Financial Services

This is a dynamic and rapidly changing sector with attractive investment opportunities, especially for strong management teams. We are especially interested in certain business models: the separation of 'manufacturing' and 'distribution'; creation of specialised scalable platforms; outsourcing of non-core activities; and sophisticated IP-led businesses.

Bridgepoint has a strong network and experience of this sector's highly specific regulations, and track record and relevant expertise in delivering transactions.

We are particularly attracted to several sub-sectors:

• Asset management - where there is strong growth from good performance and inflows, driven by demographic factors like an ageing and increasingly wealthy population, where businesses can gain market share and scale rapidly.
• Asset gathering/wealth management - we look for scalable business models with wide distribution of product and control of funding flows and where customer reputation, trust and fiduciary responsibility are key to long-term relationships and business success.
• Financial infrastructure, technology and services - where efficient, focused operators can make attractive margins as well as improving costs and service to customers. We are particularly attracted to payment processing, logistics management, back office operations and claims handling businesses.
• Insurance - where there are excellent growth prospects in broking and underwriting through best in class analytics and customer service offers.
• 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.