on dynamic pricing, rate filing and also on the agency reform and also suitability of the products. All these new regulations aim to turn finance in insurance industry to its fundamentals so as to better play up its main functions. Given all these kind of changes, CPIC remained steadfast in our strategy. We speed up our building our competitive edge, improve our business structure, business mix. As we have just mentioned, for the first half of this year, our total assets and our revenue continue to rise. Our OPAT, net profit, and the EV also saw growth, steady growth.
Our overall business performance stabilized, produced solid results and steady growth. We have more better foundation for high quality growth. We see more resilience. To be more specific, you can see for the first half of this year I would say we see three features. First of all, we continued with our transformation. We see steady growth of our main business. For example, for life business, we continue to focus on value creation and develop multiple channels. We enrich the product offering and segmentation of customers. Our NBV and the margin continue to improve and the share of our variable products is also rising. Agency team headcount is stabilizing and the productivity of core agents is growing and the contribution of bank channel is improving. On the P&C side, we focused on business quality and continued with restructuring. We speed up risk reduction and fine tuned our business management.
We saw steady growth of premium, and we improved our combined ratio with higher underwriting profits, and we saw also new high in operation cash flow. For the asset management side, we keep improving investment strategy for fixed income assets and also investment operation for open market equities. We also seize upon overseas opportunity, for example, the stocks in Hong Kong market, so as to offset some of the impact from dropping interest rate. The second feature is that we continued with our innovation and see the new growth of new engine. We focused, we pursued high quality growth by expanding our new engine and focusing on the five financial priorities. For example, we continue to improve the offering of our health insurance so as to cover those without basic social health care and those already ill.
We also keep improving our elderly care ecosystem so as to provide customer with full life cycle products and services. We're also improving our pension management with faster growth of new annuity business. We also accelerated our development in technology and the green insurance offering and promoted our digitalization and big model rollout to use AI solutions to empower our business and cut costs with the use of AI assistant, AI solutions, etc. The third feature is that we continued to consolidate our fundamentals. We keep improving long term mechanism for asset liability matching. We are improving the synergy across CPIC Group so as to improve customer operation. We see more and more customers who buy more than one policy from us. We also pay a lot of attention to customer protection in terms of digital empowered customer protection, and our subsidiaries lead peers in this regard.
At the same time, we focus a lot on building the system for compliance and risk management to monitor key risks so as to improve compliance and risk management at all levels, especially frontline outlets. Of course, we also improved our KPIs, our assessment systems so as to better balance development and compliance. We continue to develop our people, develop our talent team, keep improving, optimizing our management. I believe that's the key features of our growth for the first half of this year. Going forward, we will continue with our prudent and steady growth to pursue high quality development and also focus on innovation to generate new engine of growth to balance volume and quality and also to continue to generate value for shareholder, for customer, for society as a whole. Thank you. Let's continue with the on site questions.
If you want to ask question over the phone, please press Star and one and please identify yourself and your employer before asking questions. Please ask no more than two questions, but of course now we are having questions from on site.
Thank you. I'm from Guotai Hait ong Securities. I have two questions. Number one on par life business and second on AI plus strategy. In the first half we can see par business had a lot of, took a lot, a big share, 45%. Now our question is that what was your strategy to promote the share of a par business and given the new regulatory requirements in terms of the dynamic pricing rate, what are your future moves or strategies to further promote par business? The second question is about the AI strategy. You mentioned you had already built an AI infrastructure supporting more than 100 billion parameter model. In terms of your input in AI, can you share some of the examples and how they can be applied to the real business scenarios and their impact? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Let me answer your first question. In 2025 we focused on customer needs to promote par life. In terms of size, par business accounted for $10.7 billion taking a big share. For first half of this year we actually focused on four strategies. Number one, we made it absolutely sure about promoting par business at all levels. We remained on the same page about how par business is in the best interest of our customers and also future direction. Second, we differentiate by different channel, by different region. For example, agency was the first to promote par.
For example, for agency, par life accounted for over 50% and the bank channel is around 25%. For the second half of this year, we believe for the whole year the share of par business will continue to rise. Certainly, we differentiate by region. We seize upon the opportunity and also focused on the logic behind the selling. We differentiate by different region, different preferences in different regions and different teams in different areas. Fourthly, we had more policy support, for example, giving support in terms of financial support, personnel support, and also coupled with KPI adjustment so that PAR business were well taken as a priority going forward.
