Hidden Giant: High-Net-Worth Life Insurance Set to Skyrocket

A new market study has finally put a price tag on the cross-border life-insurance channel for high-net-worth clients, flashing double-digit growth and a five-year runway – yet the real shock lies in how little of the market advisers are tapping today.

Commissioned by Utmost Group and conducted by NMG Consulting, the 2024 Wealth Management Market Study shows international life-insurance new-business sales jumped 25 percent in 2024 to 41 billion pounds, fuelled by the UK’s post-Budget boom and a resurgence in European wealth-planning cases.

The report projects annual sales will scale to 67 billion pounds by 2030, generating an extra 90 billion pounds of premium inflows between 2025 and 2030.

Fresh Assets

Despite that trajectory, insurance-based solutions still account for only 2 percent – about 543 billion pounds—of the 28 trillion pounds investible-asset pool controlled by the global HNW cohort.

Moving penetration up just one percentage point to 3 percent would release more than 240 billion pounds in fresh assets and push the market past 800 billion pounds, a 50 percent leap without any macro tailwind.

What’s Powering the Tailwinds?

  • Demographics – Capgemini now counts 72 trillion pounds in HNW wealth, expanding fastest in Asia and the Gulf.
  • Mobility – clients increasingly live and retire across borders, valuing portable, tax-compliant wrappers.
  • Intergenerational transfer – roughly $6 trillion a year is shifting to heirs, spurring demand for succession planning.

Competitive Landscape

The market is highly concentrated: the top five providers capture about 45 percent of new business, with Utmost leading on roughly 15 percent after acquiring Lombard International.

Outside that circle, insurers are regional, and advisers remain the crucial distribution gatekeepers.

The Catch

Supply – not demand – may be the choke-point. The study flags «placement capacity,» the number of advisers licensed and technically equipped to structure these contracts, as the main bottleneck.

The next 240 billion pounds will hinge less on product tweaks than on whether private-bank desks and family offices can scale expertise fast enough.

Action Points For Advisers

  1. Audit client books for cross-border residency or succession triggers that justify a wrapper.
  2. Invest in technical training or partner with specialist brokers to unlock placement capacity.
  3. Re-position life wrappers as core holdings, not exotic add-ons, to capture the looming wealth-transfer wave.

Bottom Line

International life insurance may still sit in the alternatives drawer of many product menus, but the data now confirms it is already a 41 billion-a-year channel with a clear sight to 67 billion pounds.

Advisers who embrace it early could ride one of the fastest-growing flows in wealth management – before everyone else catches on.