Critical illness (CI) sales exceeded 480,000 in 2025 with standalone CI policies accounting for more than one in four, according to data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The regulator’s official product sales data for last year also showed 243,000 income protection (IP) sales were completed during last year, but around one in six were not advised.
Of the 480,972 CI sales in 2025, 27% or 130,787 were of standalone products, while 350,185 were as a rider or accelerated policy.
The FCA data also showed that of those standalone sales, only 55% were advised while 86% of rider CI sales were advised.
For IP, 84% or 205,315 were advised, meaning that 16% or one in six income protection products were sold through a non-advised process.
The FCA remarked that due to a combination of data resubmissions and adjustments, this latest edition of the data was not comparable to previous product sales data publications.
Previous data
In the four previous years, CI sales had gone from a high of 469,409 in 2021 to a low of 417,699 in 2023 and then recovering somewhat to 452,403 in 2024.
In contrast, during that period standalone sales had continuously increased from around 60,000 in 2021 to more than 108,000 in 2024 – growing from almost 13% of all CI sales to 24%.
In the post-Covid years IP sales surged from just over 196,000 in 2021 to more than 264,000 in 2024, a rise of 35% in just three years
Notably, during this period advised sales accounted for more than 91% of IP sales in every year.
Gen Re data, released earlier this year, indicated the number of protection policies sold in 2025 rose 1.4% continuing the market’s incremental recovery.