A Fylde Coast insurance broker has completed its first acquisition since taking on private credit backing, with an ambition to become a much bigger national player over the next few years.
Tower Insurance Brokers, headquartered in Lytham, has bought Wilmslow-based Riskworks in a deal that pushes its gross written premium past £40 million. Riskworks adds more than £5 million of GWP to the group. Combined with the organic growth Tower says it has been putting up, the firm believes it can build toward somewhere between £75 million and £100 million in GWP - enough to shift it from a regional operator into something closer to a national one.
Tower is not a new business, even though this is its first bolt-on deal. Founded in Lytham in 2017 by Tim Forshaw, who left global broker Gallagher to build the business from the ground up, the firm has grown to a 52-strong team, largely through direct new business rather than acquisitions. That changed after TDC, a private credit investor, put a multi-million-pound growth facility behind Tower late last year - funding earmarked for acquisitions as well as continued organic growth.
Riskworks has been trading in Wilmslow for well over two decades under Nick Gray and Stuart Chandler. According to Riskworks' own company history, Gray is the third generation of his family in broking - his grandfather and father both worked at the old North West firm William Heap & Son before it was absorbed into Sedgwick in the 1970s.
Riskworks has also built a working relationship with global broker Marsh and sits within the Hedron Network, specialising in high-net-worth, energy, food and technology risks alongside a private client book. Under Tower's ownership, Riskworks keeps its own branding and its staff transfer across, with the firm set to become Tower's centre of excellence for high-net-worth business. Gray is staying on to support the handover.
Tim Forshaw, who founded and runs Tower, described Riskworks as a "well-established business with good people and a strong reputation," adding that the deal sharpens Tower's high-net-worth and energy capability while extending its reach across Greater Manchester. He also said the firm has "a healthy pipeline of further acquisition opportunities."
Gray pointed to shared values between the two firms and highlighted Tower's in-house claims team as a factor in the decision to sell.
Tower's deal sits inside a much larger wave of UK broker consolidation. Recent North West examples include Seventeen Group's acquisition of two brokers into its James Hallam division and Ardonagh Advisory's purchase of Blackpool broker Anderson & Co.
What is different here is how it is funded. The biggest names in broker consolidation - Ardonagh, Global Risk Partners, Seventeen Group - have largely grown on private equity, exchanging equity for acquisition capital. Tower instead took on debt from TDC, letting Forshaw and the existing shareholders keep more control of the business while still having money for deals.
Accountancy firm PEM has been tracking this shift across the UK mid-market more broadly, noting that private credit has become "the most significant structural shift in acquisition finance" for owner-managed firms as interest rates have eased from their 2023 peak.
The timing lines up with what M&A advisory firm MarshBerry has been reporting about the broader UK insurance distribution market: deal sizes have been trending smaller over the past five years even as overall headcount acquired through M&A holds up - a pattern that leaves room for smaller, debt-backed buyers like Tower alongside the bigger, PE-funded consolidators.
Tower was advised by corporate finance firm Dow Schofield Watts (Gregg Pendlington, Jack Keoghan and Ben McKie), law firm DWF (Jonathan Robinson and Alec Mackenzie) and tax adviser Peter Hully of Claritas.
