Sales at Standard Life Ireland rose 35 per cent last year to €64.5 million with a new range of self-directed pensions and single-premium investment products credited for the improvement. Laura Slatteryreports.

The performance of the company, which demutualised and floated on the London Stock Exchange last year, is expected to be ahead of the average performance in the life and pensions market in 2006, which was estimated to have enjoyed growth of around 20 per cent.

Standard Life Ireland's director of sales and marketing, Nigel Dunne, said that its "self-invest" Synergy pension product, which allows people to buy property or invest in individual stocks using their pension fund, had proved very popular. Sales of personal pensions were up 60 per cent, while executive pension sales rose 25 per cent.

Sales of approved retirement funds (Arfs) grew 95 per cent to €67 million.

Standard Life's multi-manager funds and its property fund helped to boost sales of single-premium investments by 64 per cent to €140 million.

The sales are measured on an annual premium equivalent (APE) basis, which comprises the value of new regular premium sales plus 10 per cent of the value of single premium business.

Mr Dunne said that Standard Life Ireland had started to turn around its business in 2005 and had made significant progress last year. The company expects that Irish sales will build momentum in 2007, when the new products will have recorded a full year of sales.

In the UK, the company reported an "above trend" level of lapses in both life and pensions policies, as customers of the former mutual cashed them in following the July initial public offering and changes to UK pensions legislation.

Worldwide, the Edinburgh-headquartered company posted a 39 per cent increase in sales on an APE basis to £1.7 billion (€2.6 billion).