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When PIB Group decided to make its 19th acquisition at the end of February, of Irish Optis Insurance, there were two main reasons: the people, and Brexit.
CEO Brendon McManus (pictured) said that whenever PIB is deciding to make another business part of the group, the culture and people is always essential in the decision making, so that was one of the first things he considered.
“I met the people and really liked them, we liked their business, the way they ran it, we liked the technology they used,” he explained. “So, it was all based on the fact that they have a good business and we liked the people and we thought it was a good idea to invest.”
Strategically, however, the CEO admits that having a business in Ireland was a good move considering the soon-to-be exit of the UK from the EU.
“Because we have a revenue in euros, we thought it was also useful to have an EU-regulated insurance business - that it would give us some protection in the event that Brexit created some challenges,” McManus said. “Those were the two reasons. Firstly, we loved the people and liked the business and secondly it was a Brexit contingency.”
When it comes to Brexit, although McManus and PIB did acquire Optis to ensure they could still have EU trade after the end of March, he isn’t as worried about the issue overall as some others.
“I don’t fundamentally believe that Brexit will cause a problem for our business. I think it’s a temporary difficulty. It’s irritating and I wish we had more certainty,” he said.
McManus believes that the major issue with Brexit is that because people don’t have any detail yet, due to the inability to negotiate a deal agreed on by all parties, it has held back investment, which, in turn, has hurt the economy and the industry.
“The reason for that is that I think it’s holding back investment, insurance broking, GDP growth,” he explained. “If people don’t invest, if they don’t sell, then probably a few months later insurance broking gets the back end of that. So, I think Brexit is holding back investment which holds back our business a little bit.”
But he did add that that it hasn’t been all bad for the industry.
“Nevertheless, we still have really good growth - but I think it could be even better if we didn’t have the Brexit cloud hanging over us,” McManus said.
“In terms of the impact of Brexit going forward I think it’s almost entirely economic - once the solution is announced and people start investing again, we’re fine.”
PIB’s plan is already in place, as with many other companies in the industry. Contingency plans have been made, and risks assessed.
“PIB is pretty well heavily protected against any outcome to be honest with you,” he said. “We’ve talked it through, we’ve got plans, we’ll be able to protect our euro business, our UK business is in great shape and growing very well. I wish we didn’t have Brexit but we’ve got to cope with it while it’s there.”
Indeed McManus and PIB are extremely optimistic about their future, with positive numbers and lots of plans for the coming year.
“We had a really good start to the year - January and February are looking really great and we’ve got a lot of plans to invest in better technology which are well underway for 2019,” the CEO said.
“We have a lot of plans to acquire new businesses and those plans are well advanced, and we will announce them throughout the year. We’re pretty excited about 2019.”
