Bridgepoint

Long-term strategic and structural dynamics in the Financial Services sector are creating attractive investment opportunities, particularly for strong management teams and companies with carefully positioned business models. These include for example the separation of 'manufacturing' and 'distribution'; creation of specialised scaled platforms; outsourcing of non-core activities; and sophisticated analytical IP in combination with a strong customer service philosophy.

Bridgepoint’s track record and experience of the highly specific nature of regulation in the financial services sector means that we can put in place robust and effective financing structures in order to structure our investments so that we can efficiently deliver benefits to all our stakeholders.

Our investment focus in this sector is on strong platforms with defensible market leading positions where we can support strong management teams to secure organic and acquisitive growth.

Within Financial Services we are particularly attracted to a number of sub sectors:

• Consumer and Specialist Finance - where companies using proprietary IP can identify and penetrate customer niches that the general lenders find hard to reach and serve economically.
   
• Financial Infrastructure, technology and Services - where efficient, focused operators have the opportunity to make attractive margins whilst delivering cost and service quality improvements to their customers. Examples of the types of business we are attracted to include payment processing, logistics management, back office operations, trust and fiduciary services, debtor management and debt collection services.
• Insurance - where there are excellent growth prospects in underwriting from disciplined, dynamic capital allocation across niche lines based on best in class analytics and customer service offers. Similarly, in the fragmented insurance broking market, where for smaller specialist providers who are able to leverage IP and service, there are opportunities to secure defensible and valuable niche positions.
• Wealth and Asset Management - where assets under management show strong growth as a result of factors like an ageing and increasingly wealthy population and best in class businesses can capture market share and are highly scaleable.