“We are losing market share to Ireland. This is already the case in Italy, which is the second-largest market for Luxembourg’s international life insurance.” 
Ireland is a familiar rival to Luxembourg in the field of investment funds, particularly when it comes to exchange traded funds (ETFs). It is also a well-established competitor in the high-end life insurance segment. Ireland’s strengths are well established. The country benefits from a more flexible asset custody framework than Luxembourg’s model, which is built around a tightly regulated depositary agreement. Above all, the cost of living and taxation are lower in Ireland than in Luxembourg – differences that are reflected in pricing.
“Irish products are often promoted by distributors because of their extremely attractive pricing,” says 
Unit-linked products, which are tied to investment funds and where the policyholder bears the full investment risk, have grown in popularity in 2025, supported by buoyant financial markets and lower interest rates. This is true in France as well as in Italy. “Luxembourg players usually achieve strong inflows in Italy thanks to the euro fund, a capital-guaranteed product that Irish providers do not offer. The growing appetite for unit-linked business is therefore moving us onto more competitive ground,” Le Foll notes.
In Italy, he believes the balance of power between Dublin and Luxembourg now clearly favours the former. But, in his view, the game is far from over.
The bespoke bet
Faced with pricing pressure from Dublin, the French executive refuses to reduce the debate to a simple cost comparison. “It’s not exactly the same offering, nor the same level of support. Luxembourg is positioned more around advice, service quality, bespoke solutions, wealth structuring and a genuinely cross-border approach,” he insists.
Le Foll, who is also head of high-end wealth solutions for the AG2R La Mondiale Group, describes an organisation built around wealth planning expertise made available to distribution networks. “We are used to handling complex cases,” he says, pointing to families spread across several countries, sophisticated beneficiary clauses and structures involving split ownership. All of these, in his view, form “the strength of Luxembourg.”
Our objective is clear: to compete with Ireland in the Italian market.
More broadly, he describes an ecosystem in which private banks, business lawyers, wealth planners and brokers work closely together. This cooperation turns Luxembourg life insurance into “a comprehensive wealth solution.” Many policyholders use only part of its capabilities, but the structure preserves strategic flexibility: multiple custodian banks, a range of asset managers and multi-currency management.
In this context, “pricing is an important factor, but it has to be weighed alongside several others,” Le Foll says. “Life insurance is a consumer product, but a long-term one: with us, a policy stays on the books for an average of 15 years. That can encourage clients to prioritise service quality over the cheapest offer.”
For that reason, he does not see a race to the bottom against Ireland as relevant in the high-net-worth segment. For clients primarily seeking simplicity and lower costs, however, the insurer is considering a more digital and standardised offering – “not low cost,” he stresses, but a solution tailored to different needs.
Digital shift in Italy
In Italy, La Mondiale Europartner’s strategy is designed as an extension of what France has rolled out. “The aim is to extend the existing Luxembourg-based wealth life insurance solutions focusing today on HNW clients to an affluent client base, with digitalised processes,” says the chief executive. The technical developments are complete. “The only real limitation at this stage is more on the side of Italian distributors,” he notes, suggesting that not all of them have yet reached the final stage of their own digital transformation.
Le Foll also challenges the perceived lead often attributed to Dublin in this area. In his view, while some Irish players still rely on legacy administration systems, several Luxembourg insurers have recently equipped themselves with modern, automated tools. In an ideal setup, policies can be taken out entirely online, data transmitted automatically, checks carried out by systems and ongoing monitoring supported by AI.
The competition with Ireland is not the most relevant debate for Luxembourg.
Such an organisation would also have economic implications. If distribution becomes fully digital, “the costs linked to the distribution become very low,” he argues. That could partly offset higher overheads and help strike “a good balance”: remaining profitable while offering “the right product at the right price, with the right level of service.”
With this in mind, Le Foll sees no reason why Ireland should maintain a lasting edge. “Our objective is clear: to compete with Ireland in the Italian market,” he says – relying on technology to narrow cost differences and make Luxembourg’s offering more attractive to a broader base of wealth clients.
Expanding the pie
Vanhoenacker, who took the helm of Utmost Luxembourg in May 2025, says he is in a “comfortable” position, as business remains within the same group whichever centre is chosen. But he believes the industry sometimes focuses too heavily on the rivalry between financial centres, “like a rabbit caught in the headlights,” without seeing the wider picture.
For him, the real issue is the penetration of unit-linked life insurance within overall private wealth. “We are talking about only a few percentage points at most,” he says. A large share of the potential market may not even be aware that such solutions exist. “Our main competitor is ignorance,” he adds.
The Utmost Luxembourg chief executive would rather concentrate on expanding the market than on dividing what is seen as a fixed pool. Europe’s stock of private assets, along with the wave of intergenerational wealth transfers expected in the coming years, represents a significant opportunity. “An increase of just one percentage point in penetration would be far more meaningful than a few billions gained or lost between jurisdictions,” Vanhoenacker says.
According to a study conducted by Utmost with the consultancy NMG, the upper affluent and high-net-worth segment represents around €28trn in financial assets in Europe, of which only 2% is held in cross-border life insurance. “The pie we are looking at today is only a fraction of what the potential market could be in a few years,” he concludes.
However, Vanhoenacker rules out lowering the entry threshold for wealth management below €500,000 in financial assets. “That is not my position, nor Utmost’s strategy,” he stresses. “If you move down towards the lower affluent segment, or even the retail market, you enter a completely different value proposition. That also implies a very different operating model.”
This article was written for the Wealth management & Private banking supplement of Paperjam magazine’s March 2026 issue, published on 25 February. It is published on the site to contribute to the full Paperjam archive. Click this link to subscribe to the magazine.
