Introduction
This is the second annual mylife.ie Life Insurance Claims in Ireland report. Each year we aggregate the publicly disclosed claims statistics of every life office that writes meaningful protection business in Ireland, so that consumers, advisers and journalists have a single, like-for-like picture of how the market actually pays out.
The 2025 edition covers all five domestic offices in scope: Irish Life, New Ireland / Bank of Ireland Life, Aviva Life & Pensions Ireland, Zurich Life and Royal London Ireland. Together they paid approximately €919 million in protection claims to Irish customers across more than 18,200 individual claims in 2025. Where 2024 figures are referenced, they are taken from the equivalent 2024 mylife.ie report so that year-on-year comparisons are like-for-like.
About mylife.ie
mylife.ie is the digital life-insurance brand of SMP Financial Ltd, an Irish brokerage established in 2006 and authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland (registration C42382). We arrange mortgage protection, term life cover, whole-of-life cover (including Section 72 inheritance-tax planning), specified serious illness cover and income protection from every major life office in the Irish market.
We publish this report to make the Irish protection market easier to compare. The figures here are drawn from each insurer’s own published 2025 claims statistics and from their official corporate disclosures — no commercial data is included and no insurer pays a fee to appear.
Providers covered and claims paid
Across the five domestic offices in scope, the public 2025 claims reports indicate at least approximately €919.2 million of protection claims paid. The figure is a minimum / approximate aggregate because several offices disclose rounded “over” figures, and because product scopes differ by provider: some totals include group benefits, terminal illness, riders, hospital cash or multi-claim cover, while others focus on individual protection classes.
| # | Provider | 2025 claims paid | Claims / counts | Core scope used in this report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Irish Life | €404.3m | 7,907 | Life, specified-serious illness and income protection |
| 2 | New Ireland / Bank of Ireland Life | €199.08m | 5,815 | Life, specified-serious illness, income protection and ancillary |
| 3 | Zurich Life | €132.2m | 1,551 | Life, specified-serious illness and income protection |
| 4 | Aviva | €125.6m | over 2,900 | Life, specified-serious illness and income protection |
| 5 | Royal London Ireland | €58m | not separately disclosed | All protection claims (life, SI, IP combined) |
| Total (minimum aggregate) | €919.18m+ | 18,200+ | Five offices | |
Provider profiles
Providers are ordered by the value of claims paid in 2025, largest first. Each profile combines claims scale with ownership, market position, balance-sheet and solvency context drawn from the office’s own corporate disclosures.
1. Irish Life
Irish Life is the largest office in the 2025 claims dataset, reporting €404.3 million paid across 7,907 individual claims, including €265.7 million of life cover, €62.28 million of specified serious illness cover and €68.57 million of income protection. The business is part of Irish Life Group and ultimately sits within Great-West Lifeco through Canada Life; Irish Life’s SFCR describes over 1.5 million customers, €34.9 billion of pension customer funds under management at end-2024, profit after tax of €144 million and a year-end solvency ratio of 152%. In claims terms, Irish Life is therefore not simply the largest reporter in this dataset; it is the principal scale benchmark against which the other offices must be interpreted.
| Cover type | Amount paid | Number of claims | Average age | Average payout | Paid rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life cover (term, WoL, mortgage protection) | €265.7m | 2,831 | 68 | €88,942 | 98.7% |
| Specified serious illness | €62.28m | 1,104 | 54 | €62,823 | 92.8% |
| Income protection | €68.57m | 3,239 | 48 | €25,237 | — |
2. New Ireland / Bank of Ireland Life
New Ireland / Bank of Ireland Life ranks second in the 2025 dataset, with €199.08 million paid across 5,815 claims in 2025; the published Bank of Ireland Life page states that the claims figures reflect the combined New Ireland and Bank of Ireland Life claims experience. New Ireland’s detailed 2025 claim statistics disclose individual and group death, specified illness, income protection and ancillary benefit categories, including €47.76 million of income protection paid. The provider profile table below aggregates the adult individual and group sub-categories within each product class for comparability across offices; children’s benefit claims are stripped out and footnoted separately. As a business, New Ireland was established in 1918 and describes itself as the first wholly Irish owned life assurance company to transact business in Ireland. The 2024 annual report identifies New Ireland as a wholly owned subsidiary ultimately within Bank of Ireland Group plc, records a 20% share of the new business market and reports a Solvency II ratio that sits comfortably above the regulatory floor.
