BMS turns focus back on London

Insurance Day - 29 June 2009

The BMS Group has been focusing its attention on building and consolidating its presence in the US market in recent years but is now ready to turn its attention back to London, its chairman, Hugo Crawley (pictured), told Insurance Day.

He explained the group was especially keen on cementing its insurance presence. At present, BMS’s business mix is 55% reinsurance, 20% delegated authority business and 25% specialist insurance business. The group expects the insurance element to increase, while the delegated authority segment is likely to reduce somewhat.

“There will be opportunities on the insurance side,” he said. “Particularly, there will be things coming up this year that will give us the opportunity to grow our London platform again.”

Crawley explained: “We’ve been focused on building a reinsurance broker in America over the past three to four years but there’s an opportunity here in London again. With the consolidation and increasing requirements and costs of the FSA [Financial Services Authority], we see an opportunity in terms of looking for and finding other smaller and specialist businesses in this market.”

BMS’s group managing director, Roger Cooper, said the group was looking at a combination of “small acquisitions” and picking up individual teams in London in the short term. In the US, the focus would be on finding individuals to join the current structure, he said.

Cooper added that the funding for any acquisitions this year would come out of existing reserves and its profits.

For 2008, BMS achieved a profit of £1.5m ($2.5m) on revenue of £42.6m. The year saw a significant revamp of the BMS board, including the appointment of Crawley as chairman. At the same time, BMS added what Crawley described as “more practitioners” to the board.

BMS also successfully licensed its US operations as a Lloyd’s broker in its own right, allowing it to place and service business into London seamlessly on behalf of clients from the US.