Excerpts from State Council policy briefing on June 23

The State Council policy briefing on June 23 covered measures from this week's State Council executive meeting, which are aimed at accelerating the development of private pension insurance.

Huang Hong, vice chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, was invited to the policy briefing to elaborate.

As an important part of the pension insurance system, private pension insurance is provided by commercial insurance institutions, covering insurance products and services, such as pension risk prevention and pension fund management.

The objective of developing private pension insurance is to take advantage of commercial insurance institutions' professional market operation to increase the supply of pension insurance products, extend the service range, improve insurance coverage, meet the diversified needs of pension insurance, improve the pension insurance system and people's lives, and in the process, boost the real economy, according to Huang Hong.

The State Council executive meeting on June 21 set development goals targeting 2020 for private pension insurance and brought forward support policies.

Having a pension is crucial to ordinary people's lives, and the function of the insurance industry is risk management. So the main concern is to ensure the safety of people's money insured by commercial pension insurance institutions, said Huang.

According to Huang, efforts will be made to ensure safety management of pension insurance funds, including higher qualification and requirement for insurance institutions, strengthening supervision on investment of pension insurance funds, and improving support policies for private pension insurance investment.

Private pension insurance in China has witnessed stable development in recent years, while its overall scale is yet to be expanded, said Huang.

"In 2016, the accumulated premium income of life insurance, which include pension programs, reached 860 billion yuan, accounting for 25 percent of overall life insurance. However, the insured population was 65.32 million, taking up less than 5 percent of China's current population of 1.37 billion," he added.

To accelerate the development of private pension insurance in China, related departments should implement the State Council's guidelines, taking full advantage of the support policies.

Huang also stressed efforts to work on technology and talent building in the insurance industry. Efforts will be made to improve existing actuarial techniques, and developing new techniques according to the present situation of commercial pension insurance. Also, more professional talent should be introduced and cultivated by consulting with colleges and universities, as well as the country's education department.

In addition, he urged strengthening rules and regulations to better supervise the private pension insurance industry.