| Cover type | Amount paid | Number of claims | Average age | Average payout | Paid rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life cover† (incl. group death, terminal illness) | €111.28m | 1,981 | 69 | €56,174 | 98.0% |
| Specified serious illness† (incl. group) | €38.04m | 641 | 55 | €59,345 | 89.0% |
| Income protection | €47.76m | 2,653 | 47 | €18,003 | — |
| Other adult ancillary cover | €1.76m | 509 | — | — | — |
3. Zurich Life
Zurich Life paid €132.2 million in 2025 across life cover, specified serious illness and income protection combined. The breakdown comprises €122.3 million of life and serious-illness claims (€96.7 million across 823 life claims and €25.6 million across 351 specified-illness claims) plus €9.9 million of income protection paid across 377 supported claimants whose average age was 47. Zurich’s 2025 release describes a 35% rise in total claims paid versus 2024, reflecting both more individuals supported and higher average sums assured. Zurich Life Assurance plc’s Solvency and Financial Condition Report is the principal corporate disclosure for the office and is published annually on the zurich.ie corporate site.
| Cover type | Amount paid | Number of claims | Average age | Paid rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Life cover (term, WoL, mortgage protection) | €96.7m | 823 | 63 | — |
| Specified serious illness | €25.6m | 351 | 53 | — |
| Income protection | €9.9m | 377 | 47 | — |
4. Aviva
Aviva Life & Pensions Ireland paid €125.6 million in 2025 to more than 2,900 Irish customers (463 life-cover claims, 151 specified-illness claims and approximately 2,300 income protection claimants), with claims-paid rates of 97% on life cover, 87% on specified serious illness and 92% on income protection. Aviva’s headline 2025 story is a 32% year-on-year rise in new income protection claims, with psychological causes (26%), orthopaedic causes (25%) and cancer (21%) the three largest drivers of new IP claims. Within specified-illness claims, cancer represents 67% of all claims paid, followed by cardiac (16%) and stroke (6%). Aviva Life & Pensions Ireland’s SFCR sets out the office’s solvency position and own-funds composition under the Solvency II framework.
| Cover type | Amount paid | Number of customers / claims | Paid rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Life cover (term, WoL, mortgage protection) | €59.4m | 463 | 97% |
| Specified serious illness | €11.6m | 151 | 87% |
| Income protection | €54.6m | ~2,300 | 92% |
5. Royal London Ireland
Royal London Ireland published its 2025 business results in April 2026, reporting €58 million of Irish protection claims paid and a claims-paid rate of 99% across all protection claim types. The Royal London Group paid £751 million (approximately €876 million equivalent) of protection claims across its UK and Ireland operations. Royal London Insurance DAC, the Irish-authorised entity, publishes a Solvency and Financial Condition Report annually; the 2024 SFCR describes the regulated entity and its solvency position.
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mylife.ie compares Irish Life, Aviva, Royal London, New Ireland and Zurich Life across price, underwriting terms and policy definitions.
Get your free quote →Comparative analysis
This section normalises and compares the five offices on the dimensions where the underlying disclosures permit direct comparison. The aim is not to rank providers on quality from headline volumes — claim values are heavily influenced by portfolio scale, age profile and product mix — but to use the public data to draw out the patterns that matter for clients.
1. Aggregate claims paid
The 2025 minimum aggregate is approximately €919.2 million across the five offices. That compares with approximately €847.7 million in 2024 across the same five offices, a market-level rise of roughly +8.4%. As in 2024, the four largest offices account for over 93% of the total paid; Royal London Ireland’s €58 million is the smallest publicly reported office figure but its 99% claims-paid rate is the highest in the dataset.
2. Product mix by provider
Each office discloses its claims with a slightly different product taxonomy, but three broad classes are comparable: life / death (including terminal illness), specified-serious illness and income protection. At scale, the mix shows Irish Life and New Ireland as broadly balanced books with material income-protection and serious-illness blocks; Zurich is heavily concentrated in life cover; and Aviva is unusually weighted to income protection.
3. Claims-paid rates
Claims-paid rates are the single most useful comparable indicator of provider behaviour. The 2025 dataset shows life-cover paid rates clustering between 97% and 99% across the four offices that publish a percentage, serious-illness paid rates between 87% and 93%, and income-protection paid rates between 87% and 92% where disclosed. Zurich does not publish a headline life-cover paid-rate percentage in its 2025 release. Royal London Ireland reports a 99% paid rate across all protection claim types combined, the highest disclosed in the dataset. As in 2024, the gap between life and serious-illness paid rates is the most material consumer signal in the data: serious-illness definitions, not proof-of-event, drive the majority of declines.
| Provider | Life-cover paid rate | Serious-illness paid rate | Income protection paid rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Irish Life | 98.7% | 92.8% | — |
| New Ireland | 98.0% | 89.0% | — |
| Aviva | 97.0% | 87.0% | 92.0% |
| Zurich Life | not disclosed | not disclosed | not disclosed |
| Royal London Ireland | 99% (all protection) | 99% (all protection) | 99% (all protection) |
4. Year-on-year trends: 2024 vs 2025
Four of the five offices reported higher protection claim values in 2025 than in 2024, with Zurich showing the largest percentage uplift (+34.9%). Aviva was the only office where total claims paid edged down slightly (-2.6%), driven by life-cover experience offsetting a sharp rise in new income-protection claims. The five-office aggregate moved from approximately €847.7m to €919.2m, a rise of roughly +8.4%. The full like-for-like table is set out in Appendix A.