New rules on dynamic pricing rates will be opportunities and challenges because for the short term, it will be harder to sell PAR life, but at the same time, the gap between PAR business and the traditional business is narrowing, so the relative competitive edge of a PAR business becomes even more obvious. It will be beneficial in the long run given this kind of macro changes. CPIC will continue to look at various factors to respond to these changes. We'll use AI. We'll focus on synergy, to be specific. First of all, we'll continue to improve the offering of variable products to help with our product mix structuring. We focus on customer needs and also consider the need of our distribution channel. Secondly, we will continue to focus on health insurance to diversify the source of our profit.
We'll seize upon this kind of mid to high level health insurance needs, for example, long term care needs, so as to improve this kind of integrated solution combining product plus services. Thirdly, we'll continue to build our capacity in the backdrop of dropping interest rate. We'll continue to buy long term T bond, long term debt assets, so as to better match liability with investment with assets. Thank you. Let me answer your second question. We launched the DITP program in 2023. Now it includes the use of a large model. I would say we had already some results. In terms of infrastructure, we have already stable infrastructure. We already have built a computing power platform supporting the training of 400 billion parameter models, achieving 512 card GPU cluster management capacity, and integrated fundamental models such as Deep Seq and Adaptive Queuing.
More than 30,000 of our employees and more than 90,000 agents are using our AI applications. The digital workforce is bringing productivity equal to 2,700 employees. In terms of health insurance, we reduced our claims turnaround time to merely two minutes on average. Also, we use AI to improve our productivity. For example, our AI coach can actually improve the per agent new business premium by 21% in pilot areas, and AI also improved our risk management. Our texture loss reduction exceeded CNY 100 million thanks to AI. We continue to build our private domain large models and the insurance knowledge base basis. We focused on our core scenarios to build our CPIC private large model. Secondly, we also try to build our knowledge base for 10 key areas, and we use webcase through iteration to improve the basic capabilities of our large models.
In the 15 Five-Year Plan, AI is one of the three key strategies of CPIC Group. We will focus on six key areas to reshape our business procedures so as to cover all the value chain of AI and all the user Groups of AI. Thank you.
Thank you for the answer. Now let's continue with the questions.
Thank you from Huatai Securities. First of all, congratulations on the resilience of your performance. Two questions from me now. First one on the life business, you have N+2, a 2+N channel strategy. You have total headcount of over 180,000 agents and the bank channel is enjoying fast growth in terms of value and also volume. What's your future strategy for these two channels? Second question about the Health and Elderly care strategy, now it's a hot topic of the market. What are your current progress and what's your competitiveness or uniqueness for Health and Elderly care sector?
Let me first answer your first question about the channels now. Thank you for your attention to our strategy. I would say we look at the market environment and also customer needs before launching this strategy. We also look at our own resources, our own realities, and we will look at the future growth of the industry before we launch the 2+N channel strategy. That is to say, agency and banker plus multiple channels, BBE and Internet, etc., so as to better improve our capability for creating value for agency and banker. They are the main pillars of our value creation. To be specific, for the agency channel we focused on building the team first to build a professional team empowered by digitalization. We see a lot of good KPIs.
For example, total headcount stabilized and recovered. Actually, it stabilized at around 180,000 agents by the end of the first half of this year. Total headcount 186,000, up by 1.6% with improved 13-month and 25-month retention rates. We also see growth in core agent productivity. FYP on average improved by 12.7% for our core agents. Thirdly, the quality of our agents also improved. We had 39,000 new agents, up by almost 20% year-on-year, and these new agents have better qualities, better educations. Now, new agent FYP also recorded the double digit growth. Fourthly, we also saw better performance in terms of mid tier and the high-net-worth customers. We are serving them with better results. For example, the share of mid tier and above customers reached 27.3%, up by 3.8% pts year-on-year.
