United Kingdom’s Admiral Group has agreed to sell its U.S. insurance business — Elephant Insurance Co. and Elephant Insurance Services— to the private investment firm J.C. Flowers & Co. for an undisclosed cash consideration.
Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, Elephant is a property/casualty insurer that offers mostly auto but also home, renters, motorcycle, and life insurance direct to customers through an online application process. It sells in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Admiral indicated it is selling Elephant in order to focus on its core business.
“This is a good outcome not only for Elephant and its employees, but also [Admiral Group] and our shareholders. This transaction will enable us to focus on the opportunities we see for delivering long-term sustainable growth in our businesses in the UK and Mainland Europe,” said Costantino Moretti, head of International Insurance for Admiral Group.
Eric Rahe, managing director and co-president of New York-based J.C. Flowers, noted that Flowers has a long history of investing in the insurance industry. Rahe said the private equity firm will leverage its experience to “help Elephant Insurance generate new opportunities as a standalone company.”
The move by Admiral was not unexpected. In March, Admiral executives acknowledged they had been assessing the strategic options for Elephant and were in talks with a potential acquirer.
Admiral Group had a very good 2024, reporting a record group pre-tax profit of 839.2 million pounds ($1.08 billion) for the year, up 90% from a year earlier.
Elephant also saw improvement in 2024 after what the company said were “some quite bruising years in the U.S.” Admiral executives said the team at Elephant deserved “huge credit” for “materially improving the bottom line in 2024” in auto insurance and engineering what they said was a “pleasing turnaround” that included some shrinking of the size of Elephant’s book of business. The result swung from a loss of $26.5 million to a profit of $18.5 million thanks to a much improved loss ratio and expense outcome.
Elephant Insurance was founded in 2009 as an American subsidiary of the Admiral Group, a direct-to-consumer insurance provider in the U.K. that brought this business model to the U.S. via Elephant.
Andrew Rose was the founder and CEO of Elephant. He left the company in 2012 to become president and CEO of Admiral’s comparison-shopping website, Compare.com. Former Admiral Group FD and Confused.com CEO Kevin Chidwick took over as CEO of Elephant from 2012 to 2017. When he stepped down, Henry Engelhardt, the co-founder, and former CEO of Admiral Group, stepped in as interim CEO. The current CEO of the company is Alberto Schiavon, a native of Italy, who became CEO in 2017 after spending five years with Admiral.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Admiral Group is a leading FTSE 100 Financial Services company offering motor, household, travel and pet insurance as well as personal lending products. It has offices in Canada, France, Gibraltar, India, Italy, and Spain.
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