Legal and General has seen a "better than expected" 50% fall in female sales after going gender neutral.
The drop from a 50% proportion of female policy sales to 25% follows an overall 20% surge in protection sales, male and female, prior to the re-price.
Stuart Welch, actuarial director for individual protection at L&G, said: "It is extremely difficult to say exactly what impact gender neutralisation has had on sales but we did see a surge of about 20%."
Welch added that despite going gender-neutral earlier than its competitors it has always been part of the strategy and was "fairly pleased" with business volumes.
"We were worried about gender neutral pricing in that we half expected not to sell any female policies after going gender neutral," he said.
"But female policies have held up reasonably well even if they have dropped off."
Welch expected "gender-neutral norm" to settle in once the whole industry had re-priced and gone through some pricing volatility in the first quarter of 2013.
L&G moved to gender-neutral pricing on 21 November.
