* H1 earnings fall to 105.6 bln yuan – regulator
* Return on investment slips 42 pct to 294.5 bln yuan (Adds details on investment return)
China’s insurance industry saw its first-half earnings slide 54 percent to 105.6 billion yuan ($15.9 billion), the country’s insurance regulator said on Thursday, squeezed by falling investment returns.
Insurance companies’ return on investment declined to 294.5 billion yuan, down 42 percent from a year earlier, Duan Haizhou, deputy head of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission’s (CIRC) statistics management department, told reporters at a news conference.
Duan attributed the industry-wide lower investment return and profit to a gloomy stock market, decreasing interest rates and China’s economic slowdown.
Insurance premium income reached 1.88 trillion yuan in the first half, up 37 percent from a year earlier, the CIRC said.
Insurance industry total assets rose 15 percent from the beginning of the year to 14.27 trillion yuan at end-June, it said.
($1 = 6.6610 Chinese yuan renminbi)