Some 70,000 Irish policyholders with the Scottish life assurer Standard Life will be asked to vote in about three months on the issue of demutualisation.

While the Standard Life board is set against changing its status and becoming a publicly quoted company with shareholders instead of members, it has been forced to put the issue to a vote by Australian fund manager Fred Woollard.

The company has 2.3 million members. For demutualisation to go ahead some 75 per cent of those who vote must approve the move.

Standard Life has 150,000 Irish policies which boils down to about 70,000 Irish people who could be in line for pay-outs under a demutualisation. Mr Woollard estimates that policyholders would get £5,000 (€8,094) to £6,000 sterling each. The company disputes his figures though it has not put forward any of its own. But in the event of demutualisation, Standard Life is expected to set terms that ensure its longer term policyholders fare best.

Since the announcement in late 1997 that Canada Life was to demutualise there have been regular flurries of speculation about the other mutual insurers. This lead to the "carpetbagger" problem. Carpetbaggers are people who put money into a policy just to qualify for the payout on possible demnutualisation.

To deal with this, Standard Life raised its minimum monthly premium payment for new policies from £10 to £50 in April 1998. Since February its has asked all new policyholders to sign a declaration stating that if the compnay demutualised within three years they would foresake rights to any payouts.