For smaller brokers looking beyond the UK, accessing new markets can require infrastructure and regulatory capabilities that are difficult to build alone. Marco Capital believes its planned acquisition of Pro Global can help close that gap, giving brokers a route into international markets while expanding the services they can offer clients.
Marco Capital, the parent of PoloWorks, agreed this week to acquire Pro Global, subject to regulatory approval, creating a combined group of roughly 1,400 staff across 15 offices spanning the UK, Europe, North America, Latin America and Australasia.
Speaking to Insurance Business UK, PoloWorks chief executive Paul Andrews and Marco Capital chief executive Simon Minshall said existing broker clients should see no disruption from the planned integration, but argued the bigger opportunity lies in giving them access to capabilities and territories that previously sat beyond PoloWorks' largely UK-focused footprint.
Andrews said Pro Global's presence across markets including London, New York, Cologne, Buenos Aires and São Paulo changes PoloWorks' geographic reach "in a single pen stroke".
He framed that as a direct response to some of the practical barriers facing brokers looking to expand. Increased Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) scrutiny of how principals manage their appointed representatives, alongside the additional complexity of accessing European and other international markets since Brexit, has made entering new territories more difficult.
"We can become a great enabler" for brokers that lack the scale to enter those markets independently, Andrews said, identifying smaller firms as a natural audience for that support.
Minshall said the opportunity also extends to the services brokers can offer their own clients, including managing general agents (MGAs), captive insurers, prospective Lloyd's syndicates and businesses requiring US claims support.
"A lot of the syndicates come through brokers," he said, "as do captives, as do legacy transactions. So the opportunity set for brokers just to meet their clients' needs with us is now bigger."
For smaller firms in particular, that potentially changes the calculation around international growth. Rather than building the infrastructure required to operate in individual territories themselves, brokers could use the combined group's existing footprint to support clients across a wider range of markets.
The same principle could extend to brokers starting businesses of their own. Alongside MGA incubation through Pro MGA, syndicate and MGA incubation via Polo Managing Agency (PMA) and a Guernsey-based captive operation, Andrews revealed a broker startup incubation capability that has not yet been formally taken to market.
He pointed to movement among senior broking teams across the market as a potential source of demand, with individuals who control established client relationships increasingly having the opportunity to establish businesses independently.
The plan, Andrews said, is to combine client finance capabilities with existing systems, including the DXC Assured platform, to support those businesses, with a broader go-to-market push targeted for next year.
For prospective broker founders, the proposition is similar to the international access opportunity: providing infrastructure that would otherwise require significant investment to build independently.
The question for brokers is whether that greater access can be delivered without losing the specialist service they already receive.
Andrews was direct about the standard he expects the combined business to be held to. "Nothing's going to change – that's what they should judge us on," he said.
"We're going to make sure our broking clients are experiencing the same excellent service they've always had. If anything, there's an opportunity for us to talk about additional ways that we can bring new people, process and technology to that. So it should be an enhancement, not a deterioration. At worst, business as usual, at best an enhancement of our capability that will help them."
Andrews argued that Marco Capital's approach to expansion is "proposition-led" rather than focused simply on adding revenue streams, with acquisitions intended to build complementary capabilities around a defined strategy.
That distinction matters as the insurance market continues to debate what consolidation actually delivers for clients. Greater scale can create access to technology, expertise and international infrastructure, but brokers will ultimately judge it on whether those benefits translate into better service.
Minshall said the businesses will be integrated quickly rather than operating indefinitely in parallel, while Andrews said formal change control is under way and planning for a combined 2027 strategy will begin in the final quarter of this year.
"This isn't a case of what are we going to do over the next two years," Andrews said. "We know what we're going to do. We've just got to action that."
For brokers, the test will be whether the combined business can genuinely make international markets and specialist capabilities easier to access without adding another layer of complexity between them and their clients.
