Nobody likes to think about illness, injury or losing someone they love. But life tends to arrive unannounced. The real test of protection cover isn’t the policy you take out on a good day. It’s what happens on the worst one. That’s the reason claims data is worth paying attention to. It’s the clearest evidence there is of what a cover actually does.
Protection isn’t just for “later in life”
There is a story most of us tell ourselves about serious illness, which is that it is a problem for later. For our sixties, maybe. Something to sort out down the line. The numbers don’t agree.
As a partner to Royal London Ireland, we get a close look at how their claims play out, and their 2025 snapshot is worth a few minutes of your time. In 2025 they paid out more than €58 million to customers and their families across Ireland and settled 99% of every protection claim that came through the door. Read that again. Ninety-nine percent. When it mattered, people got paid.
It doesn’t wait until you’re “old enough”
Royal London Ireland’s youngest income protection claimant last year was 25. The youngest specified serious illness claimant was 30, and the youngest life cover claimant was 28. Right across the board, claims were paid for people who hadn’t come close to sixty, people who on the day they took out cover almost certainly assumed they were doing it for some distant future version of themselves.
Illness doesn’t check whether the timing suits you. That’s really the whole point of buying cover early. Not because something will happen, but because you don’t get to choose when it might.
What people actually claim for
When you look at why claims happen, one cause sits at the centre of it, and you can probably guess which. Cancer.
Royal London Ireland paid out €7.3 million in cancer claims on serious illness cover alone. None of which is surprising when you remember the figure the National Cancer Registry Ireland keeps coming back to. One in two of us is expected to receive a cancer diagnosis at some point. One in two. It’s a risk that reaches into almost every family.
Cancer wasn’t the only thing, though. Heart conditions came up a lot, so did neurological illness, mental health and musculoskeletal problems. Mental health was the second most common reason income protection claimants couldn’t work. These are the ordinary, everyday ways that lives get interrupted and they can affect anyone at any stage of life.
More than a cheque in the post
It’s easy to picture protection as one big payment that lands at the end of a terrible year. Sometimes it is. Life and terminal illness cover paid out lump sums averaging around €147,000 and €124,000, the kind of money that keeps a family in their home when everything else has fallen apart.
Income protection works differently, and it’s the part people tend to overlook. Instead of a single payout, it quietly replaces a lost wage, month after month, for as long as someone can’t work. One claimant, a GP who’s been unable to work since 2021, has received €300,000 so far. That isn’t a windfall. It’s a lifeline, paid in instalments.
All told, Royal London Ireland paid €12.1 million in “living benefits” last year, money that reached people while they were still here to use it.
Support that goes beyond money
A claim isn’t only a financial event. It’s an emotional one too. Every Royal London Ireland claim is handled by a single dedicated assessor, so nobody has to keep retelling their story, and the focus is on paying valid claims quickly with minimal paperwork.
There’s also Helping Hand, free from the first day of a policy and not just at claim time. Through their partner RedArc, customers and their families can access a dedicated nurse for emotional and practical support, along with services like physiotherapy and counselling.
Looking ahead
There’s a bigger picture too. Since 2024 Royal London Ireland has partnered with Breakthrough Cancer Research, donating over €440,000 towards research into the cancers with the poorest survival outcomes. In 2026 that funding will go to new research into glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive brain cancers, where treatment has barely moved in two decades.
So, what’s the takeaway?
Whether you already hold a policy or you’ve only ever half-meant to look into one, the message from 2025 is a plain one. Protection isn’t an abstract “what if” gathering dust in a drawer. It’s something thousands of real people leaned on in 2025, a lot of them younger than you’d expect, facing things none of them saw coming.
The best time to sort it out is always before you need it. If you’re not sure your cover still fits the life you are actually living, that’s not a failing. It’s just worth a conversation, and it’s one we’re glad to have.
