Honan Insurance Group is set to focus on its organic growth following its recent acquisition in South East Asia.
The brokerage announced this week that it had acquired Singapore-based NGA Benefits as the business continues its expansion into the growing Asian insurance market.
Damien Honan, CEO of Honan Insurance Group, told
Insurance Business, that the firm is “heavily focussed” on its organic growth in the wake of the acquisition as the firm is happy with its current South East Asian progress.
“It’s a competitive market, but we approached our first acquisition with the mindset to learn and grow,” Honan said. “I believe it’s increased our global footprint by facilitating inbound business.”
Honan stressed that the South East Asian market is “unique” but offers opportunity to those who can understand its nuances.
“It takes a lot of commitment to make it work,” Honan continued. “You need to understand local customs, and culture. You need to have your timing right, and a long-term strategy behind the decision.”
Honan noted that NGA Benefits aligns well with the group as Honan’s first Asian acquisition, of Singaporean broker MACS in 2015, had opened doors for the business to grow further.
“We already had a good network in Singapore based on our earlier acquisition. This opened up the door to meeting NGA,” Honan said. “Their service culture and client philosophy is very similar to ours at Honan.”
With a presence in Asia, New Zealand and the US, as well as its home base in Australia, Honan said that the NGA Benefits acquisition will boost the group at large as the acquired business uses a best practice platform with capability to service both multinational and local clients in the Singaporean market.
“We’ve had strong organic growth in Australia due to our focus on people, partners and clients – so for me those three things need to line up very closely,” Honan said.
“The Malaysian service centre will also provide a great leverage point; we are considering how we could potentially integrate this through the group.”
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