The British brokerage PIB Group, majority owned by the venture capital funds Apax and Carlyle, has bought 100% of the shares of the Barcelona brokerage Confide to lead a build-up operation: build a large insurance brokerage group in Spain with the aggregation of small local firms.
Martín Navaz, president and majority shareholder of the brokerage, of which other members of the management team are also partners, will become the first executive of PIB in Spain and will also become a shareholder of its British parent company.
Navaz explained that PIB has already bought three other brokerages in Spain: Cicor and its subsidiary Global Marine and the Tractio group, which with Confide place the company in Spain with brokered premiums of 125 million euros, 45,000 clients, 140 employees and 15 million revenue. This would place the firm as the fifth largest in Spain after Aon, Willis, Marsh and Howden. The agreement, in which DC Advisory has advised the British group, is conditional on receiving the approval of the CNMC.
The British company is now in advanced negotiations to buy another five brokerages in Spain, Navaz explained. "The purpose of the group is to accelerate the integration of companies, to build a group with an operating profit of 20 million euros within five years."
PIB Group has already applied a similar model since its founding in 2015 in the UK. The group has integrated more than 50 brokerages in that country, as well as in Ireland, Germany, Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands and already has annual revenues of 300 million pounds (355 million euros), with annual growth rates of around 50%. The firm is controlled 60% by Apax and 20% by Carlyle, while the rest of the capital is in the hands of the directors of the brokerages it acquires.
Navaz, who is president of the Spanish brokerage association, Adecose, acknowledged that he had received multiple purchase offers for Confide, a company with a portfolio of more than 80 million euros in premiums and an operating profit of more than 2.5 million of euros. “Joining PIB is a great opportunity because it is a long-term project, not speculative, and because it shares our philosophy of focusing on treating customers” who are always companies.
Integration also allows the company to be more efficient, have more resources and be more competitive in a market in which concentration is narrowing margins. “Professionally, moreover, it is a great opportunity as a manager to direct a concentration process” like the one that in his opinion is going to take place in Spain “because it makes no sense that we have 5,500 brokerages, many of which are very small and very inefficient in providing services. what the end customer needs.
