Global Risk Partners (GRP), a vehicle designed to acquire brokers and MGAs trading in the UK retail and global, specialty insurance markets, completed 18 acquisitions in 2019 while its run rate GWP neared £800 million.
At the same time, the firm has reported that run rate income increased by 25% to £139 million in the year and has also announced a run rate EBITDA of operating entities of £50 million, which represents growth of 42% on the previous year.
GRP’s Chairman, Peter Cullum, commented: “GRP has again enjoyed an excellent year of strong and sustainable growth. We are now one of the UK’s leading SME focussed insurance intermediary groups with national scale and coverage. Our track record of outstanding growth is underpinned by a proven M&A and organic growth strategy supported by a unique data led platform and high-performance culture.”
According to Mike Bruce, the firm’s managing director, the impressive results in 2019 were fuelled by both organic and acquisitive growth.
“We now provide our insurer partners with leading edge data analytics giving new insight into how particular books of business are performing, and identifying development opportunities for new products that benefit our clients,” said Bruce.
Looking forward, Bruce added: “We remain fully focused on growth through acquisition and integration of regional brokers, MGAs, portfolios and teams, and high-quality third-party financing remains in place to support GRP’s capital base and to invest in further expansion.
“We accelerated the number of deals completed in FY 2018-19 from the previous year, and the trend has continued during the new financial year, with 13 since the end of March. Our model, which empowers our hub businesses to leverage their local and market relationships to deliver local ‘spoke’ acquisitions, means that our pipeline is stronger than ever, underlining the continuing attraction to broking entrepreneurs of GRP’s owner-driver philosophy.”