5. Serious-illness claims: cancer share
Cancer dominates the specified-serious illness book across every office in the dataset, accounting for between roughly 60% and 68% of serious-illness claims paid in 2025. Irish Life’s 68% cancer share is the highest reported, with Zurich at 66%, Aviva at 67% and New Ireland at 60%. Heart attack, stroke and multiple sclerosis remain the next-largest categories across the published serious-illness breakdowns.
| Office | Cancer as % of serious-illness claims (2025) |
|---|---|
| Irish Life | 68% |
| Aviva | 67% |
| Zurich | 66% |
| New Ireland | 60% |
6. Income protection: cause profile
Income protection is the product where the cause profile differs most sharply from life cover and serious illness. Aviva’s 2025 release provides the most detailed breakdown of new IP claims, with psychological causes (26%) the largest category, followed by orthopaedic (25%) and cancer (21%). Aviva also reports a 32% rise in new income protection claims versus 2024, the single most striking provider-level data point in this year’s dataset.
7. Average claimant age by product
Across the four offices that disclose average age by product, the pattern is consistent: life cover claimants are in their mid-to-late 60s, serious-illness claimants are in their early-to-mid 50s, and income-protection claimants are in their late 40s. Aviva’s life-cover average is lower than peers because mortgage protection (a younger book) is a larger share of Aviva’s life claims experience.
8. Provider scale and solvency context
Each office in this report publishes a Solvency and Financial Condition Report (SFCR) under the Solvency II framework. The most recent published SFCRs (2024 year-end) describe Irish Life, New Ireland, Aviva Life & Pensions Ireland, Zurich Life Assurance plc and Royal London Insurance DAC as well capitalised, with solvency ratios in each case meaningfully above the 100% regulatory floor. Bank of Ireland’s 2024 annual report and Irish Life’s corporate disclosures provide the supplementary financial-strength context used in this section.
9. What this means for clients
The 2025 dataset confirms three patterns that already shaped advice in 2024 and that continue to drive how mylife.ie talks to clients in 2026. First, the Irish market pays claims: 97–99% paid rates on life cover are now the norm across every office. Second, serious-illness paid rates are materially lower because the policy definition has to be met — not because the claim is disputed in good faith. Third, income protection is the product where claim incidence is rising fastest, driven by psychological and orthopaedic causes that are typically not catastrophic in the mortgage-protection sense but that nevertheless interrupt earnings for months or years. For most working clients with dependants or debt, those three observations argue for a layered protection structure rather than mortgage protection alone.
Frequently asked research questions
How much did Irish life insurance offices pay in protection claims in 2025?+
Which provider paid the most claims by value in 2025?+
Which provider has the highest claims-paid rate?+
Which illness causes dominate life insurance claims in Ireland?+
Which illness causes dominate specified-illness claims?+
Why are serious-illness paid rates lower than death claim paid rates?+
Why is 2025 used as the whole-market base year for this edition?+
Methodology and limitations
The dataset is compiled from publicly available provider claims publications and related official company materials. Where the provider supplies both a claims brochure / press release and a web page, both are cited where relevant. Company background and financial-strength facts are taken from official SFCRs, annual reports or provider corporate information pages.
The principal limitation is that the reports are not standard regulatory returns prepared on a common template. Some providers include group claims; some include terminal illness inside life cover; some report total protection claims while others report product categories; some disclose claim counts and some do not; and several totals are rounded. Consequently, the aggregate figure should be read as a minimum / approximate market view across the offices covered, not as a statutory market total.
The analysis uses three broad product classes: life / death / terminal illness, specified or serious illness, and income protection. Ancillary benefits such as hospital cash, accident benefits, broken bones, surgical cash, children’s benefits, riders or multi-claim cover are included only where the provider’s own total includes them, and they are separately noted when their values are disclosed.
Average payouts shown in the Irish Life and New Ireland provider profile tables are calculated by dividing each disclosed amount by the disclosed number of claims in the same product class. They are derived figures, not statistics published directly by the office. The calculated averages should therefore be read as product-class indicators across each office’s full disclosed book, not as the office’s own headline figure. The report does not attempt to rank providers by quality solely from claims volumes — larger claims paid may reflect customer base, sum assured, portfolio age, product mix, distribution strength and historic business scale.
