IMA Financial completes recapitalisation as Oak Hill, New Mountain take minority stakes
What's the deal? IMA Financial GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Denver-based insurance brokerage, has completed an equity recapitalisation bringing in Oak Hill Capital and New Mountain Capital as minority investors, with additional participation from HarbourVest Partners and other institutional co-investors. Employees will continue to own a majority of the company, with all 3,000-plus associates participating as shareholders.
SkyKnight Capital and The Stephens Group are exiting as part of the deal. New Mountain, an investor since 2020, is exiting its existing position and reinvesting alongside the new group.
"We accomplished every goal we set out to achieve: preserving majority employee ownership, maintaining our independence and strengthening our ability to build on what makes us successful," said chairman and chief executive officer Rob Cohen.
Why now? IMA has grown fast since its first recapitalisation. Revenue has increased by nearly 400% since 2020, driven by strategic partnerships and organic growth. Its workforce expanded from 700 to more than 3,000 nationally.
The new capital is meant to fuel further investments in technology, talent, and strategic partnerships — while preserving the firm's independence and employee-ownership structure.
What could go wrong? Rapid growth through partnerships and acquisitions can strain culture, especially for a firm that markets itself on a "people-first" ethos. Maintaining that identity with multiple institutional investors and a workforce that has quadrupled in five years is no small feat.
The deal's financial terms were not disclosed, making it harder to assess whether the recapitalisation's valuation reflects the broader cooling in insurance brokerage multiples.
The signal: Insurance brokerage continues to draw deep private equity interest thanks to its recurring revenue profile and fragmented landscape ripe for consolidation. IMA Financial Group's nearly 400% revenue growth since 2020 underscores why investors such as Oak Hill Capital — a fund with a track record in financial services roll-ups — are willing to take minority positions even as deal terms remain undisclosed. The majority employee-ownership model may prove a competitive differentiator in attracting talent and retaining clients, but sustaining that structure through successive recapitalisations will test whether cultural independence and institutional capital can coexist at scale.
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