China Insurance:Key Takeaways from China Financials Tour

Life and earnings still challenging, but slowly getting better — We just returnedfrom our China Financials Tour visiting life insurers (and banks). Our key takeawayis that life growth remained weak and investment income was still under pressure in1H12, but operating trends seem to gradually and incrementally improve. Wecontinue to prefer life over P&C. Top picks are Ping An (2318.HK; HK$60.25; 1) andNCI (1336.HK; HK$29.15; 1).