Jeff Fine describes how this company is leading the industry through an acquisition strategy backed by a noted investment firm.

If you’re a traveler in need of a passport or visa, you have two choices: a) you could sort through piles of confusing paperwork, drop your application off at the nearest embassy, consulate, or passport agency (praying you submitted the correct information), and cross your fingers they’ll have it ready on time or b) pay a minimal fee to hire an expert like CIBT who can guarantee on-time delivery do everything for you.

Jeff Fine, CEO of CIBT, Inc., the world’s leading visa and passport expediting service, explained that US passport agencies only allow for a certain number of passports to be submitted by expediters, and the only way for an expediter to obtain more “slots” is to acquire another company. That’s where CIBT has an advantage. As the only institutionally backed passport and visa expediting service in the world, it has acquired 14 companies in the US and overseas in the past three years, and has the greatest number of “slots” in the US.

Today, with more than 30 locations worldwide, CIBT’s 450 employees help business travelers, tourists, students, travel agents, cruise ship operators, government employees, diplomats, and humanitarian organizations obtain the correct documentation for international travel on a time-constricted basis. In addition, the company offers short-term cellular phone rentals through its subsidiary Global Phoneworks, as most US cell phones don’t work overseas.

Jeff Fine

McLean, Va.-based CIBT was acquired in 1989 by two business school graduates who grew the operation to $15 million in revenue. But in 2003, they decided to move to pursue other interests, which is when Fine came into the picture and jumped on an overlooked opportunity.

“I noticed that while visa and passport expediting was a global business, all of the companies in the industry were sole proprietors who didn’t pursue the chance to grow internationally. I wanted to use CIBT as a platform to consolidate an otherwise fragmented industry, starting first in the US and then rolling it out overseas to create a global brand,” said Fine.

To fulfill his vision, in 2003, Fine partnered with Peninsula Capital Partners, a mezzanine fund based in Detroit. The investment fund provided capital for several acquisitions, but in 2006, had reached the maximum dollar amount it wanted to invest in one company and decided to cash in. “For us to further our acquisition strategy, we had to find another investor with deeper pockets,” said Fine. In May of 2006, CIBT announced it was purchased by Boston-based Audax Group, a $2.3 billion investment fund.

Making a mark
With strong financial backing, CIBT, originally geared toward corporate travelers, has been busy acquiring passport and visa expediting agencies that not only introduce the company into new channels, but also broaden its footprint. For example, it bought a San Francisco-based company that focused on cruise lines and a business in Washington, DC that served mainly tour operators. However, CIBT has not lost its focus on corporate customers. In fact, it serves 65% of all Fortune 500 companies. “We estimate that we service about 85% of all Fortune 500 travelers, if you exclude companies that are domestically oriented and don’t require employees to travel overseas,” said Fine.

The acquisition strategy has been overwhelmingly successful thanks to CIBT’s scalable business model. “When we ask one of our couriers to take a passport to the Chinese Embassy to get it stamped, we are responsible for the cost of that person’s time. When we ask the same person to take 50 passports, it takes the same amount of time. The more volume we create, the more our operating margins increase because we are not adding to our logistics costs,” Fine explained.

CIBT has taken its acquisition strategy overseas and now owns agencies in the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and India and has affiliations with agencies in Scandinavia, Belgium, France, Australia, and Canada. All acquisitions, Fine explained, operate as subsidiaries under their existing local brand. “The companies we acquired had widespread brand name recognition in the countries in which they operated, and we didn’t want to change that,” he said, adding that eventually all companies will be branded CIBT.

After 14 acquisitions, the once $15 million mid-size business in 2003 has grown to a $125 million industry giant. Eventually, Fine would like to see CIBT reach the $200 million mark. “At that point, we’ll have made an impact on the industry and will be processing about 1 million passports per year.”

Keeping track
Institutional backing has given CIBT the ability to operate a 45-person call center in Houston—a major advantage over its mom-and-pop competition. Because many passport and visa expediting agencies aren’t scaled to handle high volumes of service-related phone calls, customers are often left on hold or forced to leave a voicemail. But customers calling CIBT have their questions answered immediately by a trained visa and passport expert.

Last year, CIBT replaced its tracking system with a proprietary software package that enables the company to keep track of all visa and passport applications, forms, and filing instructions—tens of thousands of them. “You can travel to 240 countries, each one requiring a different set of documentation. With travelers holding 240 different types of passports, the matrix starts at 240 by 240. Within each cell on the matrix, people travel for various reasons—tourism, business, humanitarian purposes, and so on, creating sub-cells. We deal with tens of thousands of these combinations,” Fine said.

The software application, called Travel Pass, was built using a programming tool set provided by the Ten-Fold Corporation and can not only keep track of where each document is and action lists for CIBT agents and couriers, but it also integrates customer service and billing functions.

Besides being behind a pioneer company that is transforming the travel industry, Fine loves that CIBT helps people every day—from those traveling last minute to attend a wedding or a funeral to corporate employees who need to shake hands with colleagues on the other side of the globe to humanitarian workers rushing to aid those struck by disaster. “The best part is that there is no replacement for our experience. No one is going to create a new widget that will make our value-added service obsolete.”