Insurers' premium growth set to slow

The premium growth of insurers is set to slow this year after the explosive rise in 2016, as financial deleveraging and a more restrictive regulatory approach to curb risks will be a priority for regulators, an insurance official said on Tuesday.

Total insurance premiums reached 3.1 trillion yuan ($452 billion) last year, up by 27.5 percent from the previous year, according to data from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

"The growth will get slower this year as deleveraging will be a main theme and regulation will be tighter," Duan Haizhou, a statistics official with the CIRC, said at a news conference.