Benjamin Verlingue: Fourth generation leader emphasises ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ underpinning UK and European operations

Working alongside his sister at an insurance broker and following in the professional footsteps of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, one could certainly be forgiven for thinking that Benjamin Verlingue – chairman at European broker Verlingue, as well as chairman and chief executive at its France-headquartered parent company Adelaide Group – is yet another victim of the insurance industry’s rhetoric that its hires fall into their careers, rather than actively choosing their job roles.

Verlingue’s great grandfather, Jules, started his insurance career back in 1933, establishing the eponymous broking business. His son and Verlingue’s grandfather, Jean-Yves, joined the firm in 1946, with Verlingue’s father, Jacques, taking up the professional mantle in 1994.

Verlingue, alongside his sister Audrey Verlingue – the company’s deputy chief executive – entered the firm’s family fold in 2012.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times, Verlingue admits that although he was already “joining the Christmas party pretty early”, it was indeed his choice that he opted for an insurance career and to start work at Verlingue.

“I worked previously in other [industries] before deciding to enter the family business,” he says.

“So, it was really a choice. Probably not the easy one, but I would say the more interesting one, to be able to take over a business, especially in a growing time. It’s exciting to be able to design something. I’m not sure that I would [have taken] over this responsibility if it was just to run a business.”

In 2023, the family owned Adelaide Group celebrated its 90^th anniversary. The following year, in June, Verlingue stepped up to take on the business’ leadership after a stint learning the ropes by managing client portfolios.

With an organisational heritage rich with relatives’ leadership styles, Verlingue is keen to both “respect the legacy” while “looking forward and making sure that we have this useful impact”.

He explains: “I don’t feel 90 years [of] pressure. The way we are doing business today is not the same as we were doing 10 years ago and [is not the same as how we are] going to do [business] tomorrow.

“One [thing] that has not really changed [over these years] is [that we] think [an] insurance brokerage is a useful business. In a time of uncertainty, time of tension, geopolitical issues, we [are] proud to help people.

“We have a strong DNA of growth and creating value for clients, which are mostly mid-market, upper mid-market and large companies. In 10 years, we [have] tripled our size [and become more] international.

“It was pretty natural to take over the chairmanship and to be able to open this new chapter. I have the chance to take over a healthy business and, at the same time, we know for sure that in 10 years from now, the playbook won’t be exactly the same. And so, for me, one of the key factors of accepting this position was to have this entrepreneurial spirit, [work with] great teams and be able to have a real plan.”

A better financial future

The “real plan” Verlingue references here is the firm’s three-year Better Future 2028 strategy – internal work on the four pillar plan started as soon as Verlingue got his feet under the leadership table in June 2024, with the strategy formally launching across the broader group, including in the UK, in January 2025.

Verlingue describes the strategy as “pretty ambitious”, with designs to double the size of the business across the next three years while focusing on four ringfenced stakeholders – the firm’s clients and employees, as well as the group itself, and the environment.

“It will be a lot of new challenges, but I’m sure that we have all the right people and fundamentals to be really confident in achieving this project,” Verlingue notes.

In terms of what the Better Future strategy looks like numerically, Adelaide Groups hopes “to achieve turnover of €800m (£684m) by 2028” – according to its 2024 full-year financial results, published in April 2025.

This builds on the 12.5% uptick in turnover the group reported for 2024, to reach €450m (£385m).

This figure takes into account Adelaide Group’s operations across five countries – France, UK, Switzerland, Portugal and Italy – performed by 2,900 total staff. The Verlingue business specifically has around 1,600 employees.

Verlingue attributes last year’s turnover improvement to a combination of organic and acquisitional growth – he adds that around 10% of the 12.5% turnover boost is a direct result of organic growth.

This trend is mirrored in Verlingue’s UK business, which is led by chief executive Mike Latham.

Speaking alongside Verlingue, Latham tells Insurance Times: “The UK business last year grew by just short of 14%. Organically, it was 8.2%.

“That, for us, is the platform to [create a] successful organisation – being good at winning clients, being good at retaining clients, being good at attracting talent – and then [acquisitions] will just give you that additional boost that you need to maybe get different talent, different locations.

“For us, it’s never about acquiring just income. It’s about building extra strength into the plan.”

Latham hopes to recruit or acquire an employee benefits team to sit with the four insurance professionals based out of Birmingham, as well as acquire “broking capability” to add to the Gloucester-based employee benefits team of 12, as examples of this possible additional strength.

Latham adds that although profitability in the UK arm “is slightly less” than Verlingue would perhaps like, it is still “around the 20% mark, which is a good level of profitability”.

He continues: “It gives us [the] opportunity to improve that profitability, but also continue to invest in the business.”

Considering the Continent

For Latham, Verlingue in the UK does not simply rely on its European parent for financial firepower or internal infrastructure – in fact, the business has adopted a commercial strategy that is common in the Continent, but lesser known on British soil.

This includes the broking of insurance and employee benefits being more closely interwoven and sold to clients as a package, rather than being delivered as separate propositions. Being able to create this type of multifaceted proposition also aligns with Verlingue UK’s ambition to attract larger clientele.

For example, 60% of the new clients Verlingue UK secured in 2024 brought the broker income “in excess of £20,000”. For 2025, however, the broker’s clients are paying up to £300,000 a year for insurance and employee benefits, with a third of the firm’s portfolio specifically purchasing these two product sets together.

“There’s an opportunity to bring employee benefits and insurance broking together in the UK,” Latham explains.

“They do it naturally in the Continent – very well in France, very well in Switzerland. In the UK, it seems to be just separate silos.”

Latham believes that in the UK, only three or four brokers are able to pull together the amalgamation of services that Verlingue UK has on offer, including access to the London market, employee benefits provisions and risk management expertise.

He describes this landscape, therefore, as a “great opportunity” for Verlingue UK.

He continues: “There’s a huge opportunity. Acquisitions [have] created a void between global brokers and smaller, independent brokers, where clients are not getting necessarily the choice – where [clients are] not a huge company, but still a very significant company, where they need wider services, but also a good level of engagement.

“If you go back [to] 2007, Verlingue in the UK was effectively a receiver of international business. It then became a producer of its own business, but it started on the smaller scale, but each year it becomes bigger and bigger and more capable by investing into talent and propositions.

“The UK is on a journey.”

Verlingue agrees that the UK is “a huge market” in terms of insurance and is certainly a geography that the broker wants “to be strong in”. He adds that the broker very much picks its battles when choosing territories because “where we go, we really want to be strong” and have “leverage”.

Therefore, if the business cannot obtain a certain internal scale in a chosen marketplace, then it will opt for a strategic partnership approach instead, Verlingue explains.

He continues: “We want to be a key player in the UK. It’s also making sure that [the] UK [business] can provide capacity and expertise for the different entities of Verlingue [globally] – we have many clients in Continental Europe with complex risks that can be helped by the UK team.”