Howden has announced the acquisition of Thomond Asset Management, the trading name of Folk Asset Management, a Limerick-based financial advisory business.
The deal is Howden's third financial advisory acquisition in Ireland this year, following Maven Financial Planning in Galway in April 2026 and Opes Wealth Trust in Dublin in May 2026, and remains subject to approval by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Founded by Tom Fitzgerald, Neal Kelly and David O'Neill, Thomond Asset Management provides financial planning advice for individuals and business owners, covering pensions, investments and estate planning. Its team of nine professionals will join Howden, continuing to support the firm's Financial Advisory growth across Ireland.
Howden's Financial Advisory business, launched last year under Managing Director Dermot Gaskin, now includes more than 80 professionals serving clients nationwide.
The Limerick deal marks Howden's first Financial Advisory acquisition in the city and extends a run of regional expansion that has already taken the group into Galway and Dublin within the space of three months.
The activity sits within a broader consolidation trend across Ireland's intermediary sector. According to FTI Consulting, strategic buyers are increasingly targeting specialist advisory firms that offer scalable benefits across portfolios alongside geographic and product-line diversification, a dynamic driven by both UK private equity-backed platforms and domestic consolidators building scale through acquisitions.
The client profile firms like Thomond serve, self-employed professionals, business owners and private clients with complex, multi-policy needs spanning protection, succession planning and retirement, is among the most commercially valuable in the market, making it a natural target for integrated advisory groups.
The dynamics playing out in Ireland closely track what has already reshaped the UK advice market, where Howden's own Financial Advisory ambitions sit within a wider group structure spanning UK and Irish retail broking.
NextWealth's 2026 Consolidation of Advice Report noted that the era of buying UK advice firms simply for scale is over, with acquirers now judged on their ability to integrate, govern and grow those businesses organically, a maturing that is prompting private equity investors in UK wealth management to weigh cultural fit and data quality as carefully as price.
Even so, separate research from Dyer Baade & Company pointed to how much runway remains: more than 85% of UK advisory firms still operate with five advisers or fewer, a fragmented structure that keeps the addressable acquisition pool large despite years of deal activity, with rising regulatory compliance costs continuing to push smaller firms toward scale, sale or exit.
Gaskin has previously described Howden's Irish growth plans as "ambitious," underpinned by a pipeline of "transformative acquisitions" for 2026 and beyond, and the Limerick deal, following Galway and Dublin in quick succession, suggests the group is replicating in Ireland the same disciplined, integration-focused buying pattern already well established in the UK market.
Gaskin said Thomond Asset Management has built a strong wealth management business in Limerick City, with values that closely align with Howden's own.
"Thomond's focus on long-term client relationships, built on trust and openness, mirrors our commitment to putting clients at the centre of everything we do," he said, adding that the acquisition would offer Thomond's clients a wider range of services while ensuring continued access to expert advice close to where they are based.
Thomond's co-founders said they were excited to join Howden as its first Financial Advisory acquisition in Limerick City. "This partnership means our clients will benefit from greater resources and broader expertise, but with the same personal service they value today," they said.
With more than 85% of UK advisory firms still operating at five advisers or fewer, and Ireland's intermediary market only beginning to consolidate at a similar pace, Howden's Limerick deal looks less like a one-off and more like an early move in what could be a much longer buying spree.
