Penta Capital backed Peter Cullum, the industry leading serial insurance entrepreneur, along with a strong team led by David Margrett and Stephen Ross in late 2013, to carry out a buy-and-build in UK insurance broking and MGA’s (capital light underwriting).

A novel approach to buy-and-builds was undertaken, using an owner/driver model across GRP’s subsidiary businesses with ultimate rewards tied to individual business performance. The effect was to drive a focus on sales, margins, the achievement of synergies such that the group significantly outperformed its peer group.

By 2020, we had acquired 60 businesses, and had become a leading independent insurance broker in the UK. The scale, stability and growth in profitability led to a very strong partial exit, with Penta delivering 3.3x money for our investors.

Penta continue to maintain a minority interest, and the group has grown further having completed over 80 acquisitions. We anticipate a commensurate further growth in value for our investors.