24
company pRoFILE IRIsh LIFE IntERnatIonaL
The frontier spirit
Launched to take advantage of the Third Life Directive, Irish Life International is one of the
few success stories that has achieved true cross-border market penetration
Bryan Low, managing director,
Acuity Consultants
Fact FILE
Company name and parent
group: Irish Life
& Permanent Plc
Head office: Irish Life
International, Irish Life Centre,
Lower Abbey St, Dublin 1,
Ireland
No of employees: 78
Core markets: Italy, Belgium,
Finland, Sweden, Spain, UK,
France, the Netherlands and
Cyprus
Branches/rep offices:
None – FOS basis only
Key products:
Portfolio Bond, Personalised
Portfolio Bond, International
Investors Bond
Website:
www.irishlifeinternational.com
It could be said that Irish
Life International’s (ILI)
diverse market coverage is
very much what the architects
of the Third Life
Directive and Ireland’s
International Financial
Services Centre (IFSC) had
in mind over 20 years
ago. The company is one
of only a small number of
success stories in the true
cross-border freedom of
services market.
l Unique offering
Launched in 1994 to take
advantage of the newly
implemented Third Life
Directive, ILI has strived to
carve out a niche in a
number of European markets
through hard work
and determination in the
face of numerous regulatory
obstacles.
Currently operating in
nine European markets, it
has a small but growing
investor base of local
nationals and expatriates.
The company plans to
deepen its penetration of
its current markets as well
as entering new markets
where it feels it can offer a
unique proposition.
In 2008, ILI’s single
premium new business
volumes totalled €305m,
down 23% on the €394m
achieved in 2007.
ILI’s parent company,
Irish Life, was established
with state assistance in
1939 by the amalgamation
of a number of insurance
companies affected by the
Great Depression, and later
joined by a number of Irish
operations of British insurers,
the largest of which
was Prudential, whose
door-to-door sales
approach became the business
model for the newly
amalgamated group. Irish
Life was a private, part
state-owned, company
until it was finally floated
on the Irish and London
Stock Exchanges as Irish
Life plc in July 1991.
Following this key development,
Irish Life launched
ILI as a wholly-owned subsidiary
to market life insurance
products on a crossborder
basis to a range of
international investors
across the EU and beyond.
Established in the IFSC
under the preferential corporate
tax regime at that
time, ILI was one of the
earliest Dublin-based crossborder
life offices and soon
started selling business in a
wide range of markets in
the EU and further afield in
places as diverse as Israel
and South Africa.
l European focus
In 1999, Irish Life merged
with Irish Permanent, the
largest building society in
Ireland, to create the Irish
Life & Permanent Group,
which is still the largest life
assurance company in
Ireland and market leader
in the provision of life,
pension and investment
products. Despite an overriding
strategy to focus on
the Irish personal financial
market, the newly formed
group retained ILI as a
means of achieving growth
outside its core home
market but refocused its
strategy back onto
European markets.
l Key markets
Subsequently the group
has shed a number of its
international interests
including its UK domestic
market subsidiary, a market
now covered by ILI on a
cross-border freedom of
services basis, while retaining
ILI to serve the needs
of international investors
from an Irish base.
Today ILI serves nine
European markets on a
freedom of services basis
from its Dublin base,
although it is no longer
physically located in the
IFSC, moving to a new
Dublin office following the
harmonisation of the Irish
international and domestic
life insurance tax regimes.
The firm’s key markets
are currently Belgium,
’04-’08 sales growth by region
Italy, Finland, Spain,
Sweden and the UK, with
recently added markets
being Cyprus, France and
the Netherlands.
Having developed its
own service infrastructure,
ILI has been able to achieve
a cost-effective model of
multiple market penetration
in Europe, utilising the
freedom of services and
independent distributor
business model that has
yet to be fully accepted in
all EU markets.
l Low overheads
While ILI has not been able
to achieve significant penetration
of all of these
markets, the lower overheads
that ILI enjoys have
ensured that sales have
been profitable. Business
volumes have grown year
on year in most markets
and, compared with many
competitor companies that
have tried and largely failed
in the pan-EU life market,
ILI has been more success-
INTERNATIONAL ADVISER [www.international-adviser.com] mAy 2009
100
80
60
40
%
20
0
-20
-40
'04 '05
Source: Irish Life International
'06
'07
UK
Europe
'08
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