Overview
The 2026 edition of the Negative List for Personal-Insurance Products has been released, refining health-insurance design and long-term-product aligned-reporting-and-execution requirements versus the 2025 version. It flags medical policies with excessively high deductibles or low payout ratios and indemnity products with too-low sums assured; long-term products reporting multiple channels, front-loaded expense rates, or two-year payment designs are also named as non-compliant.
Background & Interpretation
1. Regulatory & Industry Context
As the bancassurance channel grows rapidly, regulators keep pushing aligned reporting and execution to refine fee management. The new list narrows the scope from generic sales channels to long-term products and adds health-insurance prohibitions, reflecting a source-governance approach to curb extensive competition and spread/lapse risk. It also requires pricing to use the 2025 China Life-Insurance Experience Mortality Table with prudent assumptions.
2. Core Drivers & Underlying Mechanisms
The list targets two hazards: health insurance drifting toward savings over protection (high deductibles, low payouts weaken coverage), and distorted long-term fee assumptions (front-loaded expense rates, two-year payment designs implying short-payment risk, profit-test investment returns far from market rates). Both can amplify interest- and expense-spread losses and impair long-term solvency.
3. Market Structure & Industry Chain Impact
The negative list pairs with the Property Insurance Product Development Rules (effective November 1) to form a life + property dual product-governance framework. Product development—planning, review, filing, evaluation and cleanup—becomes more standardized, with product committees and internal accountability mandated. Compliant leaders gain; smaller insurers face higher iteration costs.
Implications & Outlook
Near term, health products should return to adequate coverage, prudent pricing and transparent fees; long-term fee structures and investment assumptions face re-checks. Watch: 2025 mortality-table execution, bancassurance fee control, and product-level risk penetration under Solvency II Phase II.
Takeaways for Industry Participants
Insurers should re-review in-force products against the list and proactively clean up; bancassurance must standardize fee assumptions and channel reporting; actuarial and product teams should strengthen mortality-table alignment and investment-assumption reasonableness; consumers can expect real improvements in coverage and deductibles.
This column compiles industry information and shares technical perspectives; it does not constitute investment advice.