Firm looks to pick up redundant financial advisers

Canada Life has plans to add 100 financial advisers to its Irish team in the coming months and is looking to capitalise on the unusually large volume of talent on the market at the moment.

The life and pensions market has been suffering of late, and Canada Life currently holds around 5% of the market. In a bid to boost this market share, it's planning on recruiting 100 financial advisers for its already 650-strong Irish team.

"One of the benefits of the downturn is quite a few financially literate people have come onto the market. We'd like to hear from those people," the firm's managing director Tom Barry told the Irish Independent. It is "actively looking" for 100 financial advisers he added.

It's not been all plain sailing for Canada Life. Last year, in the face of falling demand for its products, it cut 10 broker consultants in order to "cut our cloth to suit the market and our budgets." Around 30 were made redundant throughout the year.

But Barry suggests that now's the time to invest in new talent in spite of the current market conditions, which have seen new business sales of life and pensions fall by 46% in the first quarter of this year.