Taikang Brand Guidelines: Beijing 1996, Taikang Community & the New Life Insurance Model

An insurer started by a founder from the auction trade.

Taikang began in Beijing in 1996. The company gives that year as its founding date, and so does Forbes, which in October 2023 described Taikang Insurance Group as a Beijing-headquartered firm founded in 1996 and “one of China’s largest insurers.” Its founder is Chen Dongsheng, named as founder and chairman by China Daily in August 2022. English Wikipedia says the life insurer was set up after approval from the People’s Bank of China; in August 2026 the company marked its 30th anniversary, Caixin Global reported.

Chen came to insurance from other fields. Forbes wrote in 2023 that he had served as chairman and general manager of China Guardian Auctions, the Beijing art auction house, and earlier as deputy editor of the monthly Management World. The group’s website still lists China Guardian Auctions among its links.

The insurer grew into a group of separate companies. English Wikipedia says Taikang Asset Management and Taikang Pension were created in 2006 and 2007, and a property investment arm in 2010. Today the group’s own profile, read in November 2026, names Taikang Life, Taikang Pension, Taikang Online, Taikang Asset, Taikang Community, Taikang Medical and Taikang Dental as its companies, covering personal insurance, online property cover, asset management, enterprise and occupational annuities, health management and commercial property.

Taikang is not listed on a stock exchange; Caixin Global described it in August 2026 as an unlisted insurer. Its shareholders have included foreign investors. English Wikipedia says Goldman Sachs bought a stake of about 12 percent from AXA in 2011, and in 2023 Chen told reporters in New York that foreign shareholders, Goldman Sachs among them, held 24.9 percent of the group, Forbes reported.

Insurance, asset management and elderly care.

Taikang describes itself as a group with three core businesses: insurance, asset management and what it calls health and elderly care. Its profile states the aim of building a platform of “longevity, health, wealth” for China’s growing middle class and their families, and gives its vision as making Taikang “part of people’s happy lives.” Its stated mission is to make insurance more reassuring, more convenient and better value, and its stated values are to respect, care for and celebrate life.

The idea the company puts at the centre of its brand is what it calls “new life insurance.” In the company’s words, traditional life insurance has two sides, payment and investment; Taikang adds a third, service, by running its own elderly-care and medical facilities, and calls the result a “payment + service + investment” model. China Daily reported in 2022 that Chen described the aim as a full life-cycle health system for an ageing population, and that the group planned an industry cluster in Wuhan that year.

The company presents three “name cards” for that model. The first is Taikang Community (Taikang Zhijia), its elderly-care brand, which the company says uses a continuing-care approach combining residential living with medical services. The second is Xingfu Youyue, roughly “an appointment with happiness,” which the company describes as linking insurance products with the group’s own care services. The third is the HWP, or health and wealth planner, the company’s title for its advisers, whom it describes as insurance and finance specialists who also connect clients with the group’s medical and care services.

Taikang says that in 2009 it was among the first insurers to win pilot approval to invest in elderly-care communities, and that it now has community and medical projects in 37 cities, from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to Sanya, Chengdu and Wuhan. Those figures are the company’s own. It also says its dental arm runs two clinic brands, and that its medical business has five major medical centres across China. The company calls its newer approach a city care network: a large flagship community in each city, smaller facilities in city centres, and services delivered in neighbourhoods and at home.

How the category presents itself.

China’s large insurers and securities firms are mostly listed groups with sizeable state shareholders, and many trade in more than one market, typically Shanghai or Shenzhen alongside Hong Kong, and in a few cases London. Their brands therefore have to work in at least two scripts. A full Chinese company name usually sits beside a shorter Chinese form and a set of English initials, as with PICC and 人保, or CPIC and 太保, and designers need all three versions to stay recognisable together.

The visual language this guide looks at includes wordmarks in reds, blues and golds, lettering with roots in Chinese calligraphy, and square, seal-like symbols that echo a traditional name chop. Websites and reports commonly pair those marks with photography of office towers and city skylines, and with images of the people and places the companies serve.

The products shape the pages. Insurers organise their sites around life, property, health and pension cover, policy and claims services and branch finders, while securities firms present brokerage, investment banking, asset management and the wealth apps through which retail investors trade. Group sites often link out to separate websites for each subsidiary, each carrying the parent’s initials.

Much of the most carefully designed material is financial reporting. Annual and interim reports, results presentations and ESG or sustainability reports are published in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and English for investors on several exchanges, and they set the tone that the rest of a brand often follows. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — when it was founded, who owns it and where it is listed — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

Art, auctions and a change at the top.

Taikang’s brand reaches beyond insurance into art. English Wikipedia says that in 2016 Taikang Life acquired a stake of about 13.5 percent in Sotheby’s, becoming the New York auction house’s largest shareholder at the time. The group’s website also lists a Taikang Art Museum under its public-interest work, next to the Taikang Yicai foundation, which the company says focuses on elderly-care training and support for care organisations.

The company adds outside rankings to its profile. It says it has appeared on the Fortune Global 500 list every year since 2018; that is the company’s account of the ranking.

Leadership changed in 2026. Caixin Global reported on 24 August 2026 that Chen Dongsheng had stepped down as chief executive, handing the role to president Liu Tingjun, and that Chen would remain chairman overseeing strategy, risk management and major decisions, according to a company statement issued on the 30th anniversary. The company’s own news page dated the governance change to 22 August 2026.

For a design guide, Taikang shows how an insurer can make a physical place — the care community — the centre of a financial brand. Compare China Life, a life insurer with a 1949 lineage, and Ping An, another integrated Chinese finance group. For this guide we use pine green, jade and a warm gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Taikang’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.