Healthy sales across all product lines helped Singapore's life insurance sector to strong growth in the first half of this year.

For the first six months of the year, the Life Insurance Association (LIA) said the weighted new business premiums came in at $1.298 billion, an increase of 24 per cent compared to the same period a year ago.

Sales of regular premium products for the six months to June 30 rose by 31 per cent on-year to $983.8 million.

As for sales of single premium products, they went up by 7 per cent in the same period to $314.2 million.

New health insurance premiums also shot up in the first half to $191 million, more than double the $84 million seen in the same period last year.

LIA said the hike in new health insurance premiums was due to participating members enhancing their plans to provide more comprehensive benefits for policyholders.

This was done in response to better coverage provided by the national MediShield scheme which took effect from March 1 this year. As a result, the premiums of such plans have been revised upwards.

Ms Annette King, LIA president, said the industry had a challenging start to the year, though things have been better since the second quarter.

"This reflects an improved economic outlook which we hope will continue into the next two quarters," she said.