Risk Management
Business Wire | January 12, 2024
Riskonnect, the leader in integrated risk management (IRM) solutions, today announces its acquisition of Ventiv Technology, a market-leading provider of risk, insurance, and underwriting technology solutions. The acquisition fuels growth and innovation for Riskonnect and drives value for customers by enabling the organizations to bring all aspects of risk under one roof.
Riskonnect’s acquisition of Ventiv will enhance value for the 2,500+ combined customers globally. Ventiv is known for its innovation in RMIS Analytics (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Benchmarks, Geospatial), claims administration, billing, and policy solutions. Customers rely on Riskonnect for the breadth and depth of its integrated risk management platform. The combined offerings will create a comprehensive suite of risk management tools that streamlines data management, provides actionable insights tailored to specific business sectors, and turns risk into a strategic advantage.
“We’re thrilled to welcome the entire Ventiv team to Riskonnect. The acquisition adds substantial value for our customers, giving users of both companies access to a broader range of products and services that are intentionally designed to meet the diverse needs of modern risk management,” said Jim Wetekamp, Riskonnect’s CEO. “We’re bringing a value enhancing suite of tools to market that equips organizations to confidently answer the increasingly imperative question – ‘how at risk are we?’. Our complementary technologies and shared commitment to helping customers stay ahead of the rapidly evolving risk landscape positions all our key stakeholders for success.”
The companies’ combined expertise and technology across incident tracking, claims administration, claims management, governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), business continuity and resilience, and predictive analytics creates a one-stop-shop for organizations seeking end-to-end risk solutions.
“We share Riskonnect’s mission to transform the way companies manage risk,” said Salil Donde, Ventiv’s CEO. “Pooling our resources and expertise enables us to continue to innovate on AI-driven predictive analytics and expand our reach globally to best serve the present and future needs of our customers.”
Riskonnect’s current majority investor, TA Associates (TA), a leading global private equity firm, supported the acquisition of Ventiv with additional investment capital. TA will continue as the majority owner. Union Square Advisors LLC served as the exclusive financial advisor to Ventiv and Davis Polk & Wardwell served as legal advisor. Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Riskonnect.
“By joining forces, Riskonnect and Ventiv Technology, both recognized as industry leaders in the Redhand RMIS Report, are not only consolidating their technological expertise but also strengthening their commitment to providing leading RMIS solutions to customers seeking to optimize their risk management strategies,” said Patrick O’Neill, president and founder of Redhand Advisors.
About Riskonnect
Riskonnect is the leading integrated risk management software solution provider. Our technology empowers organizations with the ability to anticipate, manage, and respond in real-time to strategic and operational risks across the extended enterprise. More than 2,500 customers across six continents use our unique risk-correlation technology to gain previously unattainable insights that deliver better business outcomes. Riskonnect has more than 1,100 risk management experts in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
About Ventiv Technology
Ventiv Technology is a leading global provider of risk management information systems (RMIS), enterprise risk management (ERM), insurance claims, billing, and policy administration technology integrated with its market-leading analytics and predictive models. Ventiv Technology’s SaaS and on-premise solutions are deployed by insurers, brokers, insured corporate entities, federal and regional governments, public entities, third-party claims administrators (TPAs), and risk pools across a variety of industries, including transportation and logistics, retail, financial services, leisure and hospitality, energy, aviation, and manufacturing among several others.
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Life Insurance
PR Newswire | January 10, 2024
illumifin, a leading third-party insurance administration and technology provider, today announced it has acquired Administrative Partners of America (APA), the Third-Party Administrator (TPA) of AmeriLife, a national leader in developing, marketing, and distributing life and health insurance, annuities, and retirement planning solutions.
As one of the largest independent marketing organizations (IMO) in the U.S., AmeriLife and APA administer approximately 230,000 policies that generate $3.1 billion of premiums in life insurance, annuities and Medicare Supplement products annually. APA employs nearly 200 associates in Clearwater, Florida, and Salt Lake City, Utah, all of whom will transition to illumifin as part of the sale.