Appendix A — Year-on-year claims summary: 2024 vs 2025
This appendix presents the like-for-like comparison of claims paid by each office in 2024 and 2025. Figures are drawn from each insurer’s own published 2024 and 2025 claims statistics.
| Provider | 2024 claims paid | 2025 claims paid | Change (€) | Change (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Irish Life | €379.7m | €404.3m | +€24.6m | +6.5% |
| New Ireland | €184.0m | €199.08m | +€15.1m | +8.2% |
| Zurich Life | €98.0m+ | €132.2m | +€34.2m | +34.9% |
| Aviva | €129.0m | €125.6m | -€3.4m | -2.6% |
| Royal London Ireland | €57.0m+ | €58.0m | +€1.0m | +1.8% |
| 5-office total | €847.7m | €919.18m | +€71.5m | +8.4% |
Appendix B — Complete source list
The following URLs are included to make this report auditable. The claims experience documents are listed first, followed by provider background and solvency / financial condition sources, and finally the equivalent 2024 publications used in the year-on-year trends section.
2025 provider claims publications
- Irish Life 2025 protection claims update — https://my.bline.ie/news/claims-2025-update
- New Ireland 2025 Claim Statistics PDF — https://www.newireland.ie/view-document/302468-2025_Claims_Statistics_7265203_v12.05.26.pdf
- Bank of Ireland Life / New Ireland claim statistics page — https://personalbanking.bankofireland.com/insure-and-protect/life-insurance/claim-statistics/
- Aviva Ireland 2025 protection claims release — https://www.aviva.ie/group/media-centre/2025-income-protection-claims-rise/
- Zurich Ireland 2025 claims page — https://www.zurich.ie/blog/claims-paid-by-zurich-2025/
- Royal London Ireland 2025 business results release — https://www.royallondon.ie/press-releases/press-releases-2026/April-26/Royal-London-Ireland-2025-business-results/
Provider corporate, financial-strength and Solvency II disclosures
- Irish Life Assurance plc SFCR 2024 — https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/regulation/industry-market-sectors/insurance-reinsurance/solvency-ii/sfcr-2024/irish-life-assurance-plc-sfcr-2024.pdf
- Irish Life Solvency and Financial Condition Reports landing — https://www.irishlife.ie/solvency-and-financial-condition-reports/
- Irish Life About Us — https://www.irishlife.ie/about-us/
- New Ireland Assurance Company plc SFCR 2024 — https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/regulation/industry-market-sectors/insurance-reinsurance/solvency-ii/sfcr-2024/new-ireland-assurance-company-plc-sfcr-2024.pdf
- New Ireland Assurance Annual Report 2024 — https://investorrelations.bankofireland.com/app/uploads/New-Ireland-Assurance-Annual-Report-2024-signed.pdf
- New Ireland Financial Information — https://www.newireland.ie/utilities/financial-information/
- Aviva Life & Pensions Ireland SFCR 2024 — https://static.aviva.io/content/dam/aviva-public/ie/pdfs/aviva-life-pensions-ireland-sfcr-2024.pdf
- Aviva Ireland regulatory returns — https://www.aviva.ie/about-and-support/regulatory-returns/
- Zurich Life Assurance plc SFCR landing — https://www.zurich.ie/about-us/sfcr/
- Royal London Insurance DAC SFCR 2024 — https://www.royallondon.ie/siteassets/site-docs/about-us/sfcr/rl-ireland-sfcr-ye2024.pdf
- Royal London Ireland SFCR landing — https://www.royallondon.ie/about-us/corporate-governance/sfcr/
- Royal London Ireland Financial Soundness — https://www.royallondon.ie/about-us/financial-soundness/
2024 provider claims publications (used for year-on-year comparison)
- Irish Life 2024 Protection Claims Handbook — https://my.bline.ie/news/claims-2024
- New Ireland 2024 Claim Statistics PDF — https://www.newireland.ie/view-document/302468-302468_Claim_Statistics_2024_5596331_v11.04.25.pdf
- Aviva Ireland 2024 protection claims report — https://static.aviva.io/content/dam/aviva-public/ie/pdfs/2024-Protection-Claims-Report.pdf
- Zurich Ireland 2024 claims page — https://www.zurich.ie/blog/claims-paid-by-zurich-2024/
- Royal London Ireland 2024 claims snapshot — https://www.royallondon.ie/siteassets/site-docs/customer-collateral/rli-claims-stats-2024.pdf
Closing note
The 2025 Irish life-insurance claims experience confirms what the 2024 evidence first set out: protection in Ireland works at the point of claim, and the offices that operate in this market pay the overwhelming majority of valid claims they receive. For mylife.ie, the appropriate use of this evidence is to improve the precision of recommendations, the quality of client communication and the likelihood that cover will work as intended when it is needed most.
The 2026 edition of this report will repeat the same exercise for the 2026 calendar year. Comments, corrections and methodological challenges are welcome at k.rothschild@smpfinancial.com.