Chinese insurance companies' premium income topped 799.86 billion yuan (118 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of the year, up 33.6 percent year on year, China's insurance regulator said Monday.

The growth rate was 27.1 percentage points higher than that for the same period last year, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said in a statement on its website.

In the first six months, premium income from the property insurance business rose 33.5 percent from a year earlier while life insurance premium income climbed 33.7 percent, said the statement, which only cited growth percentages, but stopped short of giving absolute figures for premium income.

Chinese insurers earned 75.52 billion yuan from their investments in the first half, an average return on investment of 1.93 percent, according to the statement.

CRIC Chairman Wu Dingfu said in the statement the "good state of the insurance market is due to the country's improved economy and reforms in the insurance industry in recent years."

However, Wu warned of "great challenges" to the insurance market as the Chinese economy faces difficulties stemming from the global financial crisis and the fragile global economic recovery.

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