We have about 75 people in the company, but we have organised ourselves around each market. We have also invested enormously in what we call the wealth structuring team, made up of specialists in structuring fiscal and legal issues, which is based in Luxembourg. It is what I call the engine of IWI.
Mike: The Luxembourg providers have not fully understood and appreciated some of the nuances of the UK market.
What is really exciting for me is that we are tweaking the core structures and insurance wrappers. There are certain things about the UK market that have evolved slightly differently to mainland Europe, so you need to take a different approach.
Everything we do is client-centric, so there is a committee for every part of the application process, and all the team is aware from the first day of that application that it needs to be progressed, which I have never seen before in other life companies.
What type of clients are you targeting and what sort of issues do they face?
Mike: From a UK perspective, we are acutely aware that the offshore bond market in the UK has dropped from more than £8.2bn in 2010 to £3.7bn at the end of last year. In that period you have seen a drop of more than 50% in the market and yet, perversely, you have actually seen material wealth in the UK rise, especially in the high net-worth and ultra-high net-worth space.
We have had the reduction in tax-avoidance schemes, a huge attack on tax evasion, quite rightly, across Europe and the world.
Our structure, by contrast, gives tangible benefit to the wealthy and their families. In the UK, with a trust it can help with inheritance tax planning but, generally, it is a mechanism for tax deferral and just sensible, fully legitimate tax planning. That reduction in the market happened, I genuinely believe, because the industry stopped moving with where the target market should be.
So high net-worth and ultra-high net-worth clients are the target market, absolutely, and in the UK, both UK citizens and domiciles and UK resident non-doms.
What is the typical size of asset per client?
Luc: On average, our contracts are around €1.5m ($1.6m), up until the end of last year. We were not getting any tickets above €5m.
If I look at this year, we have had new contracts coming in for €40m, €20m and €10m. As a relative newcomer on the market since 2012, this means IWI is competing with the Lombards and the others on the big tickets now. Our biggest contractor is above €100m, which is composed of multiple premiums.
