AUB Group will continue to pursue its acquisition strategy in 2018, one of the firm’s leaders has said.
Nigel Thomas, division chief executive –
Austbrokers Networks, AUB Group, said that while the firm was pleased with its organic growth in the last financial year, acquisitions will play a role in the business in 2018.
“We have a lot of activity taking place at the moment in and around the acquisition space,” Thomas told
Insurance Business. “There are a number [of businesses] we are talking to at the moment that will continue, but there are a lot of acquisitions that we don’t proceed with, many more that we don’t than we do, for all the right reasons.”
In December 2017, AUB Group announced its latest acquisition, buying New Zealand-based brokerage Lowe Schollum & Jones Ltd (LSJ) through its equity partner BrokerWeb Risk Services. Indeed 2017, as a whole, was a busy year for acquisitions by the AUB Group. Within its broking arm in Australia, the firm made one stand-alone acquisition and four bolt-on acquisitions as the underwriting agency business also made one acquisition.
However, Thomas stressed that organic growth is still vital for the firm as the business looks for more than growth when pursuing an acquisition target.
“We will continue to look, but key to us is they have a good cultural fit,” Thomas continued. “We don’t buy for the sake of growth; we buy because they fit appropriately, strategically and culturally.”
Thomas stressed that the cultural fit is a key consideration for AUB Group when it looks towards acquisitions as it is important that businesses falling under the AUB Group banner have a good core strategy and know “what you do but, as importantly, know what you don’t do.”
“By aligning to the strategy, we know who we should partner with because we see whether they are aligned to having a good core to their strategy and where they want to be,” he explained. “It is really paramount in decision making.
“[With] a lot of businesses, you can improve efficiencies, processes, the way things are done, but it is very hard to get people to align from a cultural sense.”
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