Lombard is the leader of the ”privatbancassurance” market, a niche market that we created 20 years ago. The privatbancassurance concept combines private banking and investment management services with the sophisticated use of life assurance as a financial planning structure to achieve fiscal advantages and security for wealthy investors and their families.

Lombard was founded by John Stone in 1991 and was the first company set up with the vision to create a pan-European insurance business from a Luxembourg base. This became possible under the Third Life Directive which was implemented in the early nineties. The pan-European insurance idea was very well supported by the Luxembourg regulator, the Commissariat aux Assurances (CAA), and government to create the right infrastructure so companies like Lombard could get off the ground. In effect, we have a passport, through the EU freedom of services, to market our solutions into other European countries without needing to establish a physical presence there.

We started in Luxembourg with five people and no assets under management. Today, we are celebrating our twentieth anniversary and
we’ve just reached EUR 20 billion under management. I would say it’s been a real success story, from a small pioneering beginning, to
the leader in the market, a position we have held for more than 10 years.

Lombard started with a few Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) partners and our first three countries were Belgium, Sweden and Germany. In the mid-nineties we had our first breakthrough with one of the major private banking groups, Swiss Bank Corporation,
which became UBS. We persuaded them to try the privatbancassurance concept for their wealthy clients. Until then, if you had talked
to a private banker about life insurance, they would have laughed – insurance was not seen as a solution for wealthy, sophisticated
clients. Since then we have seen a dramatic change in the acceptance of privatbancassurance and today it is widely recognised as
one of the most effective wealth planning tools for private clients.

In the early days there was little competition but we have seen this change significantly in recent years. This has not been bad for us,
because competition has created a much bigger market place, which in turn has helped Lombard to grow and develop.

We have also seen the market evolve from attracting affluent individuals, to HNWIs, which we define as individuals investing
at least EUR 1 million in a life insurance solution. More recently again, over the last four to five years, the UHNWI end of the
market, for investments of EUR 10 million or more, has risen sharply and now about 40 percent of Lombard’s business is with
these individuals.

Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a growth of about 25 percent per year in terms of our total assets under management. Back in 2001, we were just under EUR 2.1 billion of assets under management, and now we have reached EUR 20 billion.

At the core of our business model is the sophisticated use of life insurance as a wealth planning tool, to convey tax and
estate planning benefits to wealthy individuals. Our focus is on generational or succession planning, enabling individuals or families to plan how assets get passed on to the next generation. Depending on where the client resides, there are tax benefits in all European countries associated with life insurance, but the precise benefits vary significantly by country.
Innovation is at the heart of our success. We are a relatively small company and responding to the ever changing needs of clients, as well as to legal and regulatory changes is something that we have become very adept at. We have invested heavily in building a specialist wealth planning solutions team, which together with our marketing consultants who operate in the local countries, are capable of responding to the ever changing markets in which we operate. Luxembourg has been a good centre to find these specialist people.
In many ways, we have a very simple model – designing long-term wealth planning solutions to meet the needs of HNWIs.

From a distribution point of view, we never deal directly with end clients. We work through specialist financial intermediaries,
and in particular private banks, HNWI focused brokers and other independent advisers to wealthy families such as family offices, lawyers and accountants. As a direct result of the financial crisis we have seen many more clients turning to independent advisers, who work alongside the clients’ bankers, to advise on long-term wealth planning solutions. We operate a completely open architecture approach
to investment management, and Lombard never undertakes any investment management. Today we work with over 500 reputable investment managers on behalf of clients.