We should seize upon these opportunities to turn our team into a more professional team so that we can better consolidate agencies' role in terms of contributing to company value creation. To be specific, we should better improve the structure of our team, for example by focusing on capital cities, provincial capital cities, and big cities, focusing on key posts, for example high performing agents, and also focusing on key segments, for example young agents with good education. Secondly, we need to improve team management, agents team management with the updated basic law, basic compensation law. As we mentioned, our 13 months retention improved by 4.5 pts, and over 50% of our agents have been with us for over five years.
Certainly, we also need to improve digital empowerment so that our agents can better leverage the digital tools to help with their sales, to identify customer requirements, to better convert customers, better touch the customers, to do a better job at upsell. For the bank channel, we continued with value oriented bank strategy and to explore new models. For example, first of all, we see the growth of premium and also value for the bank channel. Very fast growth. Regular premium growth for bank channel was CNY 8.8 billion, up by 58%, and BV grew by 156% to CNY 3.6 billion, making up almost 40% of new business value of a total life business. Secondly, we continue to improve the structure of our bank partners. Both the sales and the share of our key bank partners increased. We see a balanced growth of joint stocks, bank partners, and SOE bank partners.
State owned bank partners, more than 13,000 outlets, sold regular premium policies, up by 28.9%, and the average monthly number of performing outlets grew by 70%, of which state owned bank outlets saw a growth of 164%. Thirdly, we continue to build a high quality, high performing, high income, high retention sales team for the bank channel. Going forward, we'll continue with the value oriented bank strategy to further enhance the value creation of the bank channel. I would say we need to improve the regional outlay. Our regional balance focuses on key cities, for example, in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta and the areas around Beijing. Secondly, we need to deepen partnership with our key partners, for example, balance the growth of joint stock banks and state-owned banks and select some good local banks, local commercial, rural commercial banks for collaboration.
Thirdly, we need to deepen channel operation so as to share with our bank partners the business growth to build up momentum for further growth. Also, we need to better match products and resources, pay more attention to customer needs, enrich product offering, offer more variable products, and provide a bank-designated or exclusive service system to better serve a bank partner customer's need for wealth management and retirement care. We also need to utilize digital tools to improve the customer journey, team building, training, quality management, operation service, etc. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Lee from Hua Thai Securities. In terms of the elderly Health and Elderly care sector strategy, we see the purpose for this is to help our main business of insurance and give you two examples. In terms of the elderly care sector, we have more and more CPIC Home up and running.
We see actually our health care, Health and Elderly care is complementing our main business of insurance. For example, our retirement community in Nanjing reached its full capacity only 18 months after its opening. The more people living in our retirement communities, the more policies they are going to sell. For example, many people visit our Nanjing CPIC Home and many of them can be converted. To be exact, actually more than 1,500 long-term policies were sold thanks to that, and not only in Nanjing, also in Shanghai Putuo area. We see this kind of mid-sized retirement communities in central urban areas are working and also empowering our main business of insurance. We also have an online health management platform, the Taiyi Guanjia. This platform offers health management services and also treatment plus claim service solutions.
For example, we served a high-tech company in Shanghai and the Taiyi Guanjia platform was used by 80% of the employees of that company. Now the HR of that company saw that the platform was widely used by its employees, and they can also see the details of how the employee benefits are used. Given this kind of stickiness of the Taiyi Guanjia online health management platform, policy renewal becomes very easy. As of now, this integrated service solution covered over 100,000 people, and it has become a very big help in improving customer stickiness and risk management. These successful cases or experiences taught us a lot in the 15, 5 year period. CPIC is treating Health and Elderly care as a core Group strategy to build an ecosystem for the healthcare and elderly care sector. We would want it to have more synergy with our main business of insurance.
CPIC actually focused on the integration of Health and Elderly care, and also we focus on medical insurance, long-term care insurance, and also opportunities from the second and third pillar for retirement. We are trying to seize upon the opportunities brought by national policies to better help the growth of insurance business. Secondly, we would continue to improve our professionalism to better improve the quality of our service. For example, we're going to focus more on retirement, household care, retirement care, online and offline treatment to boost our professionalism to enhance both quality and also efficiency. We are going to be more focused on light asset retirement communities in central urban areas and focus more on the offering of high-quality integrated solutions. I would say that we are not only exploring the market, we are actually in a good swing, up and running.
