ICA Gruppen AB: Financial Supervisory Authority Gives Go-Ahead for Insurance Business

Regulatory News:

ICA Gruppen AB (STO:ICA):

ICA Bank has now received permission to conduct insurance business from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority. ICA Bank will now form a subsidiary, ICA Försäkring AB, with its own management and board. The plan is that the company will start to offer non-life insurance to its customers at the end of 2015.

"Our insurance offering will help us to strengthen and broaden our customer offering but will also enable us to strengthen customer loyalty,” says Per Strömberg, CEO of ICA Gruppen.

"Forming a separate company will give us a better opportunity to develop unique offerings adapted to meet the needs of ICA’s customers. We also want to have a stronger link between our insurance and retail business,” says Bo Lagergren, CEO of ICA Försäkring AB.

ICA Försäkring will offer non-life insurance to private individuals. ICA Bank already has an insurance offering but through external partners. The company’s management and board have been appointed and the CEO will be Bo Lagergren, previously Head of Retail Banking at ICA Bank. The new company will be in operation towards the end of 2015.

ICA Gruppen AB (publ) is one of the Nordic region’s leading retail companies, with around 2,300 of its own and retailer-owned stores in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Group includes the retail companies ICA Sweden, ICA Norway and Rimi Baltic, ICA Real Estate, which owns and manages properties and ICA Bank, which offers financial services to Swedish customers. The Group also includes the wholly owned portfolio company inkClub and partly owned portfolio companies Cervera and Hemtex. For more information see icagruppen.se (http://www.icagruppen.se)

ICA Gruppen AB discloses the information provided herein pursuant to the Swedish Securities Market Act and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was submitted for publication at 08.00 CET on Thursday, 15 January 2015.

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