Following Marco Capital’s agreement to acquire Pro Global, we spoke with Marco Capital Group CEO Simon Minshall and PoloWorks CEO Paul Andrews about the combination of Pro Global and PoloWorks.
The executives highlighted the strong complementarities between the two businesses, with the combination also bringing greater geographic reach and creating a more scalable insurance services platform across Lloyd’s, the London Market and international markets.
“Our strategic rationale for acquiring Pro Global goes all the way back to when we bought PoloWorks in 2022. In fact, as soon as we acquired the business from Capita, I met with Pro Global to express our interest in buying their business,” Minshall explained in an interview.
Marco’s CEO noted that back in 2022, both businesses were in a very different shape than today, being relatively underdeveloped, yet offering a lot of potential.
“Since then, we’ve put in an awful lot of hard work and investment into PoloWorks. The results have come through, and we continue to reinvest. Substantial change has also taken place at Pro Global, which has grown and internationalised a great deal since we first had contact,” Minshall added.
With the acquisition and combination of the two businesses going ahead, the executive added that it creates a “market-leading” specialty services business, which he described as very exciting.
Minshall continued, “The two businesses coming together are very, very complementary. In the UK, Pro Global is more company market, and PoloWorks is more Lloyd’s. While we already have both feet in both camps, the complementary nature is really interesting.
“Areas of strength at Pro Global tend to be areas where we were smaller and less developed, and vice versa. Even on the client side, because of this company market/Lloyd’s dimension, there’s not a huge amount of overlap.
“It’s very, very complementary, and it also gives us a great geographic footprint. We were heavily focused in the UK, which is a major market, but Pro Global brings our business into the US, Germany, Australia, etc. So, it’s a really good strategic fit.”
Paul Andrews, CEO of PoloWorks, added his thoughts, saying, “If you look at PoloWorks’ business back in 2023 and you look at it now, we’ve done well with our revenue growth, a really great story, and we’re nicely profitable with a lot more to come. We’ve got a good brand in the London market, but the challenge has been that our brand has been somewhat limited to the London market.
“With Pro Global, we immediately get a global footprint. We get access into the States, Europe, LatAm, and Australia. This is valuable to us as it would have taken us years at considerable cost to build. And you’ve got to find the right people. Would we get it all right at the same time? Perhaps not.
“What we’ve got here is an accelerated way of growing our global capability. And on top of that, the beauty of Pro Global is that we know the businesses and we know the services. But, at the same time, they actually have a complementary set of skills to those PoloWorks currently has.
“For example, we’re great in actuarial and underwriting management; Pro Global is fantastic in claims. They’ve got a huge depth of claims experience while we have platforms that we can bring in. Together this combination is accretive.
We manage syndicates, which we’re growing at a rate of knots. We’ve got nine, and we’re going to bring more again at 1.1 2027. There might be some press releases around RVS about new syndicates that are launching, which we’re supporting.”
Andrews went on, “Pro Global has a whole bunch of MGAs which relate well to our platform business, and we also bring our insurance/captive management business in Guernsey to the table for this greatly expanded pool of MGA clients.
“When you go back three years and look at both businesses, they were very much process driven services, data capture, risk capture-type businesses. They’ve since both morphed into more of a value-added proposition.
“By bringing them together, you’ve got this scalable platform business, which is MGAs, syndicates and captives. You’ve got the services arm. We’ve got claims capability, that depth of claims experience will now come in and help us grow in that area. We can then start cross-selling that to our clients in the London market and providing that as a value-add.
“And then, on top of that, both businesses have a digital proposition which they’re investing in. We can bring the synergies of those together and take this to the market as one proposition, which I think is going to be a fundamental deal winner for us because of the transformational abilities we bring.
“So, if you look at the opportunity now, both businesses have got a very active pipeline, a very, very active pipeline. What you’ve got is scale, complexity, depth of knowledge and a global footprint. I think those things are so complementary overall that it makes perfect sense to bring the businesses together and go forward.
Discussing the main implications of the acquisition for the insurance and reinsurance market, Andrews identified three key areas he expects to see develop in the soft market.
“The first one is that you’re starting to see more capital coming to Lloyd’s, such as into the sidecar arrangements that you’ll see generally, in terms of Aurora and some of the other vehicles that are appearing.
“I think that for every one of those businesses that we spin up, we need resources, because our product relies on people, process and technology.
“Pro Global brings that to PoloWorks in spades, so it gives us a lot more bench strength to do those types of deals, which is great. I think that supports the market’s general trajectory in the reinsurance space.”
The second area, he said, is the growth of MGA delegated operations.
“Then you’ve got the soft market driving MGA delegated operations. Pro Global’s MGA business and PoloWorks’ MGA business are slightly different in terms of how they operate in that space, but basically, together, it’s a full proposition. It’s much more focused on capacity, investment, service and platform.
“And I think the dislocation in the insurance market, driven by things like the merger of Beazley and Zurich, and I’m sure they’re not going to be the last, and there are some rumours of other ones going, will feed that space, because it always does.
“You get the incumbents that are stuck, that didn’t get their payday, who then say, ‘Okay, what does my future look like?’
“In the soft market the MGA space for the specialty arena is perfect for that launch, and it’s a well-trodden path now. I can see an explosion over there, and that’s an area that we can capitalise on.”
The third theme Andrews highlighted was AI and how it could be applied across the market.
“And then there’s AI. Is it the answer? We keep hearing it’s bringing a revolution to our world. At C-suite level, they see many, many projects across the London market, insurance carriers and Lloyd’s carriers, and I expect our combined businesses will bring terrific solutions.
“My view is that human-in-the-loop is how AI is going to be embedded in a business going forward. You can’t have businesses running purely off AI, because it does get things wrong. It really does.
“I know that – I’ve seen it, some of the stuff I’ve had recently, from a personal perspective. And after all, it is regulated – so accuracy really matters.”
He said that human oversight would therefore remain an important part of applying AI in the London market.
“There’s that whole human-in-the-loop technology piece where we’ve got the humans. I saw a great cartoon a little while ago. There were these stalls, like at a mining convention, and it said, ‘Mining equipment for sale, mining equipment for sale.’ A guy walks up to one of the stalls and goes, ‘Have you got any miners?’
“We’ve got the miners; we’ve got partners out there that want to sell the equipment, and we can humanly link those together. Our technology solution, our transformation division, will be key to delivering that augmentation of services for the London market.”
Andrews also pointed to data and legacy technology as a major factor limiting the impact AI can currently have in specialty insurance.
“If you look at what’s holding the market back in terms of why AI hasn’t made the impact everyone thinks it should have by now, and, don’t get me wrong, homogeneous products and services with chatbots and checkboxes are great for AI, as soon as you get into specialty areas and large-scale pieces of technology where you are doing underwriting analysis, the driver is data.
“And, actually, the legacy platforms that every carrier has are what’s holding them back. So our focus has to be working with clients to make sure that data is corralled in a fashion and delivered to them in a fashion that adds value to that process.
“And on the basis that we’ve now got a huge footprint, not just a big footprint, but a huge footprint, in data collection for the London market, we have the potential here to talk to clients about really revolutionising how they pull data together, use it, corral it, hold it, and join it to their own driving vehicles.”
Ultimately, the acquisition looks set to take Marco Capital’s strategy around insurance services to the next level, combining PoloWorks’ Lloyd’s presence and growth trajectory with Pro Global’s international footprint, claims expertise and broader company-market capabilities.
For Minshall and Andrews, the strategic fit appears clear: what began as an ambition to build a stronger insurance services platform has evolved into a much larger proposition, with global reach and a significantly broader role to play in the specialty market.
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