New figures from Irish Life show that it paid €985.3m in claims last year across its life assurance and health insurance businesses, which equates to almost €4m every working day.
Irish Life Assurance paid €404.3m in protection claims, while Irish Life Health paid €581m across 974,663 health insurance claims. The company has over over 1.6 million customers here.
As well as health insurance, Irish Life offers life cover, specified illness cover, income protection, terminal illness and rider protection benefits. It is part of Canada’s Great-West group of companies.
In recent years, Irish Life has paid almost €4.4 billion in claims, made up of €2.014 billion in protection claims between 2020 and 2025 and €2.377 billion in health insurance claims between 2021 and 2025.
In protection, Irish Life said it paid more than €1.5m every working day in 2025 to customers and families facing bereavement, serious illness or loss of income.
Living benefits accounted for the majority of protection claims by volume, with Irish Life paying 5,075 living benefit claims across individual and group plans, representing 63% of claim cases and €138 million in payments. These included specified illness cover, income protection, terminal illness and rider benefits.
Death benefits accounted for the remaining 2,831 cases, representing 37% of claim cases, with total payments of €265m.
Irish Life noted that among individual Life Cover death claims, while the average age of claimants was 68 some 23% of claims were for people aged between 41 and 60.
The pattern was even more pronounced for individual Specified Illness Cover claims, where the average claimant age was 54 and 59% of claimants were aged between 41 and 60.
Today’s figures show that malignant cancer was the largest cause of individual specified illness cover claims, followed by heart related conditions and stroke.
Irish Life paid more than €1.1m every week on individual specified illness cover plans last year, including around four breast cancer claims, two prostate malignant cancer claims, one heart attack claim and one stroke claim each week.
Cancer remained the leading cause of individual death claims, accounting for 32% of cases. Respiratory conditions accounted for 19%, while heart-related conditions accounted for 12%, it added.
The group said its health insurance claims showed a similar scale of support. Irish Life Health paid €581m across 974,663 health insurance claims last year, an average of almost 19,000 claims every week and more than €2.2m every working day.
Hospital claims accounted for the majority of payments, at €501m across 417,199 claims, while outpatient claims totalled €80m across 557,464 claims.
Sarah Parks, Head of Claims at Irish Life Assurance, said the company’s 2025 claims data show how Irish Life is supporting customers and their families when they need it most.
“Notably, we are continuing to see claims paid at younger ages and at stages of life when people are building careers, raising families and taking on long-term financial commitments,” Ms Parks said.
“For us, every claim is a reminder that timely advice and the right level of protection can make a vital difference to families’ financial stability at very difficult moments,” she added
