According to Dinani A and others (March 2000) ?A Critical Review?, in the year 1998, almost two thirds of critical illness sales were mortgage related. It can also be said that around 50 percent of in force critical illness policies were riders to mortgage insurance. There was a big difference in critical illness sales amount according to how companies sold the product. This varied between successfully marketing the product and simply adding it to complete a wide range of products.

As per Munich Re 2001, the market share for the top 10 providers in critical illness sales volume had fallen as the market expanded. This had not stopped these top 10 providers to possess 60 percent of the overall market as they had changed marketing strategies and product design during the 1990's.

Moreover, the initial success for critical illness cover came with Direct Sales Forces (DSF) in the late 1980's. Although new competitors stepped inside the insurance market DSF still held around 85 percent of market share in the year 1991. The remaining 15 percent was held by the Independent Financial Advisors (IFA) market. According to Dinani A and others (March 2000) ?A Critical Review?, there was competition between DSF and IFA. Since the year 1991 to 1998, DSF had been the better offices to win. In the year 1993 DSF held about 90 percent of market shares while IFA held roughly 10 percent. But IFA did not stop and continued to strive which resulted in a considerable increase in shareholding by the year 1998. For both IFA and DSF, critical illness sales have been the main target than any other product.

Furthermore, during the year 1991 bancassurers, another office, held a minimum percentage share in the critical illness insurance market. This share increased to 35 percent in the year 1998. Thus, the critical illness market was then split among three groups, DFA, IFA and Bancassurer. Over the year 1998, it was the Bancassurance sector that grew rapidly in the critical illness market. According to Robojohns N 2000, in 1997 bancassurers had about 176 individual critical illness policies sold as compared to 238

in 1998. This therefore represented a 35 percent growth. On the other hand DFA experienced a downfall for individual critical illness policies sold. The result was 259 in 1997 and 218 in 1998 which showed a -16 percent collapse. As for IFA there was a 16 percent raise in the number of critical illness policies sold which was best described as 188 policies sold in 1997 as compared to 218 policies sold in 1998.

As per Robojohns N 2000, Bancassurers applied much effort on term insurance with critical illness. As for DFA and IFA it was endowment with critical illness insurance that brought success. Bancassurers accounted for around 60 percent of the total accelerated term insurance critical illness market. But DFA remained most dominant concerning whole life critical illness policies with about 60 percent of that whole market share. In the year 1998 when Bancassurers held 35 percent of the critical illness market, DSF held 32 percent and IFA held also 32 percent. It meant that at that time, the game had started to become a close one.