We were asked this question recently by a client to whom we were recommending a Specified Illness policy. Our answer was that should she suffer one of the serious illnesses covered by the policy, she was preventing financial concerns being heaped upon the worries she would have about her health, at the time of trying to get better. Not having to worry about money would be invaluable at that time of significant stress. The “cost” of the policy would be the premiums paid for no monetary return, should she avoid a serious illness – that would otherwise undermine her quality of life – for the duration of the policy.
Our client followed our advice and now has more peace of mind about her financial future.
Her question also prompted us to show her Irish Life’s claims statistics for last year, as a representative sample of the overall market picture. They also gave her significant peace of mind so we thought it might be useful to share some of the highlights from the 2025 figures.
Irish Life paid out over €400 million in protection claims, to meet just under 8,000 individual claims in 2025. They paid out on average over €7.7 million each week.
Nearly 2 out of 3 claims paid were for Living Benefits claims – there’s a lot more to financial protection than just paying claims when people die. The 4,830 claims that Irish Life paid in 2025 for living benefits were for Specified Illness lump sums or Income Protection – regular payments if you can’t work due to an accident or illness.
Causes of claims
Life Insurance claims payable on death tend to be for significantly larger amounts than Living Benefit claims. The largest life assurance claim paid in 2025 was for €12.7 million, while the largest Specified Illness claim was for €666,000. While death claims only accounted for 37% of the claims by number of claims, over €265 million was paid out on death – 66% of the total amount. 98.7% of death claims were paid out. Cancer was the largest cause of death, accounting for 32% of life assurance claims, followed by respiratory disease.
When it came to Specified Illness claims – lump sum amounts paid on the diagnosis of a specified illness, cancer was responsible for more than 2/3rds of claims, with breast cancer being the biggest cause of claims among women and prostate cancer among men. The average claim amount was over €62,000, a very useful financial payout for claimants who had just got bad news. This certainly would have eased their financial worries in their hour of need.
Cancer again was the main cause of Income Protection claims in 2025, with the average claim amount being over €25,000. But remember, this amount is often paid each year until the claimant returns to work or reaches retirement age. This is a hugely valuable benefit.
There were gender differences
There were notable differences between men and women in terms of Specified Illness Cover and Life Insurance claims paid during 2025. Malignant prostate cancer in males and malignant breast cancer in females were the no. 1 causes of claims for each gender. Also, while the overall split of claims was fairly equal between men and women, males made 66% of the claims in relation to strokes (of specified severity) and 80% of the claims for heart attacks.
The largest life assurance claim on death in 2025 was for a male, with a claim amount of €12.7 million, while the largest claim amount for a female was €2 million. 39% of female claims and 30% of male claims were as a result of death caused by cancer.
The average age of a life assurance claimant was 68, while the average age of a specified illness claimant was 54.
So what can we learn from all of this? We know that none of this makes happy reading, as there are either bereaved families, seriously ill people or others unable to work behind every claim statistic.
However, it is comforting to know that in that time of grief or personal financial need, the advice given to take out life assurance, specified illness and income protection policies has made the lives of many claimants a lot easier to bear.
