Over the last year Westland Insurance Group has been on a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) spree, snapping up brokerages across Canada left, right and centre.
At the end of 2021, the company acquired Gillons Insurance Brokers, Ironside Insurance Brokers and G&E Insurance. Earlier this year, Daysland Insurance, Storm Insurance and Blackstone Credit also became a part of the Westland family.
Jamie Lyons, president and COO of Westland Insurance Group, spoke to Insurance Business about the company’s strategies to keep the M&A ball rolling in 2022.
“Our objective is to be Canada’s leading national independent insurance brokerage and we are continuing to expand our footprint through M&A as well as through organic growth,” he said.
“There are a number of areas we look to enhance our business but, more importantly, we want to acknowledge the ways in which the business is changing. To some degree, it’s about positioning yourself to enjoy organic growth.”
Born in British Columbia, Westland has expanded eastward over the past five years, connecting its operations as far as Atlantic Canada. In the prairies and Ontario, the company has completed 30 deals in the last 12 months, acquiring just under 400 employees.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to make some larger acquisitions in Alberta and Manitoba with great commercial portfolios,” Lyons mentioned. “We’re continuing to push forward and serve as many Canadian communities as possible.”
From a strategic standpoint, Westland targets deals in geographies that will further the national expansion of its portfolio. It also seeks deals that will provide growth opportunities in specific segments, such as SME commercial lines.
Lyons said growth in SME commercial business will be a particular area of focus for Westland in 2022, as the brokerage already has a very strong platform to work off.
“We’re also looking at spaces like employee group benefits, which would be a very complementary offering for our commercial lines clients,” he added.
Additionally, Westland will continue looking for digital opportunities to enhance its infrastructure, in order to help existing and new employees facilitate business effectively and efficiently.
“A key area of focus for us right now is to continue providing an excellent client experience via digital transformation,” Lyons said. “When we acquire brokerages, we bring on the technology they’ve been using and convert it with our own technological strategies.”
In some cases, it makes more sense to bring new partners on to Westland’s existing platform, but some agencies have bespoke platforms that provide unique digital opportunities for the entire organization.
“It’s prescriptive in the sense that we want to make sure we’re being as efficient as we can with our own platform across all our operations, including acquired entities, but we have acquired some interesting pieces of technology that have come along with specific brokerages,” Lyons explained.
The pandemic forced many industry leaders to turn business models upside down and embrace a new level of digitalization faster than anticipated. According to Lyons, Westland was no exception.
“As an organization, it was a great opportunity to test our own resiliency and ability to be nimble when responding to evolving customer needs,” he added.
Lyons said it was interesting how the pandemic affected the industry when it came to acquisitions. The geographic limitations that once slowed the M&A process were alleviated with the engagement of virtual mediums.
“We’re really using this time to think thoughtfully about our business by taking a step back and positioning ourselves for the future which takes a lot of discipline,” Lyons told Insurance Business. “For many years we were considered a regional brokerage but now we’re starting to get the Westland name out as a national platform, and we plan to invite more conversations from an M&A perspective. We still see quite a bit of runway in 2022.”
