Abstract: In this paper , We divide the 32 life insurance companies into four groups ,old domestic、newly-founded domestic、old foreign and newly-founded foreign ones，and employ a two-stage DEA model dealing with negative outputs to measure the 32 life insurers’ operating efficiency for 2003 to 2010. Throughout the study, the domestic companies established for a long time and owned old brands still have a good comparative advantage especially in the first stage, although their efficiency have showed some decline faced with the serious challenge after the entry into WTO. The old foreign ones can not reach the level of former ones in the first、second and overall stage, while there is little difference among newly-founded ones. In addition, special emphasis should be placed on the investment capacity so as to improve the insurers’ overall efficiency.