Aviva and Legal & General saw significant rises in protection product sales last year to dominate the market as it continued its recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The duo accumulated more than a million protection sales in 2021 with a combined 47% market share – up from 45% in 2020.
The pair of insurers also claimed the top two positions in term assurance, critical illness (CI) and income protection (IP) sales, according to data from Swiss Re.
The reinsurer’s Term and Health Watch 2022 shows that overall individual protection sales of these three products rose by 136,441 or 6.3% to 2,293,704 last year.
However, Aviva and Legal & General both surpassed this, the figures show, with a combined growth of 11.2% and accounting for 109,258 or 80% of the additional sales.
L&G grows market dominance
L&G remained by far the largest insurer in the market and completed 722,133 sales of term assurance, CI and IP – more than double its nearest competitor and almost one third of the market.
This was up 58,880 or 8.9% from the 663,253 completed in 2020.
Most notably, L&G grew its IP new business by 27%, completing 47,711 sales in 2021 – 10,223 more than in 2020.
Term assurance and CI sales were also up by 6.3% and 13.5% respectively.
Aviva sees 21% term increase
Aviva remained the second largest insurer in the market with 360,816 sales – up by 50,378 or 16% from the 310,438 in 2020.
Along with its overall increase, Aviva also reclaimed second place in the term assurance market where it grew sales by 21% compared to 2020.
It completed 221,155 term assurance sales last year, 38,224 more than the 182,931 in 2020, according to the Swiss Re figures.
Aviva also saw 12% and 2.4% gains in CI and IP sales respectively.
Other insurers
Other notable sales figures saw AIG become the third largest term assurance provider as it completed 190,304 policies – slightly up from the 182,013 in 2020.
It also grew CI sales sharply to 60,084 making it the fourth largest in the market, having been outside the top five in 2020, completing fewer than Vitality’s 45,000 sales.
Royal London however saw its term assurance figures drop 8% from 194,785 to 179,294 last year, but it did increase IP sales by 12% to 23,061.
LV= also increased IP sales by 13.4% to leapfrog Royal London with 23,168 sales.
And The Exeter grew its IP new business by 9% to complete 13,815 sales.