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A China Life advertisement on a bus in Huaibei, East China's Anhui Province.

China Life Insurance Co, the country's biggest life insurer, saw its profit more than doubled last year, fueled by premium growth and higher investment return from the booming stock market.

Net income increased to 19.96 billion yuan, or 0.75 yuan a share, from 9.31 billion yuan in 2005, or 0.35 yuan a share, the Beijing-headquartered insurer said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange yesterday, citing international accounting standards.

"The improved operating performance has contributed to the growing sale of policies and higher investment returns," said Yang Chao, chairman of China Life.

In 2006, the company's total gross written premiums reached 92.32 billion yuan, an increase of 23.2 percent over the previous year.

The rapid growth in business and the improvement of business quality enhanced the insurer's embedded value, an industry yardstick that reflects future premiums customers are required to pay under existing policies and an indicator of insurers' business sustainability.

The company's embedded value hit 181.99 billion yuan at the end of 2006, a jump of 59.7 percent from the previous year. The value of new businesses for last year was 10.48 billion yuan, an increase of 40 percent from 2005.

"China Life's performance is better than our expectation, and the stronger-than-ever stock market last year was also a trigger," said an analyst with China CITIC Securities, adding the insurer still has huge growth potential as it gradually extends to the property and pension sectors.

China Life has been one of the largest institutional investors in the country's capital market. Last year the company's asset investment was 6.87 billion yuan, an increase of 38.9 percent year-on-year.

Thanks to the booming stock market in 2006, China Life's investment yield was 4.27 percent, up 41 basis points from 2005. However, this is a bit lower than the industry average of 5.8 percent for 2006, statistics from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) show.

"We are going to focus our equity investment on the infrastructure and financial sectors this year," Liu Lefei, chief investment officer of China Life, had earlier told China Daily.

In 2006, China Life became CITIC's second-largest shareholder and one of the three biggest shareholders of Guangdong Development Bank. It also set up an overseas investment platform China Life Franklin Asset Management Company Limited.

China's insurance market, dominated by China Life and rival Ping An Insurance, has seen an average annual growth of 30 percent in the past two decades.

Shares in China Life nearly quadrupled last year, outperforming those of Ping An, and its shares now trade at around 36 times the estimated 2007 earnings, compared with roughly 10 times the projected earnings for American International Group, the world's largest insurer by market value.

The company's market share last year was 45.27 percent.

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