Italian insurance giant Generali is weighing a potential sale of its Irish unit, RedClick, according to reports, less than two years after it acquired the business from US peer Liberty Mutual as part of a wider deal.
If a disposal were to result from a strategic review that Bloomberg reported on Thursday Generali is undertaking, it would mark a second change of ownership within 15 years.
Generali has hired Bank of America to review options for the Irish unit, which was rebranded as RedClick a little over a year ago, the report said. A disposal of RedClick is one of several options that are said to be under review.
Representatives for Generali and Bank of America declined to comment, it said.
The Italian insurance giant inherited the Irish business as part of a €2.3 billion deal completed in early 2024 that also included Liberty Mutual’s businesses in Spain and Portugal.
It 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.
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Generali is seeking to improve its profitability by focusing on more lucrative assets, and expanding in casualty and property business and asset management.
RedClick had 250,000 customers and more than 400 employees across offices in Cavan, Enniskillen and Dublin as of late last year.
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 its then Madrid-based subsidiary Liberty Seguros in 2018, leaving it as a branch of the Spanish company.
The rebrand last year saw Generali appoint 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.
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.
It was 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 last year.
Revolut, meanwhile, also entered the Irish motor insurance market in 2023, with policies underwritten by AIG.