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Generali PanEurope, the Ireland-based cross-border insurance provider, is to enter the Swedish market this year with a range of its best-selling regular-premium and single-premium investment products, redesigned specifically for Swedish clients, International Adviser can reveal.

The first products to be offered are from Generali’s Vision and Professional Portfolio ranges, giving Swedish clients access to some of the world’s top international funds inside an insurance wrapper that provides them with the potential for financial planning opportunities, Generali said.

Vision policy is Generali’s regular premium investment plan, while Professional Portfolio is a single premium investment product. Both are designed to give investors a choice of options from a global range of product providers and fund houses, according to Generali.

Targeted at so-called “mass affluent” and high net worth clients, the new Swedish Generali PanEurope ranges are designed to be distributed through independent  financial advisers in Sweden.

The Generali launch comes as some other product providers have begun to look towards Scandinavia as a possible refuge from the economic travails of many other global markets, such as the rest of Europe, Asia and the US. It also coincides with the acquisition last year of another Ireland-based life operation, Irish Life International, by Sweden’s SEB Group, which is integrating it with its SEB International operations under the SEB name.

‘Suits international mindset'

Cillín O’Flynn, Generali PanEurope’s head of wealth protection, said the product range being introduced to the Swedish market “suits the international mindset of consumers” there, and that Generali looked forward to becoming one of the market’s  key players.

Added Mats Arousell, who has been named to head up the Swedish marketing effort for Generali PanEurope as sales manager: “Particularly in the current economic climate, when consumers are becoming much more concerned about providing for their long term future, versatile solutions from blue chip financial institutions are increasingly popular.”

An arm of  Trieste-based Assicurazioni Generali, one of Europe’s largest insurance groups, Generali PanEurope is not a complete newcomer to Sweden. For more than eight years it has collaborated with Euro Accident, a Swedish life and health insurance provider which specialises in group, life and health insurance products.

Arousell, who is Swedish, comes to Generali PanEurope from Direct Financial Services, a part of the Söderberg & Partners Group, and brings with him more than 20 years’ experience in the Swedish market. He is based in Stockholm.

In addition to being one of Europe’s largest insurance providers, Generali is also one of the world’s top asset managers, with assets under management of more than €470bn in 2010, and a total property portfolio of €25bn. Globally it employs some 85,000 and has some 70 million clients in more than 60 countries.