Insurance Banter with Burand & Borup

The episode packs a reasonable number of concrete data points and process insights into 18 minutes - multiple compression figures, deal structure shifts, leverage thresholds, and timeline guidance - but is diluted by self-promotional framing and some throat-clearing around the value of hiring an M&A broker.

“the mean for publicly traded brokers has gone from 20.2 times EBITDA to 12.8 times EBITDA”

“the traditional is 80% cash, 20% equity and we're seeing some shift with that to more 70% cash, 30% equity”

Most of the framing (use a specialist broker, beware conflicts of interest, buyers do due diligence too) is sensible but not contrarian or surprising; the strongest original moment is the 'flip the due diligence' insight about demanding the buyer's balance sheet, but that stands largely alone.

“sellers, when due diligence comes up, Chris, they think it's about them. they have to prove their numbers. There is a flip side. You want to have the buyer prove what they said as well”

“if there's a broker involved you generally will get 2 times more EBITDA in the process than if they were one on one”

Kevin Donahue is a genuine practitioner - 25 years running an insurance-only M&A advisory firm with over a thousand completed deals - not a thought-leader or career podcaster, which gives his specific claims real credibility; his seniority and track record are solid but his name recognition outside the niche is limited.

“we've been involved in well over a thousand completed transactions in 25 years”

“We have offices in Charlotte, New York, Miami, Denver and London. We are happy to be celebrating our 25th anniversary this year”

The episode is notably specific for its length: named companies (Acrisure, Howden, Brown & Brown, Risk Strategies, Kinloch, Seaman Holtz), precise EBITDA multiples with mean and median, a named sourced claim (Tom Riley, Assured Partners founder), dollar settlement figures, and concrete timelines - this is strong evidence discipline for an 18-minute episode.

“the mean for publicly traded brokers has gone from 20.2 times EBITDA to 12.8 times EBITDA. Ah, wow. It's quite the contraction. And then the median on that is 17.7 to 12.6”

“HRH won. They won a, I think it was $12 million settlement. And that to a new private equity backed firm was a uh, was a death kill”

Chris (Speaker C) asks legitimate follow-up questions on leverage discovery and deal structure shifts, but the interview is structurally compromised by the host being an open referral partner who vouches for Kevin mid-episode, removing any incentive to push back; Speaker B adds little and leans on clichés like the Rumsfeld matrix.

“How does a seller discover what the leverage rate is for private equity?”

“Does that mean that there's going to be a slowdown or is it just simply a correction”