This article is by Gianluca Berghella, CEO, Armundia Group
Across Europe, the insurance market is going through an intense phase of consolidation. There were 789 transactions announced in 2025, more than 80% of which were concentrated in the intermediary segment – an increase of 14% year on year.
This wave of M&A in the intermediary segment is not driven solely by the pursuit of size, but by the need to fund innovation through capital. But scale alone doesn’t create value. Consolidation only generates value when the buyer can effectively integrate what has been acquired, within the expected timeframe and at the expected cost.
In most cases, this doesn’t happen. I’ll explain why.
The operational integration problem
Most M&A deals in the insurance sector result in a recurring and underestimated problem: every acquisition brings with it disparate systems, unstandardised data, and vital processes that can’t simply be switched off.
In fact, synergies are routinely overestimated at deal stage because the real cost of operational integration is only discovered after closing, when the margin for correction is most expensive.
It leaves the acquirer dealing with opaque portfolios, incompatible legacy systems, and those data and process issues mentioned above. These are structural, recurring challenges that financial models consistently underestimate.
So, when it comes to M&A in insurance, the real differentiating factor — between those who extract value from an acquisition and those left managing its weight — is the ability to address operational integration from day one.
Reading data and connecting systems
To resolve this, what the market lacks isn’t capital nor technology — it’s deep expertise in insurance intermediation processes. All the while deals are managed by financial and legal advisors, nobody consistently covers the operational and technology layer with the sector knowledge required.
What is systematically absent is a partner with deep knowledge of local insurance systems, portfolios and processes. But these partners do exist, bringing with them the ability to enter from day one, read the acquired entity’s data, connect incompatible architectures without replacing them, and ensure operational continuity throughout the transition. The faster and more efficiently insurers can achieve this, the more value they realise after closing.
What a dedicated post-deal integration partner brings to the table is process expertise — knowledge and experience of how to interrogate the data and systems in both organisations, and integrate one into the other. We find the most effective engagement model is a modular one: from post-deal intelligence to migration readiness, from integration programme management to BPO operational support during the critical phases of transition.
The most effective approach also uses technology tools to accelerate rationalisation, improve efficiency and accuracy, and lower risk. For example, technology should be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to data profiling, document extraction from legacy archives, and connectors to carriers and buyer platforms. Insurers who engage a partner are investing in expertise – and technology multiplies its value.
Generate greater value
The key takeaway is this: the value of an acquisition is not determined at closing. It’s determined by the ability to make the acquired portfolio readable, governable, and ready to integrate from day one.
The institutions which generate the most value from their deal are those which engage before closing. They’ve done the leg-work to understand what is being acquired on the technology and operations side. And they understand that operational stability isn’t the end goal in itself, but instead the foundation on which post-integration value is actually built.
As many private equity funds approach the end of their investment cycle in 2026, we’ll see a new wave of exits and ownership changes throughout the rest of the year. The question is, which insurers will realise the true value of their M&A?
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