Irish Life Group has paid €468 million in dividends to its overseas parent in the past 18 months, bringing total payments since it was bought from the State during the financial crisis to €1.73 billion.
The payouts, which include €144 million handed over in March, eclipse the €1.3 billion that Canada’s Great-West Lifeco paid for the Republic’s largest life and pensions group in 2013 when it bought the business from the State.
Irish Life Group, the holding company at the top of the group, led by chief executive Declan Bolger, received €314.8 million of dividends last year from its main subsidiary, Irish Life Assurance, according to its latest annual financial statement, filed in recent days with the Companies Registration Office (CRO).
Separate accounts for the Irish Life Assurance unit, which has a 34 per cent share of the State’s corporate and retail life assurance market, show its net profit soared to €239 million last year from €81 million in 2022. That was driven by proceeds from a sale of a tranche of business to AIB Life, a new life and pensions joint venture set up by AIB and another arm of Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life Ireland Holdings Ltd, last year.
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AIB and KBC Bank Ireland, the Belgian-owned lender that is exiting the Irish market, each stopped acting as tied agents of Irish Life Assurance for life and pensions products during 2023.
Irish Life Group also received €22 million of dividends from Irish Life Health, the third-largest private health coverage provider, with more than a 20 per cent market share. That unit’s net profit dipped to €24.1 million last year from €33.4 million in 2022.
The government bought Irish Life in 2011 from PTSB, then known as Irish Life & Permanent, for €1.3 billion in order to limit the taxpayer bailout bill for the mortgage-focused lender. It subsequently sold the business in 2013 for the same price to Great-West Lifeco.
PTSB remains 57 per cent owned by the Government.
Irish Life Group’s net profit jumped 80 per cent last year to €481 million, with income from subsidiary dividends boosted by an almost €128 million gain from a corporate restructuring. That saw a number of its subsidiaries, including Unio and Vestone, being transferred to another part of Great West Lifeco, Canada Life (UK) Group Ltd, at fair market value.
Unio is a wealth company set up by Irish Life last year to oversee an initial €14 billion of assets on behalf of personal and corporate clients. Vestone is a holding company behind public sector-focused insurance broker Cornmarket.
The dividend payments by Irish Life Group to its parent over the past decade have occurred against the backdrop of Great-West Lifeco also backing the Irish unit as it invested significantly in growing its customer base by 50 per cent – helped by acquisitions.
The Unio business was the result of a series of Irish Life acquisitions over the past six years in financial advice companies, including Invesco, Acumen & Trust and APT. Unio – whose clients include entrepreneurs, SME companies, professional services firms, and executives in multinational and indigenous firms who generally have more than €1 million of investable assets – aims to grow its assets under advice to €20 billion by 2027.
In 2021, the group paid €230 million for Ark Life, the former AIB life insurance arm that stopped taking new business in 2012 and where Irish Life had been the administrator of policies and manager of investments. The seller was ReAssure Limited, a UK company that specialises in managing closed books.
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