Irish life insurance claims 2025: €919m paid — and what the numbers actually mean

The headline number — €919m paid in 2025

The five Irish life offices paid out a combined more than €919.2m in protection claims in 2025, across life and terminal illness cover, specified serious illness and income protection. The five-office aggregate is up roughly +8.4% on the €847.7m reported for 2024. Irish Life leads on volume with €404.3m paid across 7,907 claims, followed by New Ireland (€199.1m, 5,815 claims), Zurich (€132.2m), Aviva (€125.6m) and Royal London Ireland (€58m).

The standout year-on-year movement is Zurich at +34.9%, reflecting more individuals supported and higher average sums assured. Aviva is the only office where the total edged down slightly (–2.6%), but that headline conceals a sharp +32% rise in new income protection claims. Irish Life (+6.5%) and New Ireland (+8.2%) grew broadly in line with the market.

Life cover — paid rates clustered at 97–99%

On life-cover claims (the policy class to which mortgage protection belongs), the 2025 report confirms paid rates of 97–99% across all five offices. Royal London Ireland reports 99% across all protection claim types combined — the highest disclosed in the dataset. Differences at this end of the spectrum are real but small. For a straightforward mortgage protection claim, the practical paid rate is close to 100%.

Where life claims are not paid, the dominant reason — as in 2024 — is material non-disclosure at the application stage rather than insurer behaviour at the claim stage. Death is a binary event. The certificate is not in dispute. The 1–3% of life claims that are not paid almost always trace back to something the applicant was asked at outset and did not declare.

Serious illness — where the real differences sit

The 2025 dataset’s most consequential finding mirrors 2024: specified serious illness paid rates are materially lower than life-cover paid rates, and they vary across the market. Irish Life reports a 92.8% SI paid rate, New Ireland 89.0%, Aviva 87.0%. The gap is not random — it is structural. A serious illness claim must meet the severity threshold defined in the policy’s wording, and policy wordings differ between offices.

Two policies sold by two different offices, on the same life, in the same year, can pay or not pay on identical clinical facts purely because the wording differs. The lower paid rate on serious illness is not a sign that any office is behaving badly. It is a sign that definition, not proof of event, decides serious illness claims. The cheapest serious illness policy is rarely the one with the best wording. It is sometimes the one with the worst.

Cancer dominates serious illness — at different intensities

Cancer accounts for between 60% and 68% of specified serious illness claims paid across the four offices that disclose the breakdown.

Heart attack, stroke and multiple sclerosis remain the next-largest categories across the published breakdowns. The practical implication is that for most Irish serious illness policyholders, the cancer definition in their policy — including the partial-payment provisions for early-stage prostate, breast and other site-specific cancers — is the single most important entry in the policy wording.

Income protection — psychological causes lead at Aviva

Aviva’s 2025 release provides the most detailed cause-of-claim breakdown in the dataset. New income protection claims at Aviva in 2025 were caused by:

• Psychological conditions — 26%
• Orthopaedic conditions — 25%
• Cancer — 21%

Psychological causes are now the single largest driver of new IP claims at Aviva — narrowly ahead of orthopaedic causes, and ahead of cancer. Income protection is the most under-bought protection product in Ireland. Its 2025 reading suggests it is also the product where claims experience is moving fastest, and whose cause mix is least visible from the outside.

What the 2025 report changes versus 2024

The five-office total is up 8.4% (€847.7m → €919.2m), Zurich’s paid total is up 34.9%, and Aviva’s new income protection claims are up 32%. The structural story — life cover paid at 97–99%, serious illness at 87–93%, cancer dominating SI books, definition-not-met driving SI declines — is unchanged from 2024.

The consumer takeaway is also unchanged. On life cover and mortgage protection the paid rate is, in practical terms, close to 100% across every Irish office — disclosure at application is what determines the small remainder. On specified serious illness the headline paid rate matters less than the wording behind it. And on income protection the cause mix is shifting fast enough that the product itself deserves more attention than it currently gets.

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