Zurich<\/a>\u2019s distinct blue brand colour is going to stick, after others have come and gone. <\/p>\nFollowing the court-ordered seizure of the original business from the Quinn family in 2010, its subsequent owner, Boston\u2019s Liberty Mutual, could not have come into the market at a worse time, as it went through an extended period of turmoil and loss-making. <\/p>\n
At the time Liberty arrived in 2011, local management team were spouting about moving the business from number seven to number one by market share. By the time it exited, the business was number nine. <\/p>\n
Generali made all the right noises about its interest in Ireland in 2023 when it was set to inherit the Irish unit as part of a wider \u20ac2.3 billion deal that included Liberty\u2019s operations in Spain and Portugal.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t last long. <\/p>\n
A little over a year after the deal went through in early 2024, and months after the rebrand to RedClick, Generali called in consultants from Bank of America to carry out \u201cstrategic review\u201d. Is there a more ominous euphemism in the corporate world?<\/p>\n
Under Zurich, which already has an almost 10 per cent share of the general insurance market by premiums, RedClick, with a 4.5 per cent share, will have its most stable owner ever. But it will be at the cost of the business becoming indistinguishable from its owner, as Zurich pursues a full integration. <\/p>\n
While Zurich will be hoping to use the deal to spur a period of growth, it will be lucky to hold on to all of RedClick\u2019s existing business in the near term, as competitors seek to capitalise on the natural disruption that accompanies any integration. <\/p>\n
Zurich has more than 1,000 employees in Ireland, spread across three offices in Dublin and one in Wexford, spanning general insurance and life and pensions operations. RedClick has about 400 staff in offices in Cavan, Enniskillen and Dublin. <\/p>\n
It is hard to see all those locations \u2013 and roles \u2013 surviving the tie-up. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0BrewDog meltdown has lessons for mooted Irish savings and investment schemeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No Irish insurer has been around the blocks quite like RedClick. The household and business coverage provider \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[17421,2722,17012,17422,51],"class_list":["post-28769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zurich","tag-cantillon","tag-generali","tag-liberty-mutual-group","tag-quinn-group","tag-zurich"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116203404810601796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}