Life insurance sales for the year ending March were up 8.7% to $2.27 billion, according to research house Plan For Life.

The strongest sales growth for the year was in group life insurance with a rise of 19.8%, equating to $703 million.

Individual life insurance sales for the year were up 4.5% to $1.1 billion while income protection sales rose 4% to $376 million.

AIA lead the total life insurance premium sales for the year with annual growth of 44.7%, which generated $145 million of income.

Leading total life insurance sales was Tower with $407 million followed by OnePath with $305 million and MLC achieving $301 million in sales.

AMP and Axa were treated as separated entities by Plan For Life as the merger didn’t occur until the end of March.

The combined sales figures of the two life insurers was $340.9 million for the year ending March, which would give the combined entity a sales market share of 15.1%.

In the group life insurance market, Tower dominates sales with $248.5 million during the year ending March, which gave the insurer annual growth of 33.5%. 

AMP achieved the strongest sales growth, up 218%, although income was just $37 million.

Operating in its strongest segment, AIA achieved sales of $94 million for the 12 months giving it annual growth of 61.8%.

Total premium inflows for the 12 months were $9.5 billion generating an annual growth of 10.4%.

Again group life insurance was the strongest performer with premium inflows of $3.1 billion, up 12%.