Analysis from Equifax Touchstone, a market leading intermediary database provider, shows protection product sales in Q1 2017 rose by 6.6% (£8.7 million) to £140.2 million, returning to the peak levels of 2016.

The data, which is collated from 22 protection providers, with inputs from more than 11,000 advisers, reveals decreasing term with critical illness policies grew most during the quarter, up by 15.9% on Q4 2016 to £13.5 million. This was closely followed by term policies which witnessed a 14.4% (£7.5 million) increase.

Furthermore, critical illness, whole of life and relevant life policies all performed favourably, with sales increasing by 4.3% (£0.2 million), 2.6% (£0.2 million) and 1.8% (£0.05 million) respectively. Three policy types saw drops in sales, with income protection suffering most noticeably, falling 5.7% (£0.5 million), followed by a decrease in term with critical illness of 2.6% (£0.6 million) and a negligible decrease of 0.3% (£0.06 million) for mortgage term.

John Driscoll, Director at Equifax Touchstone, said: “Our quarterly analysis shows robust growth for protection product sales in the first quarter of 2017, with very encouraging increases across multiple products buoyed by a strong mortgage market in March.

“It’s reassuring to see substantial increases in term assurance policies drive positive growth again, enabling protection volumes to return to the highest levels of last year. Despite ongoing uncertainty in the market, we’re hopeful that protection sales will continue this upward trend into the rest of 2017.” 

Equifax Touchstone utilises intermediary and customer profiling tools to enable financial services providers obtain a detailed understanding of their marketplace and client base.

Quarterly breakdown by type of cover:

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For further information, please contact:

Sonam Patel, Alastair Doyle or Sally Moore

Four Broadgate                              

Email: Equifax@fourbroadgate.com   

Telephone: 020 3697 4200

Notes to editors:

Equifax Touchstone Limited. Equifax Touchstone Limited is one of the Equifax group companies based in the UK. Equifax Touchstone is registered in Scotland No: SC11340. Registered Office: 54 Deerdykes View, Westfield Park, Cumbernauld G68 9HN

Equifax Touchstone

Equifax Touchstone is a leading provider of strategic intermediary intelligence to financial product providers, delivering powerful benefits to its users. It operates a shared investment product data exchange with information provided by over 90 of the UK’s leading financial services companies.  It also operates the MyTouchstone database which is powered by the collective sales data of 77 major product providers, fund managers and platforms and inputs from thousands of intermediaries to help them understand how they perform compared to the other firms in their post area and across the UK.

About Equifax

Equifax is a global information solutions company that uses trusted unique data, innovative analytics, technology and industry expertise to power organizations and individuals around the world by transforming knowledge into insights that help make more informed business and personal decisions. The company organizes, assimilates and analyzes data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide, and its database includes employee data contributed from more than 7,100 employers.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is a member of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500® Index, and its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. Equifax employs approximately 9,700 employees worldwide.

Some noteworthy achievements for the company include: Named to the Top 100 American Banker FinTech Forward list (2015-2016); named a Top Technology Provider on the FinTech 100 list (2004-2016); named an InformationWeek Elite 100 Winner (2014-2015); named a Top Workplace by Atlanta Journal Constitution (2013-2016); named one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies (2011-2015); named one of Forbes’ World’s 100 Most Innovative Companies (2015-2016). For more information, visit www.equifax.com.