Bright Grey and Scottish Provident have revealed that their life, critical illness and income protection product sales were up by a quarter in the run up to the Gender Directive.

The change came into effect on 21 December 2012.

The number of Bright Grey and Scottish Provident policies that started in December 2012 was up by 27% and 25% respectively, compared to the same time in 2011. The number of life policies rose by 19% for Bright Grey and 58 % for Scottish Provident.

The number of women buying life policies also increased with Scottish Provident seeing an increase of 95% year on year, compared to a 52% rise for Bright Grey.

Thursday 20 December saw the greatest number of applications.

Roger Edwards, managing director of Bright Grey and Scottish Provident, said: “Since the terms of the new EU gender directive were announced, we called on people to take action and protect their financial futures by purchasing products ahead of the deadline while prices remained at low levels.

“It appears this message got through as significantly more applications were received ahead of the December 21st cut off.”