Walsall-based Homeserve spends £37m on home improvement companies

The Walsall-based group picked up a 40 per cent stake in Checkatrade, based in Selsey, with an option to increase its position by another 35 per cent in two years.

At the same time Homeserve has bagged a 70 per cent stake in Habitissimo, with an option to increase its position by a further 30 per cent in either four or five years' time.

Richard Harpin, Homeserve's founder and chief executive, said: "Our investments in Checkatrade and Habitissimo underline Homeserve's ambition to be at the forefront of the technological revolution as the world's most trusted provider of home repairs and improvements. "

Checkatrade is an online directory of customer recommended tradespeople, which boasts nearly one million customer visits a month, resulting in 1.3 million jobs per year.

Habitissimo, based in Mallorca, connects homeowners to local tradespeople and operates across nine countries in Europe and Latin America.

Mr Harpin added: "Both of these businesses provide innovative digital platforms, connecting customers to reliable tradespeople.

"With leading positions in the home repair and improvements market, these businesses will broaden Homeserve's reach enabling us to meet the needs of younger, non-insurance minded customers who are looking to find immediate help from a wide range of home trades."

HomeServe, which sells insurance policies through second parties such as water companies, covers repairs on domestic emergencies from burst pipes to damaged carpets, faulty electrics and dodgy fridges.

With 1,200 people based at its head office in Green Lane, Walsall, the company employs a small army of nearly 1,000 directly-employed plumbing, drainage and gas engineers across the UK, as well as a network of sub-contractors.

Checkatrade and Habitissimo have access to around 24,000 and 21,000 tradespeople respectively, which combined with HomeServe's existing networks, will give HomeServe access to over 50,000 'certified home experts' across a range of over 20 trades.

Richard Harpin added: "Our investments in Checkatrade and Habitissimo underline HomeServe's ambition to be at the forefront of the technological revolution as the world's most trusted provider of home repairs and improvements.

"Together, these investments open up exciting new possibilities to help our customers in their homes as we continue to develop our online capabilities and digital platform solutions."

Meanwhile HomeServe – with 2.2million customers in the UK, 2.8 million in the US and operations in France and Spain – said it was continuing to trade in line with its management's expectations and expects to deliver 'good growth' in its financial year to the end of March. A trade update is due on April 6.