ECI Partners has reinvested in Avantia, a new investment for its ECI 11 fund delivering a full realisation for ECI 9.
Avantia is a high-growth virtual insurer, with world-class machine learning technology and a data-led decisioning platform. Its cutting-edge technology gives it the most effective online quotability of any household insurer in the UK, via its brand, HomeProtect. It returns a quote to over 98% of applicants in under one second, with c80 per cent of its new customers in what other insurers would deem to be ‘difficult to insure’ risk categories.
Since ECI’s investment, the business has invested heavily in its technology platform and predictive capabilities, with EBITDA doubling in the last four years to over £10m, whilst at the same time delivering consistent market leading loss ratio performance.
David Ewing, Managing Partner at ECI, comments: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to reinvest in Avantia and its management team following a strong period of growth. Avantia’s excellent customer retention, proven resilience during the pandemic, and the exciting potential to roll out its decisioning capabilities across more of its chosen insurance segments, makes it a unique proposition in the insurance space.”
Mark Eastham, CEO at Avantia, says: “We are very much looking forward to continuing our successful partnership with ECI who have a deep understanding of our market and recognise the potential for substantial further growth. We have developed a unique data-led decisioning platform at Avantia and there are significant opportunities to deploy this further across the value chain. We look forward to the next stage of our journey in partnership with ECI.”
This realisation is the last exit from ECI’s 2010 vintage ECI 9 Fund and is the tenth exit from the fund to generate a gross multiple of over 3x.
The transaction is supported by senior finance from HSBC and completion is subject to FCA approval.
