Term & Health Watch 2025
On 28 May, Swiss Re published Term & Health Watch 2025. This is an annual analysis of new individual protection sales in the UK from the previous year, based on sales data provided by protection insurers. iPipeline has been a key contributor to the data for several years, adding insights gained from its platforms.
In 2024, Swiss Re’s Term & Health Watch reported that the individual protection market grew by 2.2%, reaching 2,041,428 new policy sales.
This was largely driven by rises in Income Protection and Standalone Critical Illness (SACI) policy sales (they rose by 18% and 22% respectively). Total Term Assurance sales, however, continued to struggle (dropping by 0.8%).
Despite the overall drop in Term Sales, there was a 3.6% rise in Decreasing Term Assurance (DTA) sales. This was positive when compared to a 12.1% fall in 2023. This is likely linked to the rebounding mortgage market in 2024 – the value of new mortgage commitments increased by 4.9% in Q4 2024, the highest since 2022 Q3, and 50.7% higher than a year earlier.
However, the total number of Term Assurance sales with CI cover fell by 2.7% which was driven by a 4.4% reduction in DTA with CI.
This could signal that customers are keen to secure some mortgage-related cover but could be limited by price due to elevated mortgage interest rates; the average annual premium for a DTA policy was £285 compared to £684 for DTA with CI in 2024.
The trends have shifted even in the last decade: from Term & Health Watch, in 2014, DTA and DTA with CI product sales were largely equal but now there has been a marked shift towards DTA-only (shown in the table below).
| Product | 2014 | 2024 |
| DTA | 239,001 | 317,149 |
| DTA with CI | 232,043 | 140,097 |
This switch has coincided with the significant growth in SACI sales which rose to 134,439 in 2024 policy sales compared to 18,208 sales in 2014.
We typically see lower sums assured with SACI sales (£47,443 in 2024) which could suggest that customers are buying a smaller amount of Critical Illness alongside a Term policy or as part of a menu plan.
It will be interesting to see if the upwards trend towards DTA-only continues into 2025, especially as mortgage rates in the UK are likely to remain elevated in historic terms.
A defining feature of the second half of 2025 will be the maturing mortgages from the COVID-19 pandemic house buyers’ cohort: these customers may then expect more higher mortgage repayments and therefore may consider different levels of protection when they come to remortgage.