Peter Goldstein, President and Chief Executive Officer of illumifin, commented, "This is our second life and annuities acquisition that complements our existing TPA business and further transforms illumifin. We are constantly identifying new opportunities that will enhance our value proposition and make us a key strategic partner to our clients. AmeriLife has a solid platform with key client overlap that strengthens our relationships and opens the door for significant expansion opportunities. We are very excited to build a partnership with AmeriLife to help support their future growth efforts."
Scott R. Perry, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AmeriLife, added, "illumifin is a great home for our TPA operations, and APA's customers will benefit greatly from access to a broad set of capabilities and scalable services across all lines of business. We're equally as excited to begin a new era of partnership with illumifin, and – together with our carrier partners – introduce new products to market, fuel our collective growth, and continue transforming our industry for years to come."
illumifin was formed by Abry Partners, a leading Boston-based private equity firm, and Hoplon Capital, an asset manager focused on digital transformation and disruption.
About illumifin
illumifin provides third party administration and technology services to individual and group insurers. The company, launched in 2021, blends insurance industry knowledge, technology leadership and operational execution to prepare insurers for the digital future. illumifin is a diverse, passionate and empowered team of insurance specialists committed to the growth and success of its customers. With illumifin, there's a brighter future.
About AmeriLife
AmeriLfe's strength is its mission: to provide insurance and retirement solutions to help people live longer, healthier lives. In doing so, AmeriLife has become recognized as a leader in developing, marketing, and distributing life and health insurance, annuities, and retirement planning solutions to enhance the lives of pre-retirees and retirees across the United States. For more than 50 years, AmeriLife has partnered with top insurance carriers to provide value and quality to customers served through a distribution network of over 300,000 insurance agents and advisors and 120 marketing organizations and insurance agency locations nationwide.
About Abry Partners
Abry is one of the most experienced and successful sector-focused private equity investment firms in North America. Since its founding in 1989, the firm has completed over $90 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity or preferred equity placements. Currently, the firm manages over $5 billion of capital across its active funds.
About Hoplon Capital
Hoplon pursues proprietary investments focused on the digital economy that are disruptive in their respective end markets including insurance, financial services, IT and consulting services, healthcare, digital infrastructure and media industries.
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Insurance Technology
PR Newswire | January 29, 2024
AgentSync today announced the launch of its first commercially available ProducerSync API for carriers, MGAs, and agencies to manage producer and adjuster licensing and appointment validation without the paperwork.
The ProducerSync application programming interface (API) acts as a menu, allowing insurance businesses to draw from a selection of National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) data on licensing, appointing, and personal information for producers. AgentSync humanizes and contextualizes the data so end users have actionable information from the industry source of truth without hours of manual research.
"ProducerSync API represents a key step in our long-term strategic vision. By streaming accurate and comprehensive data to our customers' existing systems, ProducerSync API drives better business decisions," said Jenn Knight, Co-Founder and CTO of AgentSync. "We're focused on building modern technology that unlocks value for our customers, and highly flexible and adaptable products like ProducerSync API do exactly that by leveraging current data for better all-around business outcomes."
The ProducerSync API uses REST API architecture, making it lightweight, scalable, and flexible, and is the first of AgentSync's planned suite of APIs to be available to the wider insurance market. It joins a family of modern business solutions the company uses to connect the industry.
"Our first product, Manage, has had strong customer adoption by delivering superior business data with a modern user interface and comprehensive features for compliance and producer management," said Knight. "ProducerSync API builds on this vision, giving customers programmatic access to NIPR data elements in a way that is highly modular and reusable for a variety of use cases."
Insurance runs on data, but maintaining the accuracy and quality of producer data across ecosystems is, historically, a challenge for all stripes of insurance organizations. With ProducerSync API, users can have confidence in their data while reducing maintenance, driving down business risks, enabling better-informed decisions, and eliminating inefficiencies with a scaled, secure solution.
