London-headquartered managing general agent Volante Global has been snapped up by Michigan-based fintech Acrisure for an undisclosed sum.
“Volante was compelling to Acrisure, given its diverse portfolio of risk, unique model providing optimal alignment with underwriting capital, and depth of underwriting talent,” said Acrisure’s global insurance president Grahame Millwater.
“Talbir has been a colleague and client of mine for over 20 years, and I have the utmost respect for his values, work ethic, and underwriting and analytical excellence. I am delighted to welcome Volante to Acrisure as we continue our journey of building a unique distribution platform with an ability to take our risk portfolio to multiple forms of underwriting capital.”
Millwater was referring to Volante founder and chief executive Talbir Bains (pictured), who set up the multi-class and multi-territory international MGA platform in 2017. The business was previously backed by Markel Corporation subsidiary Nephila Holdings Ltd.
Nephila founder and co-CEO Frank Majors commented: “We are delighted for Volante and Acrisure on their new partnership. When Talbir approached us in 2017 for investment capital, we were confident in his abilities as a leader, an entrepreneur, and an underwriter.
“He has achieved tremendous success much faster than we could have imagined, and we are thrilled he has identified a new partnership in Acrisure that will enable him to achieve even greater success in the future.”
Under the deal, financial terms of which were not revealed, Acrisure is acquiring all of Volante’s brands. These include Aesir Space, Horizon Europe AG, as well as Volante Canada and Volante Germany.
Acrisure co-founder, chief executive, and president Greg Williams had this to say: “Volante is an important strategic component of Acrisure’s ambitious MGA strategy and accelerates our value chain compression initiative. In particular, we value Volante for being highly skilled underwriters in an entrepreneurial culture given it’s a founder-led company under Talbir Bains.
“Talbir has grown a highly profitable and financially attractive platform in a short period of time. Reaching $350 million of premium in just three years is no small feat, and we expect this number to increase substantially over the next few years.”
Bains, meanwhile, had nice words for both Volante’s ex-majority investor and new owner.
He stated: “Nephila has been an outstanding investor, and we’ve cherished working together the past four years. When the exploratory process began in 2021, our objective was to ensure that future ownership would match the alignment that we’ve defined and delivered to capital providers.
“From my first conversation with Greg Williams and Grahame Millwater, it was clear that Acrisure was the perfect partner for this next phase, where Volante’s underwriting integrity and risk intelligence will both be sacrosanct and empowered, respectively. Joining Acrisure will spur Volante’s growth, predicated on delivering the highest underwriting margin to our capital providers.”
Volante, which has a presence in seven countries, expects its premiums to reach about $1 billion by 2025.
