China approves capital increase of German reinsurer

China's top banking and insurance regulator pledged efforts to push forward high-level opening-up by boosting investment of foreign reinsurers.

Hannover Re, a German reinsurance company, has been approved to increase a total of 1.5 billion yuan (about $211.95 million) to the registered capital of its Shanghai branch, bringing the total registered capital to 4.1 billion yuan, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said in a statement on its website.

Earlier in September 2019, the German company had added its Shanghai branch's registered capital from 1.55 billion yuan to 2.55 billion yuan, the statement said.

The investment expansion came after the rapid growth in the business of its Shanghai branch, indicating an upbeat outlook of the Chinese reinsurance market despite the COVID-19 epidemic shock to the global economy, the CBIRC said.

With the Chinese reinsurance market having been scaling up rapidly in recent years amid the high-level opening-up, international investors have enhanced investment in China to meet the rising demand from the growing Chinese market.