William Blair acted as exclusive financial advisor to Flexible Architecture and Simplified Technology (FAST), a portfolio company of a private equity fund co-advised by NexPhase Capital, LP (NexPhase) and Moelis Capital Partners LLC (MCP), in connection with its pending sale to Verisk Analytics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSK) (Verisk). The transaction was announced on December 4, 2019. The acquisition of FAST will extend Verisk's offerings to the life insurance market as it builds a comprehensive suite of innovative solutions to support insurer modernization. This marks the 16th insurance technology transaction and 61st software transaction that William Blair has advised on since 2017.
Transaction Highlights
- InsureTech expertise: FAST and NexPhase recognized William Blair's extensive domain expertise, buyer relationships, and track record of advising industry-leading InsureTech companies.
- Leading technology M&A advisor: William Blair designed and executed a highly targeted, customized process for FAST that generated significant competition from highly motivated financial and strategic buyers.
- Vertical market positioning expertise: William Blair's transaction team effectively focused potential acquirers on FAST's market leadership, comprehensive and unique technology platform, market-defining ecosystem of strategic relationships, exceptional financial performance, and numerous growth opportunities.
About the Companies
FAST, which stands for "Flexible Architecture, Simplified Technology," is a privately held company located in Iselin, New Jersey. FAST focuses on solving the challenges its financial services and insurance clients face as they seek to modernize their systems environments or completely replace legacy systems.
Verisk Analytics is a leading data analytics provider serving customers in insurance, energy and specialized markets, and financial services. Using advanced technologies to collect and analyze billions of records, Verisk draws on unique data assets and deep domain expertise to provide first-to-market innovations that are integrated into customer workflows. Verisk offers predictive analytics and decision support solutions to customers in rating, underwriting, claims, catastrophe and weather risk, global risk analytics, natural resources intelligence, economic forecasting, and many other fields. Around the world, Verisk helps customers protect people, property, and financial assets.
NexPhase Capital (NPC) is a thematic and operationally-focused private equity firm that invests in lower middle market, growth-oriented companies within three distinct sectors: consumer, healthcare, and software & services. The firm partners with companies that have reached a growth inflection point and are seeking a value-added partner to help navigate the company's "next phase." The NPC team has extensive industry and operational experience, and NPC's partners have invested together for nearly a decade. The firm has completed over 60 investments including add-ons and targets control equity investments between $25 million and $85 million.
Moelis Capital Partners LLC, a subsidiary of Moelis Asset Management LP, is a middle market private equity firm founded in 2007. MCP co-manages approximately $872 million of committed private equity capital with NexPhase Capital.
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