Most UK life insurance claims are paid. The latest claims statistics from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) give 97.9% as the 2025 payment rate for individual protection claims, and the life-only figures insurers publish for that year are mostly higher, but each counts something different, so none of them is a league table.

Prefer to hear how an insurer would treat your own circumstances than read averages? A free ring-back from an FCA-authorised broker, booked with the form on this page, covers that by phone. If you are new to cover itself, how life insurance works sets out the basics.

What does the ABI's 97.9% claims figure count?

The ABI's release of 29 June 2026, prepared with Group Risk Development (GRiD), says: "When looking at individual policies alone, the proportion of protection claims paid in 2025 remained strong at 97.9%." It covers life insurance, income protection and critical illness together, on individual policies only, so it is not a life-only rate. The same release reports 258,000 new individual claims paid in 2025, worth £5.15 billion, with an average claim of £19,300, and says the proportion paid has been at or above 97.9% for over a decade.

A table in the same release, combining individual and group claims, gives these 2025 figures by product:

Product (ABI and GRiD table, individual and group combined)New claims paidPercentage of new claims paid
Life48,05596.7%
Whole of life193,577100%
Critical illness20,49890.2%
Income protection18,46979%
All protection products, group and individual280,99295.9%

Because that table mixes group and individual claims, its 96.7% for life matches neither an insurer's individual life figure nor the 97.9%. Critical illness claims have their own record, covered on critical illness claims statistics, and income protection on income protection claims statistics.

What do Aviva, L&G, Royal London and other insurers say they paid?

Each row is the insurer's own figure for 2025, with the scope the insurer gives it. The rows are in alphabetical order, not in order of the figures.

InsurerFigureWhat it countsWhere it is published
Aviva98.7% acceptedIndividual life claims, a group in which Aviva counts its over-50s plans and early terminal illness payouts; 40,000 claims and more than £860 million paid. Across all its individual protection claims received, 96.9% were accepted.Aviva news release, 25 March 2026
Beagle Street99.5% of all protection claimsThe figure is for Family Assurance Friendly Society Limited, the underwriter of Beagle Street cover, across all its protection claims.Beagle Street how-to-claim page, read 22 October 2026
Legal & General97.5%Labelled "L&G life claims payout rate", alongside 13,950 claims paid and an average payout of £37,788.L&G, Life insurance payouts: the facts, page dated 6 October 2026
LV=98% of all claimsLife claims as LV= defines them (its footnote is quoted in the next section): over £80 million to over 5,500 families. Its all-protection figure is 95%.LV= claims infographic, July 2026
Royal London98.4% of all protection claims; 99.9% of whole of life claimsThe 98.4% covers every protection claim, and the same release lists critical illness and income protection payouts alongside life. It gives £326 million paid for term life and terminal illness, with no rate for that group alone.Royal London press release, 15 June 2026
Scottish Widows99% of claimsGiven beside its 2025 life cover claims: £127 million paid, helping almost 9,500 customers and their families.Scottish Widows life cover page, read 22 October 2026
VitalityLife99.4% of all life cover claimsLife cover claims: £105 million paid in 2025.VitalityLife life insurance page (archived August 2026)
Zurich99.8%Life insurance claims, £228.6 million. Terminal illness (90.6%) and critical illness (93.8%) are shown separately. This is Zurich's adviser sales aid.Zurich Intermediary, Claims paid 2025 (LIFTM167 6/26)

Aviva and LV= each put a life figure beside an all-protection one. Zurich gives a separate rate for each product, Royal London gives one for all protection and one for whole of life, and Beagle Street's is for all protection only.

Why can't one insurer's percentage be set beside another's?

Four things differ from row to row. The first is the product: Aviva's 98.7% is life insurance, while its 96.9% covers every individual protection claim, and LV= reports 98% for life against 95% across all protection. The second is what sits inside "life", for instance over-50s plans, whole of life, family income benefit or advance terminal illness payments. LV= says its figures "include claims paid for Life Insurance, Family Income Benefit, Terminal Illness and our Whole of Life products (including some guaranteed over 50’s Whole of Life products)."

The third is the measure. Aviva reports claims accepted out of claims received; the ABI reports the percentage of new claims paid; Royal London and Beagle Street give a share of all protection claims. The fourth is the mix of business. The ABI's combined table shows whole of life claims paid at 100% against 96.7% for life, so an insurer whose total holds more whole of life or over-50s claims can show a higher figure for that reason alone.

