’We’ve been very active still and the M&A team are looking forward to working with Bain Capital and making more announcements,’ says chief executive
While Jensten Group has completed dozens of acquisitions to date, chief executive Rob Organ was keen to highlight that the firm “haven’t been asleep at the wheel” over M&A in 2025 during a recent interview with Insurance Times – and adds that he is looking forward to doing more deals with new backer Bain Capital.
At the start of September 2025, it was announced that Bain Capital was to acquire Jensten Group through its insurance investing platform.
As part of the deal, the private investment firm will work closely with Jensten Group on its M&A strategy.
To date, Jensten Group, which operates across retail, wholesale and MGA segments, has completed 37 acquisitions, including 14 from its own franchise network.
Speaking to Insurance Times, Organ says he saw a report stating that his firm had seen a “slow down” in M&A, claiming that had not completed any deals during ”the thick end of the year”.
“That’s not true,” Organ is quick to highlight.
“I thought it was eight, but it’s actually 10 businesses that we’ve acquired since August last year, so still running at about one a month.”
Currently, Jensten Group has an operational presence in the east – via sites in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire – Thames Valley, Cumbria, London and the south east, the Midlands, Cheshire, south England, Yorkshire and Humberside and Ireland.
As part of its M&A strategy, the insurance distribution firm is currently focused on building out its regional operating footprint throughout the UK.
Organ acknowledges that his firm has not recently acquired “such large businesses of scale that we did in the early days to accelerate the growth”, but that the goal is to “build out around those regions”, having established its regional footprint.
“So, smaller, local acquisitions complementing and joining our current and existing regional teams,” Organ says.
“We haven’t been asleep at the wheel there. We’ve been very active still and the M&A team are looking forward to working with Bain Capital and making more announcements, which I’m hopeful we’ll do very soon.”
Capital on board
Organ became chief executive at Jensten Group in November 2024, succeeding Alistair Hardie, who had led the business since 2020.
Read: Former Esure owner agrees to acquire Jensten Group in major deal
Read: Jensten’s chief executive on ‘what’s next’ for growing broker
Explore more M&A-related content here, or discover other interview stories here
He originally joined Jensten in 2021 following the group’s acquisition of broker Tasker Insurance Group, where he had worked as chief executive since 2017.
He was made managing director of Jensten Retail as part of this transaction, before being made chief executive of broking at Jensten Group in May 2024.
During this time, Jensten Group was backed by Livingbridge, with the firm helping accelerate its transformation into a UK insurance distribution platform.
Organ says: “Livingbridge has been a great partner for the business.
“Where we were to where we are, Livingbridge has absolutely helped Jensten, supported Jensten and enabled Jensten to be what it is today and that’s something that we’re really proud of.”
Organ goes onto say that, when looking for a new backer, Jensten wanted a firm that was “excited about the future and the opportunity that we see”.
“Bain Capital are a great partner,” he says.
“The size and scale speaks volumes for them, in terms of them being able to take us from where we are today to where we’re hoping to get to in three to five years’ time and beyond.”
In addition to providing money, Bain Capital also has experience helping an insurance firm grow – for example, it looked after Esure as it went through its multiyear transformation.
Bain Capital went onto sell Esure for £1.3bn in April 2025 to Ageas UK, with the deal being completed at the end of September.
Organ says: “That was one of the sort of case studies where they demonstrated that they were a good partner for a business. They could see the opportunity for Esure.
“I’ve met [former Esure chief executive] David McMillan and chatted to him about what it was like working with Bain Capital and he was very complimentary about them as a partner.”
Through its new deal, Bain Capital will partner closely with the Jensten Group management team to invest in sales and distribution, technology and operations to further enhance the company’s client service offering and drive margin expansion.
“The team that we’re working with are insurance specialists, so they know the sector and they recognise what good looks like,” Organ says.
“They’ve got experience in working with other businesses, both in the UK and Ireland, as well as globally. The fund that’s invested in us is a specific insurance fund, so they’ve got scale, they’ve got proven capability and they’ve got a real desire to make a difference.
“They’ll bring some of that learned knowledge with them into the boardroom.”
Working together
The Bain Capital transaction is expected to close in Q4 2025. Terms were not disclosed.
Organ says that one of the first priorities they addressed when organising the deal was to make sure “that we were 100% clear, on both sides, that we are absolutely on the same page and we’re working to the same set of plans and principles, so there’s absolutely no confusion as to what we’re looking to achieve over the coming years”.
He adds “that they’ll, quite rightly, [say that] now is the time for us to focus on some things that they’ve also identified”.
However, he goes onto say: “They absolutely back the plans that we had. We’re still aiming to achieve pretty much what I’ve set out before around strong organic growth into the future and complement that with selective M&A to build out the business.”
In the most recent Insurance Times Top 50 Brokers report, published in December 2024, the broker fell two places to 38th spot, despite increasing its revenue to £46.3m.
This fall in position was more due to other brokers growing at a faster rate, however, and Organ feels that bringing Bain Capital on board now is “perfect timing”.
He says: “We’ve done the heavy lifting, we’ve created the business and now it is time to accelerate on, focusing more on organic growth, as well as acquisitions.
“Whereas to date, it would be busy building. We’ve got that platform to springboard off from as we look down the line into this next chapter.”
His career began in 2019, when he joined a local north London newspaper after graduating from the University of Sheffield with a first-class honours degree in journalism.
He took up the position of deputy news editor at Insurance Times in March 2023, before being promoted to his current role in May 2024.View full Profile
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