Irish Life spins out units overseeing €14bn of assets into new wealth company

Irish Life has spun out the Invesco, Acumen & Trust and APT financial advice companies acquired in recent years into a separate wealth management business called Unio, which will oversee an initial €14 billion of assets on behalf of personal and corporate clients.

Unio, which remains part of Irish Life Group, aims to grow the level of assets under advice to €20 billion by 2027, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The profile of Unio’s current clients represent corporate Ireland – entrepreneurs, business owners, SME companies, professional services, and executives in multinational and indigenous firms who generally have more than €1 million of investible assets. However, the company is also targeting those “who are on a journey to accumulating wealth”.

“Given the evolution of wealth in Ireland over the past number of decades, and that Ireland only started to materially grow in the late 1990s, there is a historic, generational transfer of wealth under way,” said Micheál Gunning, head of private clients at Unio, who previously held the same role at Invesco. “Combine this with the fact that Ireland, as Europe’s fastest growing economy, has the same average wealth per adult as France and Germany, tens of thousands of people require advice and support to optimally manage their wealth.”

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The average wealth of Irish adults stood at $251,340 (€229,858) at the end of 2021, according to figures in Credit Suisse’s latest global annual wealth report.

“Now is the right and opportune time to establish a wealth management and advisory business of significant scale to guide and coach investors in Ireland on wealth preservation and growth in an open, bespoke manner,” said Mr Gunning. “Essentially we are seeking to demystify wealth and investment by educating on the drivers of wealth, markets and investments in a long-term context.”

Invesco, Acumen & Trust and APT are among a number of businesses acquired by Irish Life in the past five years as the group seeks to compete with stockbrokers Davy and Goodbody for a slice of the Republic’s growing wealth management sector.

About 30 per cent of the €14 billion of assets under advice at Unio are invested in Irish Life products.

Michael O’Sullivan, a Unio board director and strategic adviser on investment solutions, who previously served as chief investment officer of international wealth management at Credit Suisse, said the company has been set up with “a new best-in-class investment process and fund selection process, with an independent investment committee that ensures that the appropriate products are picked.

Irish Life, led by chief executive Declan Bolger, was bought by Canada’s Great-West Lifeco from the Government a decade ago for €1.3 billion as the State sought to recover some of the €4 billion bailout of the group’s former sister company Permanent TSB.