White confirms Pukka to hand in Gibraltar licence at end of July

Sam White, chief executive at Pukka, has confirmed that the MGA will be handing in its Gibraltar licence at the end of July as it moves the business onshore as part of an operational restructure.

In January, Insurance Times reported that Pukka had initiated the process to bring its business back to the UK, with White emphasising that the MGA was not closing.

This month, White told Insurance Times that the Covid-19 pandemic has not impacted the restructuring trajectory and that Pukka would still be handing in its licence in Gibraltar this summer.

The main aim of the restructure, said White, is to “rationalise the cost base” and reduce the complexity of having to adhere to the two different tax and regulatory systems reigning in the UK and Gibraltar.

“By having Pukka in Gibraltar and also having the FCA licence in the UK, we’ve got two tax jurisdictions, two regulatory jurisdictions and a double set of costs,” White explained.

“We were quite vocal about the fact that last year had its challenges; we stopped working with Gefion in July.

”We didn’t have the same level of capacity, so we ended up having to run quite lean in January, February and March.

“We’ve obviously renewed our binders and we’re moving forward, but it made perfect sense to us to rationalise the cost base and not have that level of complication with the different jurisdictions.”

Wound down

Pukka’s Gilbraltar operations are currently “being wound down”, however White added that this won’t dramatically affect the overall business, particularly as the Covid-19 pandemic has eliminated the focus on geographical location with the rise in home working.

She said: “A large proportion of the functions were being performed in the UK anyway because that’s where the claims business is and we performed a certain amount of administration from the UK.

“It’s a bit of a strange one because we’re all working from home now, so the physicality of the office became less of an issue. It’s moving in the direction we wanted it to.”

White added that the restructure has also been designed to improve consistency across her portfolio of businesses, which also includes broker Freedom Services Group and motor claims business Action 365.

“It’s just about making sure we’ve got that connectivity between everybody and that we’re all operating on the same goals and same principles,” she said.