Read each figure as that insurer's own record of what it counts, not as a ranking; together they show that the large majority of life claims are paid.

Why do insurers decline life insurance claims?

The ABI's release of 6 August 2025, on 2024 claims, says: "Common reasons for declined claims were policyholders failing to disclose existing medical conditions when they took out the policy, and not meeting the policy definitions." Aviva's figures for 2025 point the same way for its individual life claims: among the few it turned down, the most frequent reason was inaccurate information given when applying, above all about health and lifestyle.

The reasons differ by product. For the group in which Aviva counts critical illness alongside children's cover and total permanent disability, its release says: "Where claims could not be paid, the majority were due to the customer’s diagnosis not meeting the policy definition for their condition." On its income protection claims, around three-fifths of those declined were due to misrepresentation during application.

The legal grounds for refusal, and what to do once a claim has been refused, are in when a life insurer can refuse to pay; what to tell an insurer when applying is in life insurance disclosure requirements, and turned-down applications in declined for life insurance. Ahead of any application, how your health history is likely to be viewed is a fair question for a broker; ask it on a free ring-back, arranged with the brief form on this page.

What do Financial Ombudsman figures show about life insurance?

The Financial Ombudsman Service published its 2025/26 complaints data on 21 May 2026, and defines upheld this way: "‘Found in favour of the consumer’ or ‘upheld’ means that the case was closed as a change in outcome in favour of the complainant." Its table of products shows, for 2025/26:

  • Term assurance: 884 new cases, 17% upheld.
  • Whole of life assurance, non-reviewable: 414 new cases, 26% upheld.
  • Whole of life assurance, reviewable: 434 new cases, 38% upheld.
  • Critical illness cover: 647 new cases, 12% upheld.

Across all financial products the Ombudsman upheld 30% of the complaints it resolved. The table counts complaints that reached the Ombudsman, sorted by product rather than by what each complaint was about, so it is not a measure of declined claims and is not a payout rate. How to weigh complaints data alongside claims figures when looking at a particular insurer is covered in the best life insurance policies guide.

How far should a payout rate guide your choice of insurer?

A payout rate describes what happened to the claims an insurer received last year. It says little about the one claim that matters to you, which turns on your own policy wording and whether your application answers were accurate. Where insurers publish figures at all, the useful questions are the ones the table above answers: which product, which year, which measure.

So a higher figure elsewhere is not, on its own, a reason to change provider. If you are weighing up a switch, a broker can set your current policy's terms beside what the insurers it works with offer now, at no cost, when they ring you back.

If you would like policies from the insurers a broker works with laid out against your own details, the brief form on this page brings a broker's call to go through them by phone; our guide to getting life insurance quotes explains the other routes.

Frequently asked questions

What is Aviva's life insurance payout rate?

For 2025, Aviva accepted 98.7% of the individual life claims it received, a count that takes in its over-50s plans and early terminal illness payouts, according to its March 2026 news release. Counting every individual protection claim, the figure was 96.9%.

What is the Vitality life insurance payout rate?

VitalityLife's life insurance page (archived August 2026) says it paid 99.4% of all life cover claims in 2025, worth £105 million. Like the other insurers' figures, it describes last year's claims as a whole, not how a claim on your own policy would be assessed.

Does Beagle Street pay out on life insurance claims?

Beagle Street says its underwriter, Family Assurance Friendly Society Limited, paid out 99.5% of all protection claims in 2025. That is a share of every protection claim the underwriter handled, not life claims alone, and a valid claim under your own policy's terms is what decides yours.

Which life insurance company pays out the most?

The published figures cannot answer this, whether you mean the share of claims paid or the amount. Each insurer counts different claims, and an average payout depends on how much cover its customers bought, so it is context rather than a guide to how much cover you need.

How often are life insurance claims turned down?

Rarely, on the ABI's published numbers: 97.9% of individual protection claims were paid in 2025, so the remainder were not paid. That figure covers life, income protection and critical illness together, and critical illness and income protection have lower payment rates than life in the ABI's combined table.

Are death-in-service and group life claims counted in these figures?

The ABI's 97.9% is for individual policies only, while its product table combines individual and group claims; Aviva's release reports its group life claims apart from its individual figures. Group life through an employer is a different arrangement from a policy you buy yourself, covered in whether you need life insurance with death in service.

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