IL&P's own broker, Davy Stockbrokers, has pencilled in 18% growth for last year, which would push annual premium equivalent (APE), the industry's yardstick for measuring new business, to 340m. But Bank of Ireland Life has beaten this result by a whisker, revealing in January that APE reached 349.3m in 2005 on the back of 27% growth. After breathing down Went's neck for so long, it looks like Bank of Ireland Life has finally nudged ahead, a remarkable achievement for a business that has been around for little more than a decade.

No matter who claims the top spot, there is no doubt the big boys are grabbing ever more of the 1.4bn life insurance sector. IL&P and Bank of Ireland have half the market between them. Add in Hibernian Life & Pensions, which recently acquired AIB's Ark Life subsidiary, and the top three players pocket 2 out of every 3 spent on life cover, investments and pensions.

Their key weapon is distribution, reaching customers through bank branches, independent brokers and armies of salesmen who comb the country spreading scare stories about the terrible fate awaiting anyone who doesn't have enough life cover or fails to plan for retirement.

The big puzzle is why nobody is threatening their dominance, especially when the industry offers rich rewards as the population ages, guaranteeing a readymade market for savings and pensions for years to come.

Financial institutions from abroad are queuing up to get into banking, with Royal Bank of Scotland, Halifax Bank of Scotland, Danske Bank and, most recently, Belgian-Dutch group Fortis, prepared to spend a small fortune to set up shop in Ireland.

But traffic in the insurance sector is headed in the opposite direction. Scottish Provident has abandoned Ireland altogether, and while firms such as Eagle Star, Friends First, Canada Life and Standard Life insist they are here for the long haul, they are increasingly being pushed to the sidelines by the big three.

The only newcomers to appear so far seem resigned to nibbling at the edges. Sean Quinn's phone-based Quinn Life has found few takers for its cheap and cheerful investment funds, while newcomer RaboDirect, owned by ACC Bank's Dutch parent, is limiting itself to a narrow base of people prepared to invest their cash over the internet.

"It's unusual that what looks like an attractive market in volume terms has failed to attract any big European players of note, " says Scott Rankin, analyst at Davy Stockbrokers.

"They're here on the general insurance side, with companies such as Axa and Allianz, but not on the life side."

It seems inevitable that one of the big global players will eventually sit up and take notice. When they do, expect that IL&P will be at the top of their calling cards. Went has always said he is willing to talk to anybody prepared to offer a realistic price, a position that ensures the company's share price is padded with a generous takeover premium.

The bottom line is that, while IL&P would deliver an immediate 25% market, it would not come cheap. This is why others seem prepared to go it alone.

Mark Duffy, the ebullient boss of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), signalled last week that he is preparing to break into Irish insurance as soon as the branch network he is carving from the ESB's old retail outlets is up and running.

Duffy's colleagues at HBOS are the top sellers of investment products in the UK. By tapping into their expertise, especially their reputation for transparency in a business where products seem designed to confuse, he promises to break the stranglehold of IL&P, Bank of Ireland and Hibernian/AIB.

"I've an intense dislike for markets where there's a concentration of business in a few hands, " Duffy says. "I see no reason why we wouldn't examine [life insurance], particularly given our parent's strength in the UK."

In the meantime, Duffy must make do with selling the enemy's products in his branches, where Irish Life is the main underwriter of the life cover Bank of Scotland offers its mortgage customers.

Distribution will be the incumbents' key weapon in protecting their turf. By covering all bases . . . branches, brokers and salaried salesmen . . .

companies such as Irish Life can reach customers in numbers that smaller rivals never will. After all, insurance is sold, not bought, so the more people you've got touting your wares, the better your chances.

Other barriers to entry are the red tape and complex tax rules that govern the sale of many insurance products, especially pensions. This means that, despite attempts by Brussels to create a single EU insurance market, it can be hugely expensive to tweak a winning product to suit the market next door.

Gareth McQuillan, director of marketing and product development at Hibernian, argues that while it seems to be relatively straightforward for banks such as Danske Bank to replicate their business models across borders, there are many more differences in insurance. "Even markets that appear similar, such as Ireland and the UK, have completely different tax and regulatory environments."

The result is that global insurance giants can decide small markets such as Ireland are not worth the effort, no matter how promising they seem. This was undoubtedly the thinking behind Axa's decision in 1997 to offload its successful New Ireland subsidiary to Bank of Ireland.

"For these companies, Ireland will always be a small spec on a big map, " McQuillan says. "They've got to ask themselves if Ireland deserves the management attention for the profits it delivers."

As long as the big three keep growing their market share, and their bottom lines, the answer is likely to be yes.