(Yicai Global) June 5 -- The purpose of insurance services is risk prevention, rather than investment, said Wan Feng, chairman of New China Life Insurance Co. Insurers should provide risk management plans for businesses and individuals, instead of providing wealth or financial management services, Wan said yesterday at the 2017 Tsinghua Wudaokou Global Finance Forum in Beijing.

Life insurance product innovation should be carried out in line with the principal purpose of insurance, but development has deviated from the core business of insurance, which is to protect people and businesses from risks, he said.

Life insurance offers long-term risk coverage to customers and balances risk and income by acquiring loyal long-term customers, he said. Chinese life insurance providers have gone through a period of leapfrog growth, and some of them have joined the ranks of the largest insurers in the world in less than 10 years. Consequently, their business expansion has proven unsustainable today.

Life insurance should be aimed at protecting the public from risks, rather than attracting money for insurers, he said. New offerings should be based on customers' needs -- not on those of insurance companies, and Chinese insurers should work to roll out new eldercare, health and medical care and ordinary life insurance policies, he said. These products form the largest insurance market in the world and represent an untapped market in China that needs to be developed.