Generali expands into Portugal with two acquisitions worth €600m in total

Global insurer Generali has agreed two acquisition deals worth a total of €600 million to become the second largest non-life group in Portugal with a market share of 18.7 percent, making it the third largest business in the market.

Its acquisition of Seguradoras Unidas for €510 million and AdvanceCare for €90 million consolidates the insurer’s leadership in Europe which is part of its 2021 strategy.

Seguradoras Unidas, the second largest non-life business operator in Portugal, has a 15.5 percent segment market share and also operates in the Life segment. In 2018, it published total gross insurance premiums of about €800 million.

The transaction will allow Generali to leverage the Portuguese operator’s agency network in the Life segment to develop protection products, to support Generali’s growth strategy.

The purchase of healthcare service platform AdvanceCare, which is Portugal’s second largest private operator with a market share of around 30 percent, will enable the global insurer to increase service-based revenues using the company's capital light fee business as a scalable model in other countries.

The insurer said the acquisition of these two assets aligns with Generali’s capital redeployment strategy in "disciplined M&A to support profitable growth".

Jaime Anchústegui Melgarejo, CEO international at Generali, said: "The transaction will enable us to optimise our strategic positioning in the country, to capture future growth opportunities, to achieve significant cost synergies through the integration of Generali Portugal and Seguradoras Unidas and to ensure the operational solidity of Europ Assistance in the Portuguese market. "The acquisition of AdvanceCare, which has a diversified institutional customer base, will also help the group to acquire strong know-how in the healthcare sector and a scalable platform to develop in other countries.

"These acquisitions are an important step in the implementation of the group's three-year strategy, which aims to strengthen our leadership in Europe.”

The deal agreed with Calm Eagle Holdings Sárl and Calm Eagle Parent Holdings II Sárl, which are both entities that are majority owned by investment funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management, is subject to closing adjustments.

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