We are going to offer good quality service instead of simple service. Thirdly, we'll have more integration of product and services. We'll focus on customer needs and focus on the full lifecycle requirement of prevention, dialogue, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation to have more touchpoints with customers and reshape our customer journey to boost the business growth of our main business. We believe our Health and Elderly care strategy will boost our overall strategy and turn CPIC from a policy-oriented to customer-oriented company. Our EV per share exceeded CNY 60 for the first time in the first half of this year. Thanks to Health and Elderly care efforts, we at CPIC are no longer a place for customers to make claims, compensation, but also we are more like a full-time health system. Thank you. Actually, the two questions are separate questions, but they are interrelated. Health and Elderly care strategy or efforts is a very good complement to our main business of insurance. Let's welcome the next question.
Thank you for the opportunity. First of all, congratulations for very good performance because already on top of a high starting point. I'm Ovangjie from Dongwu Securities. I have two questions. Number one on investment and secondly about net asset. First of all, we see a lot of volatility for the investment market. My question is on your take on the macroeconomic environment and stock market for the second half of this year. Secondly, you see as of the end of June, your net asset dropped by 3.3%. This narrowed, I mean the drop narrowed compared to first quarter. What are the reasons? What's your take for the whole year? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Let me answer your questions now. First of all, our take on the macro economy and also stock market. I would say we see a lot of uncertainties in China and also the whole world. On the international side, we see a lot of tariffs, game on tariff and geopolitical conflict. There's a lot of uncertainties. For China itself, real estate market is still restructuring and the local government is also digesting its debt and we see the slowing down of investment growth and deflation. Given all these kind of factors, we say we do face some challenges in terms of the equity market. We do see some opportunities brought by policies and we also see transition, economic transition in China. I will say the equity market presents opportunity for the mid to long term, but in the short term we will see more volatility.
I would say for equity market insurance investment would have more opportunity but more difficulty for interest rate. The interest rate is going down in the long term. Given this kind of backdrop, I would say this kind of opportunity for high quality assets would be rare. Reinvestment would be difficult for insurance funding. CPIC always pursue the main business of insurance. We have already built a SAA built on our solvency and also our risk preferences. We continue to pursue and fine tune our dumbbell asset management strategy. Continue to extend our allocation in long term bond. At the same time, we also explore opportunity for ABs and REITs. At the same time, also gradually enhance our allocation in equity assets, including non-public equity. In terms of equity asset investment, we focused on high dividend value strategy. We continue to improve the structure of our equity investment portfolio.
We will continue to expand the variety of investment and variety of investment channels. We are expanding new areas, e.g., investment in gold, private equity, swamps, etc. We believe this will improve the efficacy and quality of our investment. As you mentioned, our net asset dropped by 3.3%. Let me give you a response. Under new accounting standards, on asset and the liability side, they use different discount rate. For the liability side, they use vaud rate curve, but asset side, they use 50 days rate curve. If there is a big volatility on the interest rate side, there will be a time gap for the net assets. This is quite prominent in Q1 of this year, and in the second quarter, SSI valuation continued to improve, and so the time gap is narrowing for the net asset.
With the lower volatility for interest rate, I believe the main gap would mainly concentrate in Q1. In the second half, this kind of gap will continue to narrow. Insuring is a long-term business. Our ALM is also for the long run. CPIC has been for many years extending the duration of our assets, and the duration gap is favorable. In the long run, I believe the impact of interest rate on the asset and liability side can be offset. The overall long-term trend is stable. Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity. I'm from Zhongtai Securities. I have two questions, one for life and one for P&C. For life, we see NBV growth is good. NBV margin is also good. What are the reasons or what's the picture? For the whole year, is it going to accelerate or decelerate?
For year end, are you going to upgrade your economic assumption? For non-auto business, now combined ratio as a whole improved by 0.8 pts. For non-auto business, you mentioned the adjustment of a personal credit and guarantee business and some negativity there and negative impact on profitability. What's the impact? Also, for non-auto, what about catastrophe loss? What are your measures to cope with it? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. Sending on to your first question. On comparable basis, in terms of NBV margin, the growth is not big mainly because of the adjusted dropping pricing rate. CPIC updated our products. For example, life and whole life POP business, no profitability is still good for agency.
