Wide Group is one of the largest and fastest growing insurance brokers in Italy. It operates at a national level with a full and complete insurance products and services offering, through more than 150 brokers engaged in its exclusive ecosystem.

Wide Group is recognised as one of the most innovative businesses in the sector, thanks to a differentiated proposition built around a digital and proprietary platform for placement and management, aimed at supporting and automizing interactions between professionals, clients and insurance companies. The company is leading the industry in using advanced technology, leveraging the opportunities offered by the highly fragmented insurance distribution sector in Italy, while delivering a market-leading organic growth and establishing itself as one of the major national players in terms of size.

Wide Group, established in 2016, has rapidly gained scale through the aggregation and onboarding of experienced brokers and professionals at a national level, thus positioning itself as the largest BrokerTech-enabler in Italy.

Pollen Street is one of Europe’s leading specialist financial services investors with €4.1bn of assets under management. The investment in Wide Group is the latest in a series of recent Pollen Street investments into high growth insurance businesses including Specialist Risk Group, Markerstudy and Punkta.

Pollen Street’s investment and ongoing support will reinforce, enhance and accelerate Wide Group’s services integration and deployment for its professionals and customers. Pollen Street’s investment will be deployed to accelerate growth, enlarge services offering and support the ongoing development of Wide Group’s proprietary technologies. The group will continue to be led by its founders Gianluca Melani, Gerardo di Francesco and Matteo Barbini, leveraging Pollen Street’s resources and experience in effective industry consolidation.

Transaction closing is expected to occur in the coming months, following customary regulatory authorizations.

Commenting on the announcement, Gianluca Melani, Founder and CEO at Wide Group, said: “We are delighted to announce the investment from Pollen Street in our company and are excited to have their support to boost Wide Group’s growth. We have chosen to partner with Pollen Street as they have unrivalled expertise and experience in supporting technology-led insurance businesses across Europe. The substantial growth capital and ongoing professional and financial support from Pollen Street will allow us to further develop our tech-platform to accelerate the deployment of services and the correlated organic aggregation model, while providing capital funding and expertise to expand our strategic growth programme to fulfil our ambition to become Italy’s leading commercial insurance distributor.”

Ian Gascoigne, Partner at Pollen Street, said: “Wide has developed an exciting and highly differentiated proposition which makes it uniquely positioned in the €36bn Italian non-life insurance market. Pollen Street is proud of its track record of supporting consolidators in the financial services sector and believe that Wide has the potential to be transformational in a market which is highly fragmented and poised for technology-led transformation. Wide is led by a dynamic and highly regarded team, and we look forward to working with Gianluca, Gerardo and Matteo to accelerate the growth of the business.”