Marc Cohen took on the role of CEO of Chicago-based brokerage Hub International Ltd. in January, succeeding Martin Hughes, who remains executive chairman. Named president of Hub last year, Mr. Cohen is a longtime brokerage professional, having joined Kaye Insurance Associates Inc., which Hub bought in 2001, straight out of college. In 2017, Hub was again one of the most acquisitive brokerages in the United States and also reported 4% organic growth as its revenue approached $2 billion. New York-based Mr. Cohen recently spoke with Business Insurance Editor Gavin Souter about Hub’s future growth and acquisition strategy, the broker’s ownership and the outlook for the insurance market. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: What are your plans for Hub over the next couple of years?

A: It’s a very exciting time within the organization. We had come to a very important recognition that our successful horizontal business model, which allows our employees to align with clients, the local communities they serve and the marketplace, has to be balanced with the importance and the need to gain efficiencies through standardization and scalability.

Q: What type of efficiencies are you looking at?

A: We’re looking at the way we service our business, the way that we speak to our clients, the way that we deliver product to our clients. I’m a firm believer that in the future, business owners aren’t going to choose their insurance broker based on insurance product. I believe that business owners are going to choose their broker based on their client experience. So we’re going to use technology to help enable that. We’re going to use technology to improve our service model and to improve the way we communicate with our clients.

Right now, we’re busy thinking about what will the client of the future value from their insurance broker. We’ve surveyed thousands of business owners across the country and we asked them, “How do you want to receive insurance? What’s important to you? What do you find the value in? What do you prioritize? What don’t you find of value?”

Q: And what sort of things are you hearing back?

A: So clients want reliability, they want speed, they want easy access, they want transparency, they want 24/7 service, but they also want the ability to talk to a professional. The best example is the banking industry. You could do 100% of your banking over the internet today. You don’t even need to go into a branch, yet some people do like going into a branch. I think the same is true about insurance.

Q: So you have to offer both?

A: You have to offer both. We’re looking at both digital and bricks and mortar and trying to figure out how we use technology to layer over all of it.

Q: Hub was again one of the most acquisitive brokers last year. Looking forward, are you going to keep the same pace?

A: Absolutely. We should be successful in matching last year's closed acquisition flow. But, you know, we don’t measure success by the number of deals we do. We measure success by the quality of the deals that we do. So we try to be very strategic in the acquisitions that we bring into the organization. We’re looking for leadership, we’re looking for product, we’re looking for producers, and we’re looking for new expertise. What we’re not doing is just placing dots all around North America.

Q: Obviously hindsight’s 20/20, but how many of the acquisitions do you look back on and say maybe that wasn’t the right move?

A: Very few of our acquisitions don’t work out for us. When they have not, it’s been mostly because we followed the location as opposed to following the leadership. We’re most successful when we follow the leadership of a potential acquisition, as opposed to where that acquisition is located.

Q: The valuations of some of the brokerages that are bought nowadays are very high. How do you make sure that you’re getting a profitable transaction?

A: A lot of due diligence goes into every acquisition. The multiples today are as high as they’ve ever been for potential sellers. But we look to be strategic in who we purchase. If it’s strategic, we want to pay the appropriate price for its value in our organization. But M&A is one side of the business. The other side of the business that’s equally important to us is organic growth. We balance our priorities around both M&A and organic growth.

Q: What sort of organic growth are you seeing?

A: We finished 2017 at 4%, which is very favorable.

Q: Your private equity investor, Hellman & Friedman, invested in Hub five years ago, which is often the traditional time frame for such investments. Will you be getting a new owner, or are you getting to the size where it will more likely be a public offering?

A: All options are going to be on the table for us. We’ve had a great run with private equity ownership. We have a great relationship with our existing owners, Hellman & Friedman. They bring a lot of value to our company. We’re going to probably start the process over the next 12 months to begin more serious conversations with the financial markets.

Q: What about the outlook for the market?

A: I think the days of the big swing — soft and hard markets — are probably behind us. There’s so much capacity that’s in the marketplace. What we saw in January was just a very modest, if any, increase across the board, but there were pockets — for example, automobile, personal lines, property insurance in catastrophe areas.

Q: And you see that going forward?

A: There’s no reason to believe that there’s going to be anything that’s going to change that.