The art of the Navacord-Acera deal

Familiarity, scale, geographic diversity, and product mix all featured prominently in Navacord’s merger with Acera, the architects of the deal told Canadian Underwriter recently.

Navacord Corp. and Acera Insurance Services Ltd. yesterday announced the completion of their previously announced merger. The deal formally closed Feb. 2, following confirmation of all required regulatory, court and shareholder approvals. 

Navacord’s president and CEO Shawn DeSantis and executive chairman T. Marshall Sadd told CU the deal discussions started in 2024. They picked up steam last February, culminating in the announcement of the merger in December 2025.

Navacord has more than 3,700 professionals in over 100 offices across the country. Acera Insurance is the largest independent, employee-controlled Canadian brokerage, with 1,300 employees in more than 50 offices across Canada, and more than 700 employee-owners.

Combined, the two brokerages will place $7.2 billion in insurance and employee benefits premium and have $7.5 billion in retirement assets under management.

The merged brokerages will have more than 5,000 insurance and financial services professionals, as well as more than 150 locations nationwide.

In an interview with CU about the deal, DeSantis and Sadd said the two brokerages will work under their own brands until November 2026 and then will come under the Navacord banner.

The two sides started talking about a deal in part because of the familiarity of the brokerages’ leadership with each other, Sadd said.

Sadd and DeSantis highlighted they have a 30-year-long history together in the P&C broker business with Acera’s co-founders Lee Rogers, CEO of Acera Insurance (and formerly of Rogers Insurance), and Andrew Kemp, executive vice president of Acera Insurance (formerly of CapriCMW).

Rogers and CapriCMW merged in 2022 to become Acera Insurance.

Also in the news: Is Toronto’s record Jan. 26 snowfall turning into claims?

“There’s a lot of history with Shawn and myself, and Lee and Andrew, the founders of Acera,” Sadd told CU. “[There was] Rogers insurance, and my company, Lloyd Sadd, where I worked for the first 23 years of my career. We co-founded the Canadian Broker Network (CBN) together.

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“We were participants in the industry together. We exchanged a lot of best practices together. We’ve watched each other grow up in the industry, and we’ve been very friendly and mutually respectful competitors. And so, there’s a lot of history with the business and a lot of comfort. And I’d say the values and the cultures are very similar.”

One of the driving forces behind the deal is the increasing importance of scale, DeSantis told CU. The deal puts Navacord near the scale of Hub’s size in Canada. 

“We feel we’re at the beginning stages of where scale is going to be much more relevant in broker distribution,” DeSantis said. “For the longest time, when you sold cross-broker distribution, there were all these mom-and-pop shops across Canada. And today, arguably, the Top 10 brokers control almost 70% of the market. We believe scale is going to be really important.”

DeSantis points out scale is important in developing two key things required for future brokerage growth — technology investment and talent.

Larger brokerages have financial wherewithal to invest in groundbreaking technology, DeSantis said.

“We feel technology now is at the point where it can have a significant impact on brokers reinventing themselves,” he said. “And that investment in technology works well when you have the scale to make those types of investments.”

Plus, DeSantis added, modern brokerages require different types of skills, translating into a broader search for talent. 

“I would say we’re seeing a demand from our clients for a different type of talent,” DeSantis told CU. “So, everything from underwriters in our business, to claims and actuarial. These are resources that traditionally were not in the broker channel. They were found on the carrier side.

“As we think about what brokers need to bring to their clients to create that experience, the resources are different. So, there’s an investment required that wasn’t there before. Again, scale helps with that.”

Geographic scale also factors into the equation.

The deal “gives us diversity across Canada, from a geographic point of view, and spread of risk,” DeSantis explained. “So now, with Acera, one-third of our business is in Ontario and eastern Canada, roughly; one-third of our business would be in the Prairies, which would be Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba; and then one-third in BC.

“And so, when we think of providing capacity to our clients, we are not openly dependent on any particular Cat zone. We have access for our carriers to all three major markets in Canada. And so geographically, Acera brought that mix, which was important to us.”

The deal also diversified the product mix, Sadd said.

“From a product standpoint, they have deep expertise in property, real estate, strata condominiums, and so that really elevates our game,” he told CU. “Their high net worth, VIP, personal lines insurance team really adds bench strength to our organization.”

“And they complement us in that middle market space…in the middle market entrepreneurial space, which was something that attracted us as well.”

David Gambrill

David has twice served as Canadian Underwriter’s senior editor, both from 2005 to 2012, and again from 2017 to the present.