Warehouse InstantLife is underwritten by the country’s largest life insurer Sovereign.

AMP Financial Services New Zealand has reported a 2% increase in operating earnings to $68 million and a 2% rise in underlying profit to $77 million in the year ended December 2009.

The company credited the improvement to a reduction in costs as well as an increase in life insurance sales and income.

An 11% reduction in controllable costs helped to drive a 3.5% reduction in cost to income ratio to 37.9%.

Total life insurance sales increased by 5% to $31 million and there was a 9% increase in life insurance annual premium income.

Life insurance premiums payable rose 7.9% to $1.55 billion for the year ended March 31, with new sales outstripping a spike in people cutting existing policies.

The 7.9% annual growth figure is slightly down from a 9.4% increase recorded in the year to December 31, 2008.

Investment Savings and Insurance Association (ISI) chief executive Vance Arkinstall says it’s not unexpected that there has been a spike of existing policies lapsing in the past three quarters.

Life insurers are benefiting from the financial crisis, with a 9.5% increase in total premiums over the past year to September 30.

Total premiums for in force life insurance policies increased to $1.512 billion compared with $1.381 billion over that time, statistics from the Investment Savings & Insurance Association show.

ISI chairman Vance Arkinstall said that in difficult times people looked for the “safety, security and the peace of mind that life insurance provides.”