Life and health market outlook 2025

Russell Hutchinson, Director, Quality Product Research Limited.

Everyone is telling us that there are a lot of lapses. Most reviews of the life sector say that there are some serious challenges: there are a lot of lapses and large numbers of people are uninsured, and not-great levels of new business. That there is a problem, there is little debate.  Exactly how the problem could be resolved often focuses on externalities: the behaviour of customers, legislators, or regulators. Sometimes we spend time blaming each other – me included – as sometimes research is identified as a key problem!

While it is true that customers have changed their behaviour, we do not think that it is so fundamentally changed that they will not buy life insurance – because they do buy it at greater rates in other markets. They have also bought it more here, in the past, too – based on our analysis of insurer accounts.

Advisers and non-advising sales staff remain an important channel, and even in markets where there are substantially more digital and direct sales – they are deeply involved in those, so we think there is nothing so fundamentally changed that the advice channel cannot grow. In fact, recently we had that confirmed by an update from the companies’ office data update: in the year to September 2024 there was a net gain of 423 Financial Advisers and 26 new Financial Advice Providers. I can’t be sure what share of them offer life and health advice, but it would be a surprise for it to be none.