Life cover for women could rise by up to 30% after the announcement of a new tax structure for protection products and other recent industry developments, according to RGA.
The reinsurer believes plans unveiled in the budget to remove protection business from the ‘I minus E' tax regime will lead to premium increases.
However, Friends Provident felt the move would result in a more level playing field for new entrants to the market.
David Gulland, managing director of RGA explained the range of factors that he felt could drive life cover premiums up.
"We've seen the recent European Court of Justice ruling on gender, and now the industry also needs to adapt to changes in the tax regime, such as I-E, which take effect from the end of next year," he said.
"While the full implications of these and other changes, such as solvency II are yet to be fully understood and will vary by individual company, combined they could typically push rates up for some companies by 30% for females buying life cover.
"The need for protection is still huge and families should consider the loss of a breadwinner or housemaker when considering the other aspects of the budget on their finances," he added.
However, Friends Provident gave the tax reclassification its full support, arguing that the previous one had become restrictive and undermined new entrants.
The provider said it believed this tax structure was increasingly placing an unhelpful restriction on companies looking to compete in the protection market.
"Under the 'I minus E' structure, companies with a considerable amount of savings business could offset the expenses of writing protection business against the income of the savings business," it explained.
"As this could then be passed on to the customer through pricing, we believe this tax treatment was unintentionally restricting the protection market to those with significant savings books.
"By reclassifying protection business, the government has created a level playing field for existing and new protection providers to compete in the market-place and we believe this is in the best interests of consumers."
Trevor Matthews, chief executive officer of Friends Provident, added: "This is good for consumers and positive for the protection industry. It will help to promote a more sustainable and stable competitive marketplace and preserve the value of business already written. I am delighted that the government has taken this positive step."
The Treasury's budget document said: "The government will introduce legislation to remove protection business from the income minus expenses life tax system designed to tax investment type business and align it with the tax treatment of other trading entities."
It is set to be introduced on January 1 2013.