Whole life traditional products, the share improved by 18 pt and the bank channel 7 percentage pts, but on the whole, the overall margin didn't improve a lot because of the pace of sales. The share of single pay on bank channel increased quite a lot, and bank channel, the margin excluding single pay single premium products, the margin of banker is still lower than agency, so it brought down the overall margin. The third reason is because we improved our product mix with offering of variable products, and the margin of variable products, of course, is lower than traditional products, so the overall margin didn't grow a lot for the whole year. If you look at the first half of this year, we can make some prediction for H1. We focus on customer and also our distribution channel. We continued with Changhong transformation. We saw fast growth of NBV.
The main driver for NBV are, number one, segmentation of customers. We move customer to a higher level. The share of our mid tier and above customer improved to 27%, and the share of high net wealth, individual and ultra high net worth individual improved by around 70%. Also, we have the 2N channel strategy. We see stabilization, recovery of total headcount, and also improvement in core agents. Looking at the whole year in terms of the forecast, I would say there will be NBV steady growth, NBV margin, and NBV MVP margin to be exact. For each review, we will review our actuarial assumption and economic assumption. We would say in force investment yield is aligned with our investment yield, but for the long run it cannot be said for sure. We will keep observing, keep reviewing the market investment yield before making adjustments. Thank you. Thank you.
Let me answer your second question for the P&C company. We continue to pursue quality growth to improve business mix. As you know, peers have already removed their personal credit and guarantee business. We are doing it now. The business impacts our performance in two ways. First of all, reduction of premium because of relapse. Combined ratio also were impacted by this business. Combined ratio, non auto business combined ratio were impacted negatively by 2.8 percentage point in terms of risk exposure by the end of July, and the amount decreased by 1/3. We believe the impact will be eliminated by the end of 2026. In terms of a catastrophe loss last year, first half of 2024 is mainly because of storm and the blizzard. Last year the loss was 2% impact and 2025 the impact from catastrophe loss was 0.5 percentage point.
We should think the good weather for this year. We continue of course to improve prevention of catastrophe and danger disasters. To be specific, number one, in terms of underwriting, we continue to improve our underwriting rules to enhance the management of catastrophe at the same time by different products. We dynamically adjusted the catastrophe exposure. Secondly, we improved our risk survey system and improved our tools. On the claims side, we improved our AI empowerment to give well pre warning, pre alert, early warning. Fourthly, we improve the efficiency of claims and also review of those large claim cases.
Thank you. Now let's vote. Take some questions from the notes online over the telephone. If you want to ask a question, please press Star and zero. Please identify yourself and your employer before you ask questions. Thank you. Now we have a question from Joe Chen from UBS Securities.
Good afternoon, I'm Joe Chen from UBS Securities. First of all, congratulations on your solid performance. Your OPAT is better than expected by the market. I have two questions. Number one, you'll see OPAT improved by 11% in the first half. A considerable growth in QR for Q2 and the growth would be about 30 something. What's the reason for the net profit growth? Net profit growth. Net profit growth. OPAT grew by 7.1%. Also what are the reasons behind that? You mentioned the future development. A future dividend payment will be linked to OPAT. How about 2025 cash dividend payout? The second question, CII comprehensive investment yield dropped by 0.6% to 2.4%. Now the volatility is quite big and your absolute number is lower than peers. What are the reasons? We look at the equity investment, especially stocks.
By the end of June, the outstanding balance of your stocks improved by 11%. Now it's not a very big growth, also slower than your peers. What are the reasons? Is it because of your newly added investment in stocks were smaller or lower than your peers?
Thank you. I'll answer your two questions. For the first half our net profit improved by 11%. Of course, compared to Q1, the growth was much faster. It's mainly because of several reasons. Number one, in interest rate environments is getting better and the negative impact is narrowing down. Also, we seized upon a lot of equity market, especially the stocks in Hong Kong market. Our investment yield exceeded market benchmark. These all supported our net asset growth. Our investment business also supported this, and the P&C also see improved combined ratio. Our life business stabilized with steady growth.
