AIB life and pensions venture with Canada Life secures regulatory nod

The Central Bank has signalled to AIB and Canada Life Irish Holding Company that their planned life and pensions joint venture is on track to secure regulator approval.

Canada Life’s parent, Winnipeg-based Great-West Lifeco, said in its full-year financial results statement this week that the regulator had granted the venture “authorisation in principle” in December.

It is understood that the partners, who agreed to set up a joint venture in 2021 and originally envisaged a launch late last year, expect to start operations in the coming months, subject to a final regulatory go-ahead. AIB has been a tied agent for life and pensions products of Irish Life, also a unit of Great-West Lifeco, for more than a decade.

Ark Life, once owned by AIB, has been in run-down since 2012, but still manages a range of pensions, savings and protection policies for its customers in the Irish market.

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Canada Life Irish Holding Company’s sister company, Irish Life, bought Ark Life from London-based Phoenix Group for €230 million in cash in November 2021. Ark Life changed its legal name late last year to Irish Life Arc Dublin.

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Great-West LifeCo also revealed that Irish Life’s underlying profits, before a list of exceptional gains and charges, dipped to CAN$267 million (€185 million) last year from CAN$288 million in 2021, with the decline purely down to currency movements.

Irish Life’s total premiums and deposits, spanning life assurance premiums to inflows of institutional funds into Irish Life Investment Managers, rose to CAN$23.3 billion last year from CAN$22.7 billion in 2021, though the growth was stronger, at 11 per cent, in euro terms.

Irish Life, led by chief executive Declan Bolger, has paid out to €996.4 million of dividends to Great-West Lifeco between its takeover in 2013 and 2021. That equates to more than three-quarters of the €1.3 billion price Great-West Lifeco paid for the group in 2013 as the State sought to recover some of the €4 billion bailout of the assurer’s former sister company, Permanent TSB.

It will not be clear whether further dividends were paid last year until the Irish subsidiary accounts for 2022 are published later this year.