Royal London's drawdown sales soar 67% in Q3

In particular, drawdown sales increased by 67% to £966m. Group pension sales rose 11% to £1.9 billion while individual pensions increased 52% to £1.4 billion.

Protection Intermediary new business volumes were up 51% (£362m). In its results, Royal London said that its protection arm continues to build momentum as it moves towards bringing Bright Grey and Scottish Provident together under a single Royal London brand.

The firm's Ascentric wrap platform saw gross sales of £1.9bn - a 19% improvement on the previous year.

Phil Loney, Group Chief Executive of Royal London, said:

“This is another strong set of results with all life and pensions businesses putting in excellent new business performance. Sales from our popular life assurance and pension range have more than doubled over the last four years and total group assets under management are up 120% over the same period.

"We have now come through the initial period of pension freedoms and we have seen new trends emerging in the market. Clearly a lot more advisers are recommending income drawdown for their clients and we have seen advisers choosing to transfer their clients into our flexible personal pension arrangement in anticipation of exercising freedoms at some point in the future.

"Our workplace pension offering remains one of the most popular in the market. As the focus now moves to smaller employers we remain committed to supporting an even larger number of employers and their IFAs to provide high quality workplace pension solutions whilst recognizing the lower workplace pensions PVNBP that will result over the next 2 years from this smaller scheme profile."