The Process

Confidentiality

First and foremost let's sign a Confidentiality Agreement allowing you to begin preliminary discussions in complete confidence.

Information gathering and due diligence

We will then ask you a little more about your business, your agency and policy counts, premium and commission incomes and about your people. To do this we will send you a Questionnaire and this information, together with our discussions with you, will form the basis of our Offer.

Offer

Our Offer will be in the form of a detailed letter. With the experience we have built up from over 350 acquisitions we know that no two businesses are the same and there are many factors built into the offer that we will put to you. We know too that this can be a difficult moment for you and that's why all our discussions will be based around ensuring that the deal is right for you, your employees and your customers.

Acceptance

On receipt of a signed Offer Acceptance we will instruct our legal team to liaise with your solicitors to draw up the sale and purchase agreement and work toward exchange of contracts. A number of contract schedules will need to be completed together with due diligence enquiries and if we are to trade from your premises our Regional Surveyor will need to visit the property.

Exchange of Contracts

In most instances we will have a one month window between Exchange of Contracts and Completion. For some larger acquisitions, where we acquire a business under a Share Purchase Agreement, it is usual for us to exchange and complete on the same day.

• Human Resources people to meet with your employees
• Operational Support team to meet with you to understand your processes and how best we can integrate them
• IT to extract any computerised customer and policy data
• Facilities department to arrange collection of any transferring files or equipment
• Telephony to transfer any applicable phone lines
• Where we are to trade form your premises our Regional Surveyor will need to visit the property

All of these visits will of course be arranged and carried out with the utmost discretion.

We will also need to write on your behalf to your insurers to transfer the appropriate policies and to your customers to inform them of the transfer and welcome them to Swinton.

Post Completion

Post completion our focus is very much on ensuring that the transition to Swinton is as smooth as possible for staff and customers, and that we achieve the best possible retention rates. In most cases, your role in this will be key to achieving a successful transfer of ownership. We will of course monitor these retention rates and report to you regarding any further payments due to you.