Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) has boosted its professional indemnity (PI) offering with the acquisition of Martello Underwriting for £38.5m.
PI agency Martello trades as PI Direct, PI Brokerlink, Magian Underwriting and Saturn, and has a significant market share in the SME sector.
R&SA UK chief executive Bridget McIntyre said the deal was an "ideal opportunity" for the insurer to strengthen its position in the PI market, creating "an attractive platform from which to drive profitable growth".
R&SA is already a major capacity provider to Martello and, following the change of ownership, it will become the sole capacity provider across all of Martello's lines of business.
"This deal provides not only uniformity and continuity of underwriting capacity, but the opportunity to bring new products to brokers and customers which will help us in our next phase of development," said Martello chief executive Michael Wood.
Martello said there would initially be no job cuts at Martello but once the FSA had approved the deal, they would look at the "best way to make the relationship work".
