IBS Journal February 2015


industrybytes A year of acquisitions FIS acquisition of Clear2Pay


FIS paid €375 million for Belgium-based payments software supplier Clear2Pay in the summer, bringing Clear2Pay’s 13-year history as an independent company to a close. The firm, which was owned by private equity and its management (mainly Michel Akkermans, the co-founder and CEO), had become almost synonymous with the ‘payments hub’ concept, and was thought to be pulling in revenue of over $100 million a year. It has a number of tier one banks in its customer list which, along with its software, will have attracted FIS. Being part of FIS will help expose its software to the US market, where FIS has such a large stake. Clear2Pay was thought to have been up for sale for several years, with the likes of ACI Worldwide and Infosys having been linked with it in the past. It


was difficult from the outside to accurately value Clear2Pay, and the amount of investment needed to ensure successful outcomes at all of the ongoing projects was questioned in parts of the industry, but Rob Heyvaert, the executive at FIS who sponsored the acquisition, told IBS that there are ‘no troubled projects’. It’s now looking likely that there will be a copycat acquisition of Clear2Pay’s rival, Fundtech, perhaps by FIS’s rival, Fiserv. However, Fundtech declined


to commented on this. Misys acquisitions of CCS and IND


UK-based core banking supplier Misys spent 2014 rounding out the front office part of its offering. In early 2014, it acquired its Hungarian partner, IND, which brought with it the mobile banking software that Misys rebranded as Bankfusion Digital Channels, and then Fusionbanking Essence. IND had 40 cli- ents in Central and Eastern Europe but had found that its small size was limiting its sales opportunities, particularly outside of the region. There were only a couple of known sales of the IND-derived software in 2014, one of which was Belize Bank, which also took core software from Misys. Misys did the same thing for its corporate front office solution, by buying US-based Custom Credit Solutions (CCS). This brought a platform called Cus-


tomLender, which Misys intends to add to its LoanIQ commercial lending product. CustomLender fills a gaps in LoanIQ which Misys CEO Nadeem Syed described as a ‘mission critical piece of functionality which covers the loan origination and workflow component’. CCS was already working with a number of US banks, including Wells Fargo, US Bank and Bank of America, so Misys will hope to cross-sell into these. Later in the year, Misys launched Fusionbank- ing Corporate Front Office with CustomLender providing the loan origination functionality.


Broadridge acquisition of TwoFour Systems


Broadridge rounded off the year by acquiring the FX and liquidity management solutions provider, TwoFour Systems. TwoFour had been around since 2002, and was the brainchild of a number of ex-Frustum (which developed Misys’ Opics) individuals including Chris and Steve Davis, who are moving to Broadridge to lead the newly branded Broadridge FXL. For Broadridge, the acquisition was a chance to attract new entrants to the FX space who were looking for the type of niche software TwoFour provides, said its head of strategy, David Campbell (see p19 for more details). This leaves the treasury and capital markets space light on competition, mostly due to the incursions of Ion Trading over the last few years. It has acquired one of the largest players, Wall Street Systems, and a couple of its rivals, IT2 and Financial Software Systems, in recent years.


50 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


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