Howden boosts revenue in 2023 despite seeing less organic growth

Howden Group Holdings grew its revenue by 33% in 2023 despite seeing less organic growth than in 2022.

The broker’s FY 23 figures showed that revenue grew from £1.84bn to £2.44bn year-on-year, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) increased from £599m to £780m during the same period.

This was driven by an organic growth of 13% during 2023 – Howden put this down to its employee ownership model helping “retain and win new clients”.

Organic growth was not as high as what it was in 2022, however. During that year, the broker secured a figure of 19%, which was the same total for 2021.

Despite this, Howden chief executive David Howden said that his firm was delivering “standout organic growth” over the long-term by “consistently and relentlessly executing on a strategy to attract and empower the best talent”.

“If we look back just three years, when we had just broken through the £1bn revenue mark, we set out our intentions to be a leader in our home market, the UK, to be strong in reinsurance, to strengthen our European platform and to accelerate our global specialty business,” he said.

“Three years later and we are the second largest insurance broker in the UK, we have moved to become one of the four top tier reinsurance brokers and we’re the largest independent global player in Europe – and in global specialty we have hired hundreds of people across the world creating a team of 2,000.”

Changes

Howden also confirmed that it completed 56 acquisitions during 2023, up from the 31 announced in 2022.

The firm also made several changes during the year, one of which was adopting a single brand name and visual identity for its broking operations.

This included the rebranding of acquired firms, UK branches, offices around the world and websites to Howden.

It also announced a new management structure to unify operations – this sees the insurance broking, reinsurance broking and underwriting businesses report directly to David Howden.

”We look ahead, from a position of scale and strength and united under our new brand, with the same consistent and relentless focus on empowering great people to deliver all the capabilities of the group to our clients as we did right at the beginning,” he said.