Atec Group has announced it has acquired Commercial SME insurance specialist, Moorhouse Group, subject to regulatory approval.
This is the first acquisition by Atec since it secured PE backing from Perwyn, a leading European private equity investor, last year and signalled its intention to triple in size in the next five years through a combination of M&A and organic growth to become a top 10 specialist insurance broker.
Moorhouse is a specialist in Commercial SME insurance with a 35-year heritage. The group includes a wholesale broking operation, Xbroker, a retail broking arm under the online brand constructaquote.com, and the MGA, Toledo. Based in Caerphilly in Wales, Moorhouse’s 80 employees will all transfer across under the new ownership. The company will retain the Moorhouse brand, and the acquisition will present no disruption to service for its customers and broker partners.
The Atec Group designs, distributes, and underwrites a range of specialist home, leisure and now SME insurance products within the UK wholesale and retail personal lines market on behalf of over 350,000policyholders.
Brendan Devine, Atec Group CEO, comments:
“We’re delighted to make this announcement and hugely excited to welcome Moorhouse to the Atec Group. Moorhouse is an established, respected business with a long heritage, a clean book of business and strong capacity partnerships already in place. Its range of SME products are comprehensive, flexible and dedicated to the sector. Itis the perfect stepping stone for Atec into the SME space to help diversify and grow our portfolio into complementary lines.”
Atec has invested heavily in technology and analytics capabilities. Combined with access to 15years’ worth of high-quality data, it has successfully outpaced and outperformed the market in its specialist lines. It has more than tripled its organic revenues from 2020 to today and grown customer policy volumes from 125k to 350k. Atec will seek to replicate its success in retail and wholesale broking and in the MGA space to drive more volume and growth for Moorhouse.
Edward Lunken, Investment Director at Perwyn, said:
“We are very pleased with Atec’s first bolt-on acquisition. When we invested in Atec in June last year, we undertook to support Brendan and his team both to continue the strong organic growth and also to begin a new chapter of M&A for Atec. The acquisition of Moorhouse represents the ideal entry-point into the new and complementary end-market of SME insurance and we hope that it will be the first acquisition of many.”