Italian insurance giant Generali has rebranded the Liberty Insurance business it acquired in Ireland earlier this year as RedClick.
Generali acquired the Irish business as part of a €2.3 billion deal that also involved US-based Liberty Mutual’s insurance operations of Spain and Portugal.
The deal marked a return by the Italian group to the Irish general insurance market some 23 years after it closed its Dublin office, which had been writing small amounts of property and casualty business as well as commercial insurance at the time.
Generali has appointed a group executive, Lorenzo Ioan, who has most recently been a key figure in the group’s international business, as general manager of RedClick on the island of Ireland, effective from next week.
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The new brand is launching with an initial base of 250,000 customers and more than 400 employees across offices in Cavan, Enniskillen and Dublin.
Generali is one of the largest global insurance and asset management providers. It is present in more than 50 countries, with about 82,000 employees serving 70 million customers.
“The launch of the RedClick brand in Ireland demonstrates the group’s commitment to expand its footprint in the Irish market offering innovative insurance solutions tailored to the evolving needs of consumers as well as enhancing local competition,” Generali said.
Generali is among a number of companies that have moved recently to get into the Irish market following a series of reforms aimed at reducing volatility and coverage costs in a historically highly volatile market even by the standards of the cyclical nature of insurance internationally.
South African insurance group Outsurance officially launched an Irish motor and home coverage offering in May.
Revolut, meanwhile, also entered the Irish motor insurance market, with policies underwritten by AIG.
Boston-based Liberty Mutual entered the Irish market in 2011 by taking over the main businesses of Quinn Insurance, which had fallen into administration a year earlier after a large hole was discovered in its balance sheet.
Liberty’s Irish operation was subsumed into Madrid-based Liberty Seguros in 2018, leaving it as a branch of the Spanish company.
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