All this combined, we see good growth for the first half, and for the whole year we will continue to match investment with liability, continue to improve our quality of business growth to make steady growth. Despite a high starting point, high benchmark in the second half of last year, we will continue to pursue high quality growth. For the second half of this year, we're going to continue to improve the quality of insurance business, continue to enhance investment yield, and build up the overall capability for asset and liability management. In terms of OPAT, for the first half of this year the total OPAT was 19.9 billion, up by 7.1%. That's mainly because of the improving underwriting profit for the P&C business and also the lowered cost of liability for life business.
Of course, we know that operation experience variance and also underwriting profit from P&C were the main contributors. For the whole year, we believe OPAT will maintain steady growth. As we mentioned, we will continue with our prudent business growth to keep up the good contribution from operation variance. We believe for the whole year our OPAT will continue with steady growth. In terms of a dividend payout, we will consider OPAT. We will link it to the business growth and also consider the positive contribution from investment. Last year was a case in point. For the year of 2025, we will look at the OPAT and also investment and also look at how to smooth out the yearly distribution. In terms of the comprehensive investment yield, it dropped a little bit mainly because of the relative change of fixed income assets.
As you see, we had a considerably lower change in our fixed income asset recognized into P&L. Also, last year we had a quite high starting point, high benchmark. The annual performance of our investment yield is impacted by multiple factors. First of all, the ALM systems of the company. We are actually exploring a new model for ALM. We have actually established the NII model for ALM. We're trying to explore a new platform and tools to better match ALM. With this kind of new methodology, we continue to improve the ALM coordination. We'll continue to manage the liability and also share the long-term liability cost and risks with our customers. We are using multiple measures to stabilize our investment yield to offset the dropping interest rate. For example, extend our asset duration, enhance the equity investment, and explore alternative assets to achieve high yield.
In the first half, our investment yield only dropped by 0.1 pt on a non-annualized basis. CPIC has also established an SAA based on our long-term ALM preference. Based on our judgment for the long term and long-term market trend, we have a very good SAA for fixed income assets and diversified assets. For example, stocks in the Hong Kong market, overseas opportunities, other alternative opportunities, etc. At the same time, SAA also has impact in terms of open market equity investment. We have implemented a high dividend stock strategy. We look at not only high dividend payout but also the fundamentals of those stocks so that the portfolio can withstand volatility, withstand long-term risk. We also use growth type assets to share with the investment yield and the growth opportunities. Actually, we always focus on total investment yield cross cycles.
We always pursue value and prudent investment, responsible investment so as to produce stable long-term sustainable return to shareholders. In the last 10 years, our overall investment yield is 4.7%, number one in listed insurers. Comprehensive investment yield is also leading peers. I believe among our listed peers, our investment yield is at the mid and upper range. We believe we will keep up the good work going forward. Thank you.
In the interest of time, we can only have one more last question. One last question. We'll have a question from Liu Qi from Guangfa Securities.
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. Number one, on the exercise for the first half of this year, what are the what's your investment? New investment for 2021, for example, investment in Hong Kong stocks and the pressure for reinvestment because of your non-standard asset investment is 10% so it's quite higher than your peers. Second question, on the P&C business, the share of NEV premium is 19 is close to 20% now. What about the trend going forward and can it be profitable? What about combined ratio? Are you going to put some limits to the growth of NEV business? Maybe a follow up question. Liability, the lowering of liability cost. Is it about new business or about info's business?
Thank you. I'll answer your first question in terms of investment. 2025, first half now of course, because the macroeconomic growth and the policy adjustment the economy it is actually showing a lot of resilience is improving. However, nominal rates are still low in China.
For insurance companies, the whole industry faces pressure for reinvestment and asset allocation. Now we focused on several areas. Number one, continue with the hold to maturity for fixed income assets so as to extend the duration of our assets. Secondly, select the targets. We invest in subordinated bonds, debts of big banks so as to improve the yield of credit products. Thirdly, gradually improve the equity investment for open market. Fourthly, we explore PE and gold and other alternative assets. You mentioned our open market financing tools. Now 10% is going down. I have to say the investment environment is changing for insurance money. Previously we focused on non-standard fixed income assets and the long-term bond. We use them to extend our asset duration and equity investment is used to enhance the yield. Given the dropping interest rate, non-standard fixed income assets are having more credit risk.
