Rothbury Insurance Brokers has put a name and a structure around something it has been doing quietly for three decades: taking equity in, and often eventually buying out, New Zealand's independent broker-owners.
The programme, Evolve, sets out five partnership pathways that sit between a broker-owner keeping full ownership and a conventional trade sale. Managing director Roger Abel (pictured) said Rothbury soft-launched it around June 2026 and is only now lifting the pace, after a period in which a senior and very active member of the team retired and the company paused to regroup.
"And so Evolve is really us applying our mind, a fresh approach to maybe not an old problem, but just a different way and a broader way and a more targeted clearer way of communicating than we've had before," Abel said.
The framing matters because the activity is not new. Abel joined the business in 1992 when it had three people and said Rothbury has grown through partnership deals ever since.
"When I got involved in the business in 1992, there were three of us. And so, I understand the DNA of a small business, and we've grown over time by partnering up," he said. "And I've almost never used the word acquisition, because I've always seen it as being partnership, and yet that doesn't mean that we're communicating as easily."
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By his account the business now employs around 500 people and still has about 30 shareholders sitting around it, and completed 22 partnership transactions in an eight-year period he assessed roughly 18 months ago. Rothbury did not provide documentation for those figures, which are Abel's own.
The acquisitive record is on the public file in any case. Rothbury has absorbed Wilkinson's, TSI, Ascot and, in March 2024, Austinsure – a deal notable because the seller was Steadfast Group NZ Holdings, the New Zealand arm of a company that is itself a Rothbury shareholder. That transaction was confirmed alongside leadership changes announced at Rothbury in 2024.
The assumption that small brokerages sell to get wider insurer access is, on Abel's telling, mostly wrong. Asked directly whether joining Rothbury means access to a wider insurer panel, he said the answer only emerges once you interrogate what the owner is actually struggling with.
"When we assume that they're coming to us for access to more insurers, we actually find they're coming because risk and compliance is getting in their way," he said. "Or leadership isn't their favourite thing, and they are better brokers than they are managers, and it's driving them crazy. And so, it's only in the questioning that we find out what's getting under their skin."
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He added that scale has opened up insurer panels, technology, marketing leverage and career pathways, but returned to a phrase he has used for years: biggest isn't best.
That reading is consistent with what Rothbury's own former owners say. Garry Bray, who sold TSI Insurance Brokers, is quoted in material supplied by the company saying: "I wasn't actively looking to sell, but I knew it was important to understand my options - this gave me clarity and a path forward without pressure." Bray was not approached by Insurance Business independently and his comments were provided by Rothbury.
Of the five pathways, the one that looks materially different is where Rothbury takes a shareholding but the target keeps its own brand and systems.
"In the past, if I go back ten years, everybody that joined us, it was always our brand," Abel said. "Whereas at Cornerstone, we've got involvement. We are a shareholder. It's on the public record. But it's not the Rothbury business. It's not running our processes and our systems and technology. We're giving it some influence and expertise."
He cited a recent case in which one of three partners exited and the other two stayed in under that structure and said the two remaining owners had been in the Rothbury office the week before the interview. He also described a hybrid deal involving a Wellington broker who bought her employer's book and then brought it to Rothbury herself.
The pitch for Evolve is flexibility – options short of a full exit. The evidence Rothbury supplied to support it points the other way. Of five broker experiences the company put forward, three ended with the owner leaving the business entirely. Mark Gilbert of Ascot and Garry Bray of TSI are both recorded as full buyouts who did not work at Rothbury afterwards. Shane McPhee of SMIS stayed about two years before retiring.
Asked how many owners remain in the business, Abel did not give a breakdown by pathway, but rejected the characterisation that this is simply retirement planning with extra steps.
"And no, it isn't only a pathway to retirement," he said. "There are absolutely younger people within the business who have come in and been part of a partnership – let's just say partnership acquisition – that are quite a long way away from exiting and they've seen opportunities with either longer-term succession, having a partner."
Note his own parenthesis. Rothbury has not published the number of owners currently sitting in a structure other than a full ownership transfer, and Insurance Business has asked for it. The question is live for anyone weighing an approach, particularly given the retirement of long-serving executive general manager Paul Munton, the relationship most of Rothbury's former owners name as the reason they did the deal.
Abel closed with a line he picked up from All Blacks mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka at a Steadfast New Zealand conference: one size fits one. He offered it as a description of how the five pathways work in practice – that each deal ends up bespoke regardless of which box it starts in.
It is a fair description of a market where compliance cost, technology spend and staffing are doing more to push owners towards a conversation than premium conditions are. Rothbury's own analysis has pointed to New Zealand premium rates levelling off after several hard years, which removes one of the easier routes to revenue growth for a small independent.
Brokers considering an approach should ask for the pathway-by-pathway numbers, ask whether any partial structure has ever been unwound at the owner's request and ask what happens to the arrangement if Rothbury’s own shareholder register changes.
