The life insurance industry has finished the last financial year in very good shape, according to new surveys by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and Dexx&R.

The industry reported net profit after tax of $3.2 billion for the 12 months ending June 30, APRA says in its Quarterly Life Insurance Performance Statistics.

This was an increase of 131.6% compared to previous financial year’s profit of $1.3 billion.

Research house Dexx&R has recorded inforce annual premiums up 10.85% for the year to $8.4 billion. Inflows were up about 10% for all sectors – lump sum, disability and group risk.

Tower, MLC and ING Life led the inforce annual premiums field with growth of 40%, 12% and 11% respectively.

Tower also achieved significant growth in the group risk sector with premium growth of 103% ($465 million) at the expense of CommInsure, down 25% to $323.5 million.

However, new annual premiums were slightly down for the year by 0.19% to $1.95 billion. 

Again Tower dominated new premium inflows, reporting 96.52% growth ($414 million), according to Dexx&R.

And again it was CommInsure which suffered, with a 10.41% fall in new premiums to $290 million for the 2010 financial year, compared to $324 million for the previous year.

The strong premium inflows for Tower were also reflected in new premiums for group risk sector, up 293.9% to $255 million compared to $64 million in the previous financial year.

AIA, CommInsure and ING Life all recorded falls in group risk new premium inflows of minus 70%, 36% and 28% respectively.

APRA reports total revenues for the industry was $33.8 billion in the 12 months ending June 30 compared to the previous year’s negative inflows of $10.8 billion.

Expenses in the industry have also risen to $28.6 billion in the 2010 financial year compared to a negative $10.9 billion in the previous year.