BEIJING (Bloomberg) — China’s insurance market expanded 14.4 percent to 564.1 billion yuan ($73 billion) last year as the world’s fastest-growing major economy generated demand for insurance coverage, the regulator said.Insurance companies’ total assets rose by 29 percent to 1.97 trillion yuan, according to documents issued at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission’s annual conference yesterday in Beijing.

The premiums on property and casualty cases jumped 22.6 percent to 150.9 billion yuan, while life premiums rose 10.7 percent to 359.3 billion yuan, the regulator’s Chairman Wu Dingfu said at the conference.

China Life Insurance Co., Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. and other insurers are benefiting from the country’s economic growth and selling more protection and investment products. Government efforts to dismantle the cradle-to-grave welfare system are also spurring sales.

“The insurance industry’s growth is likely to be faster in coming years as economic expansion will make the Chinese more willing to spend on insurance products,” said Tuo Guozhu, an insurance professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business.

Gross domestic product expanded 10.5 percent in 2006, down from a 10.7 percent pace over the first three quarters, National Development and Reform Commission head Ma Kai said on January 12. Still, the growth was the fastest among the world’s biggest economies.

China’s insurance market may grow about 20 percent this year and in 2008, Tuo said. Rapid premiums growth has made Chinese insurers more attractive to investors. Shares of China Life Insurance more than quadrupled in the prior 12 months for the biggest gain among insurers worldwide, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ping An Insurance more than tripled and PICC Property & Casualty Co. doubled in the same period.

China Life’s yuan-denominated shares on January 9 more than doubled on their first day of trading on the Shanghai stock exchange, making the company the world’s second-biggest insurer by market value. The surge gives Beijing-based China Life a market value of $128 billion, surpassing ING Groep NV, Allianz SE and Axa as the biggest insurer after American International Group Inc.

China Life raised 28.3 billion yuan selling 1.5 billion shares, or 5.3 percent of its enlarged capital, on the mainland last month.