MENA II Awards unveil leading professional services firms in insurance sector

03 February 2025 Consultancy-me.com

Intelligent Insurer has unveiled the winners of its 2025 Awards, placing the spotlight on the top insurers, reinsurers, brokers and advisors in the Middle East’s insurance landscape. The awards within the professional services landscape were scooped by Badri, Grant Thornton, Aon, Marsh and Guy Carpenter, with EY and KPMG among those highly commended.

Held in Dubai, the Intelligent Insurer Awards celebrated the remarkable achievements of leading insurers, reinsurers, brokers and consultants within the rapidly growing Middle Eastern and North African markets. Awards were handed out to organizations that over the past twelve months demonstrated exceptional performance, innovation, and impact.

In the consultancy category, the top prize went to Badri Management Consultancy, a homegrown consulting firm with around 200 staff working from offices in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. Badri was flanked by runner-up EY, with both firms cementing their position in the insurance sector having recently also been named one of the leading insurance consultancies in the Middle East by another awards competition.

“This achievement is a testament to our proactive efforts in driving efficient risk management practices and raising the bar in the Middle Eastern and North African insurance markets,” noted Ali Asghar Bhuriwala, Co-Founder and Executive Director at Badri. “This achievement reflects our unwavering dedication to innovation, excellence, and delivering impactful solutions to our clients.”

In the audit category, Grant Thornton was named the overall winner, ahead of other major accounting groups active in the sector, with KPMG ending the competition in second spot.

Commenting on its win, Hisham Farouk, CEO of Grant Thornton in the UAE, said: “This award underscores Grant Thornton’s dedication to delivering exceptional audit services and maintaining the highest standards of quality. It also highlights our role in setting industry benchmarks and our client-centric approach, which is focused on building long-term relationships with clients in the insurance sector.”

Aon was named broker & distributor of the year, and highly commended in the reinsurance broker segment of the landscape – that award went to Guy Carpenter, the reinsurance broking arm of Marsh McLennan. Meanwhile, another part of the Marsh McLennan group, Marsh, was named the top cyber insurance broker of the Middle East, with Aon again bagging the highly commended status, seeing the firm return home with the highest number of recognitions overall.

Intelligent Insurer Awards

The winners and runners-up (‘highly commended’) of the Intelligent Insurer Awards were decided by an independent panel of expert judges during a rigorous process of scoring and meetings. Each of the judges has an extensive background in the insurance sector.

“Over the last few weeks, our expert panel of judges had some incredibly hard decisions to make and we were thrilled to be able to present the winners and highly commended with their trophies and recognise their hard work and contributions to the industry,” said Wyn Jenkins, managing editor of Intelligent Insurer.