After snapping up UK motor and home insurance provider esure in a £1.21 billion take-private deal in 2018, private equity firm Bain Capital is reportedly looking to sell.
According to Reuters sources, advisers such as Fenchurch have been tapped for a possible transaction. One of them pointed out that, based on a positive earnings outlook for esure, the insurer could be worth at least £1 billion.
Earlier this year, esure completed its transformation programme, which featured the transfer of the company’s entire portfolio onto its new cloud-native platform. A total of 1.8 million policies and 248,000 claims were migrated.
“The completion of our complex, multi-year digital transformation programme in the first half of 2024 is a significant milestone for esure,” chief executive David McMillan said in August.
“The migration of all our customers onto esure’s highly flexible and scalable cloud-native platform means we can now shift our focus to realising its immense opportunities: bringing consistently better experiences for customers and delivering operational improvements for the business to support future growth.”
In the first half, esure’s turnover grew by 17% to £540.5 million.
“We have maintained our focus on the core fundamentals of pricing, underwriting, and claims management in the face of the challenging market conditions that continue to impact the industry,” the esure CEO highlighted at the time.
“This prudent approach has positioned us well, seeing us strengthen profitability and enjoy significantly improved home new business performance, with a strong trajectory ahead of us.”
Meanwhile, Ageas, the Belgian insurer that recently explored the opportunity of discussing a possible takeover deal with Direct Line Insurance Group (DLG), is said to be among the prospective bidders for esure.
In March, DLG turned down a second non-binding indicative proposal from Ageas, pushing the latter to move on without making an official offer.
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