HIG was formed by its management team in 2005 and operates under the trading brands of Gateway Surveyors and Sonas Surveyors. The deal completed on December 18 last year.
Gateway is a panel manager to the bank and building society sectors and is appointed to all major bank and building society panels, as well as the second charge lending community. Sonas meanwhile is the company’s in-house employed workforce comprising of 70 employed surveyors operating throuough England and Wales.
The current management structure will remain in place and be joined by SimplyBiz Mortgages chief executive Martin Reynolds and Matt Timmins, joint managing director of the SimplyBiz Group. HIG are the 12th company within the SimplyBiz Group and its third acquisition in the past 12 months.
Martin Reynolds, CEO of SimplyBiz Mortgages, said: “The acquisition of HIG forms part of our strategy to create a wider financial services portfolio of companies.
“We believe that the valuation market will have challenges during the next few years and our future investment in HIG will help to proactively position it as a partner of trust.
“We are looking forward to working with the lending market to create mutually beneficial partnerships.”
Marcus Radcliffe, CEO of HIG, added: “Joining the SimplyBiz Group is an exciting step in growing our businesses to its next level. The combined scale and experience of the Group is a major positive for our future dealings with all lenders and panel manager partners.”
The HIG management team has vast experience in both surveying and panel management and has representation on the Building Society Valuation Panel plus the Equity Release Council.
The SimplyBiz Group provide compliance and business support services to over 2000 financial services firms and 5000 individual advisers nationwide. The SimplyBiz Group now includes SimplyBiz Services, Compliance First, SIFA, Verbatim Asset Management, 360 Legal Group, APS Legal, Staffcare, SimplyBiz Mortgages, the not-for-profit New Model Business Academy and now the Home Information Group.