This kind of financial tool, I mean the whole market for this kind of financing tool is shrinking, a lot of maturity reaching maturity by the end of this year. Our non-open market financial tool also sees reduction, the share is dropping to 10%. We will enhance our macroeconomic study so as to extend the asset duration. At the same time we will better manage the risk. Credit risk, credit risks. For this kind of non-open market financial tools we will select the good ones while maintaining the risks, while managing the risks. On the whole, so far the risks are well under control. In terms of building our capacity, investment capacity, we will focus on this kind of cross-cycle investment research capabilities. Number one, we are going to stabilize our net investment yield by extending our duration of our assets and also using ABs and REITs.
Secondly, continue to build diversified portfolios so as to seize upon high technology and also industrial rotation, etc. Also support this kind of emerging sectors through debt investment so as to achieve this kind of a cross cycle benefit. Fourthly, integrate ESG into our investment strategy. Fifthly, explore overseas and global investment opportunities. Thank you. Let me answer your second question. In the first half of this year, the premium from NEV is close to CNY 10.6 billion. Now the business is quite good. I believe NEV sector is producing profit already. Of course, NEV increases include private car and commercial cars, commercial and EVs. Now for commercial cars the risk is higher. Combined ratio more than 100%. Private and EV combined ratio is lower than 100%. In total, combined ratio is less than 100%.
In the second half of this year, I believe there will be some pressure in terms of a combined ratio for NEV. I believe it's a quite complex issue. Combined ratio is quite high with different reasons. For example, different brands will have different combined ratios. For example, for this kind of law we have more than 300, more than 300 types of NEVs which are numbered over 10,000. The 99 out of the 300 types of NEVs have combined ratio of above 100%. Also, you see, NEV is harder to repair. Battery is very pricey, around 50% of the total cost value. EV drivers tend to be young. For example, the car owner, the average age of a car owner of a Xiaomi NEV is 29 years old. Of course, driver behavior for NEV is different. We need to consider all these factors.
Now, our strategy, first of all, we developed a NEV business unit to have in-depth collaboration with NEV producers. For this kind of new and EV manufacturers, their combined ratio is quite good. Our market share for this kind of new NEV manufacturer is 16%. We are the leader in this regard. Secondly, we need to improve our risk selection. NEV in big cities and medium-sized cities, the loss ratio is high because they use NEV as taxis. For example, in Shanghai, we established collaboration with EV data so that we can monitor the NEV driving force, driving behavior, their driving routes. We can actually identify which NEVs are private cars and which NEVs are taxis. As I mentioned, first of all, we collaborate with the manufacturers of NEVs and secondly, we use data. We use data to better select the risks.
Now we will not impose any limit on the growth of NEV and we believe this is also part of our social responsibility. Actually, we have established a Houtongbao platform backed by the regulator. The Houtongbao platform is a good platform to cover all NEV drivers. It's a good platform with good growth. Now let me answer your liability cost question. With the dropping pricing rates, in 2021, the rate dropped from 3.5% to 3% to 2%, etc. Given this kind of dropping rates, we kept improving our liability side costs. We established a mechanism to adjust our pricing rates. Our overall pricing rates dropped by 70 basis points over the past five years. This is one thing. In the second hand, in terms of our business operation, we need to have a breakeven yield. In terms of breakeven yield, it is much lower than 2.5%.
That is, our breakeven rate is still reducing, still going down. Our sensitivity to interest rate is the best among peers in terms of new business. In January this year, the regulator actually released a rule on the dynamic adjustment of pricing rate. In July this year, there is a new rule capping the pricing rate at 1.99%. The pricing rate for traditional products would be 2% and the Parlife product will be 1.75%. Our liability cost will go down further going forward. Thank you for the answers and questions. We also collected some questions from mid-sized and small investors. These questions are mainly about the strategy of our agency channel and also the measures to contain catastrophe risks, and also outlook on our P&C business and also questions on SAA and TAA. I believe we have covered most of them already.
In the interest of time, we will answer your questions in text after this event. If you have unanswered questions, please contact our IR team. Thank you for your attention. Goodbye.