Zafin, the SaaS Cloud-native product and pricing platform for banking institutions and credit unions, announced that it has acquired FINCAD, a global firm focused on pricing and risk analytics of financial derivatives and fixed income products.
By acquiring FINCAD, Zafin expands its product portfolio and analytics capabilities to “become one of Canada’s largest B2B fintech companies with significant global presence including more than 450 institutional clients, over 60 ecosystem partners, and more than 500 employees spread out across 13 global offices.”
The announcement also mentioned that FINCAD is a key player in offering derivative and fixed-income pricing, modeling, and risk analytics to many of the world’s banks, asset management companies, insurers and hedge funds. The addition of FINCAD’s capital markets expertise, next-gen analytics, and global customer base will position the combined firm for steady growth.
For Zafin, the acquisition is an important milestone in the firm’s history as they will now be able to provide pricing and advanced analytics solutions to institutions “across all segments of banking, including retail, corporate and commercial, and capital markets – a key differentiator in the marketplace.”
As a result of the deal, FINCAD will operate “as the Capital Markets Group of Zafin under the established FINCAD brand,” the update confirmed.
Al Karim Somji, Founder and Group CEO of Zafin, stated:
“As we look to further accelerate our global growth and enhance our end-to-end pricing and analytics offering to the marketplace, this move into the Capital Markets space is a key step. FINCAD naturally stood out to us given their impressive track record of being the leading provider of derivative analytics and pricing with a strong team that delivers for some of the world’s most trusted institutions.”
He added:
“Working together as one global team, there is tremendous opportunity for us to scale our business by sharing deep subject-matter expertise and talent in key areas such as pricing, risk analytics and cloud technology. I believe with this strategic acquisition we’re truly going to disrupt the industry and set a new standard for how institutions can partner with fintechs like Zafin and FINCAD to deliver powerful product, pricing and advanced analytics solutions.”
Backed by a career in the capital markets, Christian Kahl, Head of Product Strategy and Client Service at FINCAD, will be serving as Interim President, Capital Markets at Zafin.
FINCAD Analytics leader and current Head of Product Development, Russell Goyder will be serving as Chief Analytics Officer of Zafin. Both Kahl and Goyder will “report to Al Karim Somji, Founder and Group CEO of Zafin.”
Kahl remarked:
“Our clients will benefit from Zafin’s expertise in cloud-native platform technologies, unparalleled user experience, as well as Zafin’s impressive ecosystem. The combined offerings of Zafin and FINCAD will enable us to deliver an unmatched portfolio of services to our clients, and further positions us as global market leaders.”
In order to stay competitive in derivative markets, customers are looking for sophisticated risk and valuation capabilities “embedded in trade decision, hedging and risk management.”
The acquisition provides an opportunity for FINCAD to leverage Zafin’s 24/7 client support and proven cloud-native platform technology to “enhance its suite of patented products, and further accelerate FINCAD’s ability to empower its client base to solve complex analytics problems with innovative simplicity and speed.”
FINCAD expects cloud computing to be “a game changer for institutions looking for advanced computations powered by leading cloud technologies.”
The acquisition of FINCAD also “further differentiates Zafin in the marketplace with a new Analytics-as-a-Service offering, which the company expects to launch later in the year.”
For more details on this update, check here.