Expanding insurance brokerage Integro Ltd. has announced the formation of an international insurance and reinsurance unit based in London.

The move is the latest step in the rapid expansion of the company which was founded two years ago by Bermuda insurance legend Robert Clements, together with Roger Egan and Peter Garvey.

Integro has an office in Bermuda, as well as its headquarters in New York and a presence in many cities across North America. And Mr. Egan (pictured), Integro’s chief executive officer, expects further growth this year.

“The future looks bright for Integro and for our Bermuda operation,” Mr. Egan told The Royal Gazette. “Bermuda has is one of the world’s major insurance marketplaces, with a lot of expertise and where a lot of complex transactions are done. That means it fits in well with our interests.

“We are in the market for for the complex risk management needs of large, Fortune 1000 clients and for international risks. Business from many of these kinds of clients makes its way to Bermuda or to the London market and we want to have a strong presence in both centres.”

Integro, which is a private company and is therefore not obliged to make its financial information public, now has more than 300 clients and big plans for the future.

“2006 was our first full year of operations and, based on industry data, we made over $46 million in revenue and that would have put us in the top 50 brokers in the US,” Mr. Egan said. “We did not expect to be profitable until our third year and right now we are still hiring and expanding.

“We want to double our size in 2007 and we’ve made a good start. For the past eight months to a year, we’ve been establishing preferred partnerships with independent brokers in countries around the world.”

Intergro has units in many major cities in North America, including its New York headquarters, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal, as well as an office in Stockholm.

The expansion into London was done through last November’s acquisition of Humphreys, Haggas and Sutton (HHS), a Lloyd’s broker established in 1994.

“We did not want to wait 18 months for FSA approval and we wanted to get into Lloyd’s,” Mr. Egan said. “It’s the only place we have gone into through an acquisition.

“We are building its capabilities to deal with wholesale and direct insurance and reinsurance by hiring three talented people from Guy Carpenter.

“HHS had a fairly narrow focus on professional indemnity — it was not as well rounded a business as we wanted. But with the addition of our three new recruits we will have much broader capabilities.”

Integro’s Julian Samengo-Turner, Ron Whyte and Marcus Hopkins, who will lead the London unit and join the board of Integro in the UK, formerly led Guy Carpenter’s global facultative reinsurance business unit.

Integro will be looking to set up offices in continental Europe and Asia, Mr. Egan added. When Integro was launched in May 2005, the aim was to provide clients with an alternative to the “big three” international brokers — Marsh, Aon and Willis — and to focus on dealing with the complex insurance and risk management needs of large organisations.

There has been a demand for a greater choice of brokers, particularly after a probe by former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer found evidence of bid rigging and vested interests in the relationship between brokers and insurers.

Mr. Egan said: “The trend towards the use of multiple brokers predated Spitzer and the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. That trend has only gathered momentum, with many large companies now using multiple brokers. Those who used to use two are now using three or four.”

Mr. Clements, a co-founder of Bermuda insurance giants Ace and XL Capital, remains chairman of Integro, while Mr. Garvey is the company’s president and chief operating officer.