Sun Life and Provincial Holdings has sold Guardian Life Ireland to Royal Liver Assurance for £83.8m ...
Sun Life and Provincial Holdings has sold Guardian Life Ireland to Royal Liver Assurance for £83.8m after failing to expand its 1.5% share of the market.
SLPH, the UK subsidiary of the AXA Group, said it aims for a top three spot in each of its market sectors.
An SLPH spokesperson said: "It is going to take about three months for this deal to go through. The reason we wanted to sell came down to this being a small operation, comprising just 1.5% of the Irish market.
"SLPH likes to be a dominant force in every market it operates in and that would have required us pumping more investment into Ireland, which is not something we wanted to do."
Royal Liver Assurance said the plan will help it develop its business in Ireland as well as strengthen its base of funds under management.
Guardian Life Ireland is made up of the Caledonian Insurance Company and GRE Life Ireland Limited. Caledonian distributes through IFAs while Royal Liver markets directly to the public.
Kathryn Harwood, head of corporate planning at Royal Liver, said: "The plan is to run Guardian Life Ireland as a subsidiary alongside Royal Liver.
"As to rebranding, we have not made any decisions that far ahead. Obviously it is an option, but it is too early to be definitive about what we intend to do. But we would like to retain the Caledonian name in some form."
Royal Liver already manages 3.5 million policies with funds under management in excess of £2bn.
