Income from bank holding companies’ sales of annuities rose 12.4%, to $734.5 million, in the first quarter of this year, setting a quarterly record.

The results are favorable both in terms of the same period last year, when $653.3 million in income was booked from annuity sales, and from the fourth quarter of last year, with $655.2 million in income. The quarterly increase was 12.1%, according to the Michael White-American Bankers Insurance Association Bank Annuity Fee Income Report, which pulls data from all 7,447 commercial and FDIC-supervised banks and 940 large top-tier bank holding companies.

Of the 940 BHCs, 381 or 40.5% participated in annuity sales activities during first quarter of this year. Their $734.5 million in annuity commissions and fees constituted 15.7% of their total mutual fund and annuity income of $4.67 billion. It also represented 19.5% of total BHC insurance sales volume (the sum of annuity and insurance brokerage income) of $3.76 billion.

Of the 7,447 banks, 886 or 11.9% participated in first-quarter annuity sales activities. Those participating banks earned $255.7 million in annuity commissions or 34.8% of the banking industry’s total annuity fee income. However, bank annuity production was down 2.6% from $263.5 million in first quarter of last year, according to the report.