AIB’s life assurance and pensions joint venture with Canada’s Great West LifeCo saw its losses narrow by 30 per cent to €9 million in 2025, its second full year in operation, as customer premiums and assets under management continued to grow.
Total revenues grew by almost 12 per cent to €40.3 million, driven by fee income, according to accounts for Soal Assurance, which trades as AIB, that were filed recently with the Companies Registration Office. AIB has set its sights on the joint venture reaching break-even during 2027.
Gross written premiums grew by 16 per cent to €533.5 million, while annual premium equivalent (Ape) – a more widely followed gauge of new business that includes regular annual premiums and 10 per cent of large single premiums – rose nearly 20 per cent to €84.1 million.
Assets under management for clients increased about 19 per cent to €2.9 billion. However, AIB said in an investor presentation last month that these assets had jumped to €3.4 billion by the end of June, while its number of policyholders stood at 62,200.
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Saol Assurance has racked up €83.7 million in losses since it was incorporated in 2021, as set-up costs and operating expenses in its initial years in business outstripped income. It started writing business in May 2023.
An AIB spokesman said that the venture “has performed ahead of its medium-term business plan in each financial year since it launched in 2023 and the contraction in net loss will continue through 2026”.
Next year will see further expansion of its product offering through the AIB mobile app, with scope for growth in the savings and investment space, he added.
AIB, under chief executive Colin Hunt, decided in late 2020 to get back into the life and pensions business, eight years after it put its former Ark Life unit into wind-down at the height of the financial crisis and became a tied agent for products from Irish Life, which has been owned by Great West LifeCo since 2013.
AIB had been receiving about €20 million in commissions per year from its tied-agent arrangement with Irish Life before AIB Life was set up. The bank received €23.1 million of distribution commissions from Saol Assurance last year. AIB will also be entitled to half the company’s future profits.
“Life and pensions companies are scale businesses and require relatively large numbers of policyholders and assets under management to generate significant returns,” said Diarmaid Sheridan, an analyst with Davy.
The joint venture, along with AIB’s 2021 acquisition of Goodbody Stockbrokers – which had €16 billion in assets under management at the end of June – is designed to tap into the opportunities presented by an ageing population. Hunt has identified this demographic shift as one of three “huge megatrends”, alongside artificial intelligence and electrification, that he expects to reshape the banking sector over the long term.
Minister for Finance Simon Harris is planning to set up a new State-sponsored savings scheme to encourage households to invest in higher-yielding assets. The scheme, details of which are expected to be announced on budget day next month, is in line with a broader push by the European Commission for EU member states to adopt tax-friendly models to encourage people to invest.
Saol Assurance welcomed the EU savings and investment drive in its financial statement. “Our medium-term perspective on the market is that the opportunity to address unmet customer needs in Ireland remains substantial, with a broadly positive economic and demographic backdrop that supports an ambitious business outlook,” it said.
