More bonds, please, say China insurers

For China''s insurance companies, the big risk in managing assets is the lack of supply in the domestic bond market.

China's life insurance companies have adopted asset-liability matching, but as a result find themselves short of instruments to invest in that reflect the long-term nature of their obligations.

Our problem is lack of supply in the bond market, says Raymond Tam, a member of Taiping Life Insurance's investment committee in Shanghai.

The situation is less acute for Taiping, which is a newer company and did not write policies with guaranteed payouts reflecting the high interest rates of the early 1990s. It is also small, with only Rmb16 billion $2 billion of assets under management, compared with $45 billion at market giant China Life Insurance, or the $22...

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