China Insurance: 9M26E: NP Distorted by Acct. Rules amid Tech Stocks' Pullback; BV Stable; NBV Soft on High Base; CoR Enhanced

In 9M26E, we expect earnings to be notably affected by tech stocks' pullback in 3Q26 while the rally of high-dividend stocks would only be reflected below the line due to different accounting treatment. Coupled with a high base for comparison last year, we forecast 15~49% yoy declines in 9M26E earnings. As such, we think BV growth is a fairer metric to assess profitability, and we expect insurers' BV to stay largely stable qoq vs. the sharp decline of reported earnings in 3Q26. Meanwhile, we also expect OPAT of the top 3 insurers to log mid-to-high single-digit increase in 9M26E. As to NBV, amid banca regulatory disruption in 3Q26 and a high base last year due to pricing rate cut, we estimate 9M26 growth to decelerate to -14% (Ping An) to +12% (China Life). For P&C, we estimate PICC/Ping An/CPIC's 9M26E CoR to improve to 95.9%/96.0%/96.9% despite higher NAT CAT losses. We believe the structural trend of household wealth reallocation towards insurance savings remains intact in a low dep