Credit insurance and surety technology firm Tinubu Square has expanded its operations in the United States with the acquisition of fellow software provider eSurety.

After hiring all 15 of the surety software company’s staff, Tinubu Square now has around 20 people working in the US, including eSurety’s former CEO Daniel Buckles. He has been appointed deputy CEO of Tinubu Square Americas and president of Tinubu Square Surety Americas.

Buckles and the majority of Tinubu’s US contingent will be based in eSurety’s Florida office, which Tinubu bought as part of the move, although the company retains a smaller hub in New York.

Speaking about the reasons for the takeover, Olivier Placca, Tinubu Square Group co-founder and deputy CEO says: “Six years ago, we launched Tinubu Square Americas. Since then, we acquired as clients several major US and Canadian credit insurers.”

He adds: “Based on this success and experience, with the recent €15mn cash equity increase, Tinubu Square moved on this acquisition.”

Tinubu Square CEO Jérôme Pezé tells GTR that shareholders provided this funding, and that the acquisition, which was finalised two weeks ago, followed initial discussions of a partnership between the two companies.

“We started to develop software for the surety business 18 months ago, and we launched it in the US nine months ago. But we realised that if we wanted to get the benefits quickly of this evolution of the market, of the digital transformation of underwriting in the US, which is the biggest market worldwide for the surety business, we had to be supported by a team that already had local credibility and experience as well as an already proven product in this specific US market”, Pezé notes.

On the other side of the coin, Pezé says that while Tinubu has worked with the likes of AIG, Chubb, Zurich and QBE, eSurety “didn’t yet have the experience of handling large, international underwriters”.

He adds Tinubu “can provide a number of modules that we have developed for the surety and credit insurance business that enable internationalisation of the product, such as multi-line, multi-country and multi-currency management.”

In the coming year, Pezé says the plan is to grow the company’s surety business in the US by 50%. Meanwhile he isn’t ruling out any further acquisitions in the next 12 months, with Tinubu potentially looking to carry out similar deals in the Americas or Europe.

The acquisition follows Tinubu’s hiring of Sophie Riottot as group sales director last year, with the firm saying at the time that she would spearhead its expansion into international markets beyond Europe “where fast growth offers significant potential”.