SYS Financial, the fast-growing financial broking group founded by former Tipperary hurling star Tony Delaney, is in talks with financial investors as it seeks to raise additional capital to play a major role in deal-making across the sector.
The 10-year-old business, which provides financial services to employers, private wealth clients and individuals, is being advised on the matter by corporate finance executive Conor Moran of Pointer Brook.
Mr Delaney confirmed the process to The Irish Times, saying it was “at an advanced stage”.
A series of deals over the past 12 months leaves SYS on track to increase its assets under advisement (AuA) from €400 million to about €1.1 billion by the end of the year, he said.
READ MORE
Further deals in the pipeline are set to leave it with €1.6 billion of AuA by the middle of 2026.
“We’re getting to the stage where the opportunities and growth potential of SYS is beyond what we can fund from our own resources,” said Mr Delaney, who is chief executive and controlling shareholder of the group with his wife.
“We are looking for financial investment to back our team as we grow to the next level. The new investors will have to buy into our culture and not interfere with how the business is run on a day-to-day basis.”
Dublin Bus CEO on recruitment challenges, going electric, and stamping out anti-social behaviour
While the general insurance broking sector has been the subject of a flurry of mergers and acquisitions over the past decade, consolidation in the financial advisory space is less advanced.
The ultimate backers of the acquirers in both sectors are often private equity firms, even if recurring fees, beloved by such investors, are less of a feature in the financial advisory industry than in insurance broking.
Deal-making is accelerating against the backdrop of rising regulatory, compliance and technology costs – and as owners of firms, built over decades, navigate issues over succession planning.
SYS has been unusual among the consolidators in recent years in not having been backed – so far at least – by private equity.
[ Sys Group sets sights on €1bn in client assets with two additionsOpens in new window ]
Last week, UK financial planning firm Fairstone Group sealed its 12th strategic tie-up in Ireland in three years, bringing AuA on behalf of clients in the State to €2.5 billion.
The group entered the market in late 2022 with a deal to buy Dublin-based financial planning firm, PAX Financial, which was behind the Askpaul.ie mortgages-to-pensions advisory brand and had about €200 million under advice at the time, for an undisclosed sum. Fairstone is backed by US private equity firm TA Associates.
Other aggregators in the sector in recent times have been Howden Ireland, which counts investment firms General Atlantic and Hg Capital and Canadian investment group CDPQ as big shareholders, and Gallivan Financial.
The latter is owned by the Gallivan family in Killarney, Co Kerry, who previously sold Gallivan Murphy Insurance Brokers (GMIB) to US-based Assured Partners in 2022.
SYS was founded in 2015 by Mr Delaney (54), who spent more than two decades with New Ireland, initially as a financial adviser, before a long period as a regional sales manager.
Outside the financial world, he was on the winning team in 11 county and three Munster hurling championships with Toomevara GAA club in Co Tipperary.
