Royal London doubles protection

For the nine months ending 30 September 2015 the group completed £362m worth of protection via intermediaries and also saw drawdown business rise 67% to £966m.

The firm said protection “continues to build momentum as we move towards bringing Bright Grey and Scottish Provident together under a single Royal London brand”.

September saw the launch of a new underwriting comparison service pilot with UnderwriteMe and further improvements to the Bright Grey critical illness product.

Phil Loney, group chief executive of Royal London, said: “This is another strong set of results with all life and pensions businesses putting in excellent new business performance.

“Sales from our popular life assurance and pension range have more than doubled over the last four years and total group assets under management are up 120% over the same period.

“We have now come through the initial period of pension freedoms and we have seen new trends emerging in the market.

“Clearly a lot more advisers are recommending income drawdown for their clients and we have seen advisers choosing to transfer their clients into our flexible personal pension arrangement in anticipation of exercising freedoms at some point in the future.”