"After our best ever year for protection new business applications in 2017, the half year figures suggest that 2018 will be another record-breaking year."
The period saw growth across all main protection lines, with life term insurance and income protection seeing the largest year on year increase in new business, up 35.1% in H1 compared with the first half of 2017.
While historically volumes in the second quarter have always been lower than the first quarter with more new business placed between January and March, this year income protection and multi-benefit products bucked that trend.
Multi-benefit cover saw an increase of 6.2% in Q2 2018 over Q1 2018, while income protection products saw an increase of 4.3% during April to June compared to the first three months of the year.
The figures also indicate growth compared with the same period in the previous year, with income protection up 45.9% and multi-benefit up by 29.2% from Q2 2017.
Dave Miller, executive general manager (commercial) at IRESS, said: “After our best ever year for protection new business applications in 2017, the half year figures suggest that 2018 will be another record-breaking year.
“This growing popularity reflects the positive steps taken by providers in the market to make products more innovative and introducing new initiatives that are engaging more people with the benefits of protection. Looking anecdotally at more general trends, awareness is growing all the time around our health and the impact that lifestyle choices can have on it. This increasing health consciousness may also be prompting more people to consider wider measures, such as protection, that can help support with health issues that may arise.”
