China Life Insurance: NBV Growth Ahead of Expectation, Agent Headcount Stable

Following largely in-line results, we retain our fair value estimate for China Life at CNY 19 per A share and HKD 20 per H share. With the H shares trading at a sharp discount to the A shares, we prefer the H share over the expensive A share. First-half new business value, or NBV, growth increased to 19.9% year on year from the 7.7% growth in the first quarter, beating our expectation for about 15.0% growth. NBV growth was driven by the 13% and 122% respective year-on-year growths in agent and bancassurance channels, as customers rushed to buy the last batch of high-yield savings products before the pricing rate cut in end-July.