Last year was a good time to be a life assurance or pension provider, judging by the figures in the Irish Insurance Federation's recently published Factfile.

Everybody, it seems, did more business, with gross premium income up more than 40 per cent to over £4.7 billion. The general insurers also did pretty well - at least in terms of premium income which was up almost 30 per cent on £1.8 billion.

But behind those total market figures are some quite contrasting performances in terms of market share gained or lost. On the life side of the industry, the figures show that 1999 was a bumper year for Irish Life, with its market share up from 25.4 per cent to 28.2 per cent.

That improvement is partly down to the settlement of the lengthy strike in 1998 with its field staff, but even Irish Life's competitors concede that its Scope investment funds and consensus pension funds generated a lot of new business. The recently-formed CGU/ Hibernian/Norwich Union also did well last year when its combined market share was 13.2 per cent - up from 10.8 per cent.

Not such good news from the two Scots assurers, with Standard Life down from 7.3 to 4.2 per cent and Scottish Provident down from 6 to 3 per cent. The two big bancassurers - AIB's Ark and Bank of Ireland's Lifetime/New Ireland - maintained their market share at 10 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.