Boston-headquartered private equity firm ABRY Partners LLC will make its seventh platform investment into insurance services with the pending acquisition of insurance broker Portfolio Holding Inc., according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.
ABRY announced the deal Aug. 19 and is looking to expand nationally the footprint of Lake Forest, Calif.-based Portfolio Holdings, which provides insurance products and services to automotive dealers. ABRY will become the target's third private equity investor as it is purchasing the company from Capital Z Partners, which acquired Portfolio Holding from Frontenac Co. LLC in 2016.

Private equity firms have taken a keen interest in the insurance brokerage industry, which offers cash-generative investments in a sector ripe for consolidation. There were 312 acquisition announcements in the first half of 2019, according to Market Intelligence data of U.S.-based entities and books of business classified as being in the insurance broker or agency space. Private equity-backed brokers accounted for approximately half of those deals.
ABRY's earliest investment in the insurance brokerage industry was its acquisition of claims-handling provider York Risk Services Group Inc. in 2010, according to Market Intelligence data. It sold its majority equity interest in the business in 2014 to Onex Corp. in a $1.33 billion deal.
More recently ABRY exited its investment in NSM Insurance Group Inc. through a deal with White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd. in 2018. ABRY has a long history with NSM, the insurance program administrator. The firm first invested in NSM in 2012 before it agreed to exit the business to a subsidiary of American International Group Inc. in 2015. Just over a year later, AIG sold its 95% stake in NSM the business back to ABRY.
Twenty-year-old firm ABRY is currently deploying its $2.1 billion ninth flagship private equity fund, which targets investments from $50 million to $200 million and has the ability to make larger investments through partnerships with its LPs. Its latest vehicle is 11% larger than its predecessor vehicle which closed on $1.9 billion in 2014.
