Barclays Vida y Pensiones Compañía de Seguros (BVP) provides life insurance and pension products in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
As part of the agreement, 35,000 customers and circa €350m (£276m, $393.7m) of assets under management will be transferred to Vidacaixa.
Financial details of the sale were not disclosed.
Reducing cost, risk, and allocation
Harry Harrison, co-head of Barclays Non-Core (BNC), said: “This is another positive step in reducing the cost, operational risk and capital allocation within BNC, swiftly following the sale of our Italian insurance business last week.
“We are making good progress and continue to focus on our target of reducing RWAs (risk weighted assets) in BNC to £20bn by the end of 2017.”
Southern European shift
BVP sold its Portuguese insurance business to Bankinter Seguros de Vida in April 2016, also completing the sale of its Italian life insurance business to CNP Assurances earlier this month.
Barclays sold its Spanish retail bank to CaixaBank S.A. in January 2015, and announced its intent to sell its Barclaycard consumer payments business in Spain and Portugal to Bancopopular-e in April 2016.
The bank will continue to operate investment banking and corporate banking for global companies in Spain.
Corporate deconsolidation
The Spanish sale is the latest development by the bank as it sheds its non-core operations.
In May the bank sold a 12.2% stake in Barclays Africa Group Ltd (BAGL) as part of its ongoing efforts to extricate itself from the business. Following the sale, the bank retains a 50.1% stake in one of Africa’s largest banking groups.
The sale was confirmed in early March, with Barclays announcing its intent to sell its full stake in BAGL over the next two to three years.
Barclays also pulled completely out of Gibraltar in April, two years after it stated winding down its retail banking operations in the jurisdiction.
In early April, Barclays Wealth and Investment Management (WIM) businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong were sold to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.
