PIB Group Limited has released its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2020 with the filing of its statutory accounts.
Group Financial Highlights
Revenue of £151.5m, an increase of 23% on 2019, Adjusted EBITDA of £37.7m, an increase of 41% on 2019, Adjusted EBITDA of £52.1m on a run-rate basis, Gross Written Premiums of £1,524.2m
Business Highlights
The spread of Covid-19 led to 2020 being a particularly challenging year given its impact on our people, our operations and our clients. From the outset of PIB’s creation the management team has implemented a strategy that is heavily focused on the achievement of long-term sustainable growth.
This strategy has had a diversified business portfolio at its core given our belief that this is the most effective way of mitigating the risk of general declines in economic conditions. The importance of this strategy was seen through the Covid-19 pandemic with the Group showing high levels of resilience and performing well from both a financial and operational perspective, while also making the health and wellbeing of our people a priority.
The strength of the underlying business through this period also gave the Group the confidence to continue its investment to help drive significant growth. Therefore, the year saw PIB make further strong progress in its ambition to be one of the UK’s leading diversified and specialist insurance intermediaries.
The Group operates a programmatic Mergers & Acquisitions consolidation programme, focusing on businesses that operate in niche segments, are “famous for something” and demonstrate attractive organic growth dynamics and additional product specialism. In pursuit of this strategy the Group made the following acquisitions:
- The employee benefit books of Sanlam Wealth Planning UK and Avidus Scott Lang both of which were absorbed by PIB Employee Benefits.
- B.K. Insurance Brokers Limited, a commercial insurance broker with a particular focus on the property sector.
- R. A. Insurance Brokers Limited, a commercial insurance broker with a strong motor trade proposition.
- Marx Re GmbH, a reinsurance and insurance broking company, based in Munich, Germany with a major focus on asset-based business, primarily in property and construction, power generation and renewable energy sourced from Europe and Latin America.
- Internet Insurance Holdings Limited, a leading online insurance proposition providing insurance products for residential and commercial property owners.
- Rigton Insurance Services Limited which provides products to the transport industry including schemes within Classic Preserved Bus, Heritage and Narrow-Gauge Railway as well as the Model Retailers and Manufacturers sector.
- Arlington Insurance Services Limited with a focus on professional property investors across the breadth of the real estate sector.
- Erskine Murray Limited whose core lines of business include Corporate and specialist SME, plus value-add services such as Risk Management and Employee Benefits.
- WDB S.A., a leading insurance broker in Poland with a focus mainly on clients in the real estate and transportation sector as well as life and health programs in the public and private sectors.
- Barbon Insurance Group which provides a range of insurance broking and related services focused on the UK private rental market with its products being sold through three lettings brands; HomeLet, Let Alliance, and Rentshield Direct.
2020 also saw PIB make significant progress in its international expansion. It has always been PIB’s intention, once it had established a strong UK platform and business, to start looking at international opportunities. This would help to both diversify PIB’s growth strategy into other non UK economies and build a longer-term growth story for its existing and future investors.
PIB started exploring international opportunities over two years ago, with its management team investing the time to find suitably attractive targets and getting to know their management teams. PIB now has a nascent International Division which covers retail, wholesale, reinsurance and MGAs, with a presence in Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Poland and Spain, and with other countries in the pipeline.
PIB’s growth led to it being recognised and placed in 13th position for The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 in 2020. The league table ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing sales over the last three years. PIB also appeared in 203rd position for the 16th Sunday Times PwC Top Track 250 in 2020, which ranks Britain’s leading mid-market private companies with the biggest sales.
A founding member of the industry-wide COVID-19 Support Fund and successfully launched the PIB Community Trust in 2021, providing a natural extension to our corporate social responsibility programme. Backed by PIB Group, which provides a proportion of its revenues to give to charity, the Trust provides funding to support the many charitable endeavours of our colleagues by enabling contributions to be made to their chosen charities, and in support of local communities.
Chief Financial Officer Ryan Brown commented:
“The spread of Covid-19 led to 2020 being an incredibly challenging year given its impact on our people, our operations and our clients. However, in true PIB style, we stepped up and I am immensely proud of the way our people came together to respond which saw us maintain our exceptional levels of service while continuing the Group’s evolution and strong growth. This was aided by our ability to rapidly migrate to a productive remote-working model, focusing on the health and wellbeing of our people, the incredible resilience of colleagues and working closely with our insurer partners to support our clients.
Amidst all of this it is also a real achievement to be able to look back and say that we remained committed to our strategic priorities, despite having to navigate the unforeseen impacts of Covid.
With the unwavering support of our capital providers, we were able to continue investing significantly in the business through acquisitions, IT and infrastructure development, and continue to hire market leading teams and individuals. All of this will help us sustain our market beating organic growth into 2021 and beyond.
Completing a number of international acquisitions was also particularly pleasing and incredibly important in the context of meeting our long-term strategic goals. These acquisitions have established us as a credible acquirer of non-UK businesses and we are now actively engaged on a number of follow-up acquisitions in each of these countries as well as having some new territories to add to the Group.
At a time of significant domestic and international uncertainty, I remain confident that the strength of our infrastructure and platforms, along with the exceptional expertise and commitment of our people, the strength of relationships with insurer partners and incredible support from our capital providers, will ensure that we are able to support our clients, adapt to changing market dynamics and remain capable of driving significant growth both this year and into the future.”