China Life, the world's largest life insurer by market value, reported a 23.1 percent year-on-year increase of premium income in November, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

However, the insurers' pre-audit premium income fell 2.27 percent year-on-year to 274.4 billion yuan in the first 11 months, with the dropping rate further narrowed compared with the first ten months. The company's premium income for November stood at 19.7 billion yuan, up 23.1 percent from the same period of last year.

Industry experts predict that demand for insurance will increase as the economy begins to recover from the financial crisis and customers begin to worry about inflation in 2010.