Acquisitions for Agency Owners: GRP Becomes Brown & Brown Europe: How One Breakfast Meeting Turned into $635M of Revenue

July 23, 2024

For this month’s edition of Acquisitions for Agency Owners, we handed the mic over to Mike Bruce, CEO, Brown & Brown Europe; Stephen Ross, Head of UK and European M&A, Brown & Brown Europe to tell us more about their experience on joining the Brown & Brown team, and how they made their decision to sell.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, Global Risk Partners Limited (GRP) was one of the UK’s largest independent insurance intermediaries, with operations across retail, broking, specialist MGA, network and Lloyd’s businesses, and annualized revenues of over $300 million. Despite this wild success, in 2021, our private equity (PE) partners were looking for an exit.

One breakfast with Powell Brown was all it took to set the wheels in motion. What was scheduled to take 45 minutes easily turned into hours, and it kick-started our journey into becoming Brown & Brown Europe.

While the businesses differed in scale and regional focus, the decision to join Brown & Brown felt natural due to our organizations’ similar cultural DNA—both rooted in honesty and integrity. Compared to a PE environment of constantly chasing rapid returns, Brown & Brown emphasized sustained growth, teammate investment and skill development within “a forever company” framework. It was the ideal home for the business we’d created and scaled.

Over the last two years, we’ve experienced true business transformation while maintaining our strong core values:

Long-Term Growth & Investment

One of our most significant gains since joining Brown & Brown has been the ability to focus on long-term strategies that benefit our customers, team and stakeholders. This shift from shorter investment cycles has opened doors to larger business acquisitions and allowed us to expand our capabilities and enhance customer experiences. By seeking out acquisitions based on more than just financial metrics, adding not only company values but valuable skills to our ecosystem as well, we’ve positioned Brown & Brown Europe for continued and sustainable growth.

At the same time, the Brown & Brown name and reputation have presented new opportunities, both from larger organizations and smaller brokers that, like us, were looking for a forever company. Brown & Brown Europe now consists of approximately 130 offices across sectors, organized like Brown & Brown in North America, including retail, programs and wholesale segments.

Ownership Culture

Through opportunities like shared ownership programs, more than 50% of our UK teammates have taken advantage of the opportunity to become a Brown & Brown shareholder.

Yet ownership isn’t just about shares; it’s about a sense of belonging and empowerment. This collective ownership fuels our commitment to excellence, driving us to go above and beyond for our customers and each other. This commitment within Brown & Brown was clear from our first meetings with Powell and the leadership team, and we’re proud to extend it throughout Europe.

Commitment to Customers

Our expansion has broadened our reach and enriched our capabilities, amplifying the value we bring to our customers. Customers engaging with us now benefit from greater institutional knowledge and a robust network of Brown & Brown teammates who proactively share their knowledge and are always happy to provide a vendor or product reference.

We are excited to tap into 85 years of Brown & Brown mechanisms and practices, such as BBU (our internal learning and development platform) and bring them to our UK teams. We also look forward to finding areas where insights from the European market can enrich our broader organizational knowledge.

As we look to the future, the Brown & Brown Europe team is excited about continually growing our business and teammate talent, focusing resources on professional development and taking advantage of new growth opportunities.

Brown & Brown Acquisitions

Contact our team for insights on the key trends impacting insurance acquisitions or more information on our acquisition process.

Interested in speaking with our Acquisitions team?
Email acquisitionsdept@bbins.com or contact us directly below. 

Acquisitions for Agency Owners
by Vaughn Stoll, SVP & Director of Acquisitions

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