Leadership

Irish Life paid out €250m in claims in 2009

08.02.2010
Irish Life paid out €250m in life-assurance claims in 2009, new figures from the insurer reveal.

The company said it paid out on 95pc of all claims it received in 2009.

Irish Life’s 2009 claims figures also revealed that one in four people in Ireland will suffer a serious illness before reaching retirement age, with one in 10 people dying before they reach retirement age.

Malignant cancer claims
The figures also reveal that for the fourth year in a row, malignant cancer remains the biggest cause of both specified illness and death benefit claims for both men and women.

In the case of malignant cancer, women account for 78pc of the total specified illness claims paid. This is largely due to the high level of female-specific malignant cancers such as malignant breast cancer, which accounted for half of the total number of cancer-related claims.

The figures also show that men have five times the level of heart-related specified illness claims that women do.

Overall, malignant cancer and heart-related disease account for 80pc of the claims settled by Irish Life in 2009.

“In the current economic environment, it is more important than ever that people continue to make payments into their protection plans. Unfortunately 1 in 10 of us will not live to see our retirement so it’s crucially important that we have adequate financial support in place for ourselves and our families should the unexpected arise,” said Martin Duffy, Head of Claims at Irish Life.

Specified illness cover
Overall, Irish Life said it paid out €34.6m in specified illness cover in 2009, at an average payment of €61,000 per claim.

The single biggest specified illness payment paid was to a 52-year-old male working in the building industry who received €685,737 on a diagnosis of leukaemia.

Death claims
Overall, Irish Life paid out €152.8m in respect of 2,152 death claims last year – with an average of over €70,600 per claim.

Almost half of all life cover claims for people under 40 were the result of accidental or sudden deaths, the insurer said.

The single largest death benefit paid by Irish Life in 2009 was €938,000 in respect of a 62-year-old male engineer. The second highest was €758,000, which was paid to the dependants of a 40-year-old-male who died in a road traffic accident, Irish Life said.

The figures also showed that over a quarter of all accidental death claims were as a result of road traffic accidents. The prevalence of alcohol in accidental or sudden deaths stood at 16pc, Irish Life said, with males forming the majority (83pc) of all road traffic accident deaths.