SEB to simplify Baltic life insurance business setup

As life insurance solution with all its range of products is the one of most suitable means for personal financial stability, SEB has the ambition to improve its life insurance value proposition in all three Baltic countries to the next level in order to offer better services and solutions. Therefore, SEB sees a good opportunity to simplify its operations model, make the processes more efficient and have decided to consolidate the life insurance companies in the Baltics.

During last couple of years SEB has shown solid annual increase in life insurance and savings across the Baltics. SEB’s Baltic customer surveys and business analysis show that the need for the financial security and personal risk management throughout the customer’s life cycle has increased over the years.  As life insurance solution with all its range of products is the one of most suitable means for personal financial stability, SEB has the ambition to improve its life insurance value proposition in all three Baltic countries to the next level in order to offer better services and solutions. Therefore, SEB sees a good opportunity to simplify its operations model, make the processes more efficient and have decided to consolidate the life insurance companies in the Baltics.   

Currently SEB life insurance companies in Baltic has extensive range of life insurance and savings solutions with 27% market share and 542 million euro assets under the management serving more than 198 thousand customers.

Today SEB has separate legal entities in the three Baltic countries (SEB Elu- ja Pensionikindlustus in Estonia, SEB dzīvības apdrošināšana in Latvia, SEB Gyvybes draudimas in Lithuania) and one company Life & Pension Holding AB Riga branch, which is holding the Baltic responsibilities in the Life and Pension area for already several years. SEB will consolidate the current four legal entities for its Baltic life insurance business into one entity SEB Life and Pension Baltic SE (SE – Societas Europaea, European company) during 2018. The new company´s headquarter will be based in Latvia and have branches in Estonia and Lithuania. It is expected that all the consolidation process will be finalized by the beginning of 2019.

On July 13, SEB has taken the first steps to fill in prerequisites of the legal merger process by submitting a draft of Merger Agreement to State Enterprise Register of Latvia and notification to the Latvian Financial Supervisory Authority (FKTK) regarding intention to open branches in Estonia and Lithuania.

Apart from the registration process in Latvia, in Lithuania SEB Gyvybes draudimas has announced the change of the status from UAB to AB in order to execute the consolidation process.

Head of SEB Dzīvības apdrošināšana Kristīne Lomanovska: “Having in mind demographic and economic situation there is a strong customer need for life insurance as well as pension savings solutions. SEB has long history in providing pension and risk solutions in the Sweden, Baltics and 12 other countries across Europe. We believe great potential in this area to help our customers for creating a better future. We continue to build on it, but with more focused and efficient activities cross Baltics. With new and one Baltic organization we will create a better platform how to approach customers more efficiently in all three countries as well as we will create better solutions and offers for our customers. This consolidation gives also a positive effect to our operational efficiency in order to be competitive as we see increased amount of regulations, which require additional investments." 

We are starting legal procedure for the merger. The consolidation process will not have an impact on our customer services.  Next communication on the progress will be released after finalizing the registration process and after needed approvals are received.