Great-West Lifeco has unified its Ireland-based wealth businesses to create Unio, which is part of Irish Life Group.
The Irish wealth arm has created by merging Invesco, Acumen and Trust, and APT into a single entity with advisory, investment and client solutions.
Unio employs 250 people in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, with 130 focused on personal clients.
The business currently oversees around €14bn of assets on behalf of personal and corporate clients and plans to grow this position to €20bn (£17.6bn, $21.9bn) by 2027.
Unio is led by Des McGarry, the former managing director and founder of Invesco. The rest of the team is made up of Miċeál Gunning, head of private clients, Ger Fitzgerald, head of investment Strategy. Alex Kinsella, head of investment solutions and Mike O’Sullivan, board director and strategic adviser on investment solutions.
Tackle Irish market
Gunning added: “Unio has a deep understanding of our clients and their specific needs. Given the evolution of wealth in Ireland over the past number of decades, and that Ireland only started to materially grow in the late 1990s, there is an historic, generational transfer of wealth underway. Combine this with the fact that Ireland, as Europe’s fastest growing economy, has the same average wealth per adult as France and Germany, tens of thousands of people require advice and support to optimally manage their wealth.
“Now is the right and opportune time to establish a wealth management and advisory business of significant scale to guide and coach investors in Ireland on wealth preservation and growth in an open, bespoke manner. Essentially, we are seeking to demystify wealth and investment by educating on the drivers of wealth, markets and investments in a long-term context.
“This is not about luring clients away from other wealth management firms. The fact is, there are so few people taking financial advice in Ireland. It is the nature of the market currently, which presents an opportunity for a new advisory-led player like Unio.
“We believe wealth management should be open, inclusive, not closed and exclusive. This is about servicing individuals who need advice on the management of their wealth, particularly when you see almost a trillion euro sitting on deposit in Ireland, when you see the growth of people with assets in excess of €1m, households with annual income in excess of €200,000 and the transfer of wealth to the next generation.
“By limiting the vulnerabilities of clients’ portfolios to risk cycles, by strategic thinking and risk framing of international markets, Unio will avoid the historic boom/bust outcomes for our clients.”
Great-West Lifeco is an international financial services holding company with interests in life insurance, health insurance, retirement and investment services, asset management and reinsurance businesses. It operates in Canada, the US and Europe under the brands Canada Life, Empower, Putnam Investments, and Irish Life.