About AgentSync
AgentSync builds modern insurance infrastructure that connects carriers, agencies, MGAs, and producers. With customer-centric design, seamless APIs, automation, and unparalleled service, AgentSync's solutions provide data intelligence and streamlined onboarding and compliance management processes that reduce costs, increase efficiency, and get producers ready to sell in hours instead of weeks. Founded in 2018 by Niranjan "Niji" Sabharwal and Jenn Knight, and headquartered in Denver, CO, AgentSync has been recognized as one of Denver's Best Places to Work, a Forbes Magazine Cloud 100 Rising Star, and as an Insurtech Insights Future 50 winner, and was ranked 65 in Forbes – America's Best Startup Employers 2023.
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Insurance Technology
PR Newswire | January 10, 2024
Keeper Security, the leading provider of zero-trust and zero-knowledge cybersecurity software protecting passwords, passkeys, privileged access, secrets and remote connections, announces Granular Sharing Enforcements will soon be available for all products in the Keeper® platform. Granular Sharing enables administrators to enforce detailed creating and sharing permissions at the user level. By implementing these permissions, organizations can ensure employees only have access to the resources necessary for their roles, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches and lateral movement within a network.
"It's critical for organizations to have security solutions that help them adhere to increasing regulations and compliance requirements," said Craig Lurey, CTO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. "Granular permission control helps organizations enhance their security posture by restricting access to sensitive information and systems. With Granular Sharing Enforcements, it's easier than ever for IT administrators to better control the principle of least privilege and streamline operations within their organizations."
Keeper's added Granular Sharing Enforcement policies provide more detailed restrictions that administrators can apply to users for both creating and sharing records. Most employees do not need access to all of the data or functionalities within an organization, and many industries and geographical regions have specific regulations and compliance requirements regarding data protection and privacy, including HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS and SOX. Granular permission controls enable organizations to align with local and industry regulations by allowing them to define and enforce access policies. This helps in ensuring the organization is compliant with industry standards and legal requirements.
Key features of Keeper's Granular Sharing Enforcements include:
Auditing: Keeper provides clear alerting and reporting on over 100 different event types.
Version control: Only a small subset of users have permissions to update or share records, helping teams ensure information is consistent and accurate.
Seamless access on any device: Keeper provides the same user experience across platforms, ensuring cross functionality and ease of use, whether on web, desktop or mobile.
Encryption: Keeper provides secure sharing with elliptic curve encryption, ensuring cybercriminals cannot intercept passwords or other shared records in transit.
Keeper Administrators can easily customize permissions to best suit the compliance needs of their organization. Administrators modify permissions in the Enforcement Policies section of the Admin Console for the chosen role by selecting Creating and Sharing. Most permissions are activated by default for maximum security. Enforcements have been designed to be simple and powerful, allowing admins to choose the appropriate settings for their unique needs.
Granular Sharing Enforcements will be available for all sharing needs within Keeper's Enterprise Password Manager, Keeper Secrets Manager and KeeperPAM. With Keeper's zero-knowledge password management and security platform, IT administrators have complete visibility into employee password practices, enabling them to monitor password use and enforce password security policies, including strong, unique passwords, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and other security policies. Keeper Secrets Manager is a fully managed cloud-based, zero-knowledge platform for securing infrastructure secrets such as API keys, database passwords, access keys, certificates and any type of confidential data.
Its latest offering, KeeperPAM, provides next-generation Privileged Access Management (PAM) that is disrupting the traditional PAM market. KeeperPAM delivers enterprise-grade password, secrets and privileged connection management within a unified SaaS platform that is cost-effective, easy to use and simple to deploy. KeeperPAM enables least-privilege access with zero-trust and zero-knowledge security. Enterprises select Keeper because of its strong security architecture, ability to support federated and passwordless authentication with any identity provider, seamless integration into on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments and ease of use across desktop and mobile devices.
About Keeper Security
Keeper Security is transforming cybersecurity for people and organizations around the world. Keeper's affordable and easy-to-use solutions are built on a foundation of zero-trust and zero-knowledge security to protect every user on every device. Our next-generation privileged access management solution deploys in minutes and seamlessly integrates with any tech stack to prevent breaches, reduce help desk costs and ensure compliance. Trusted by millions of individuals and thousands of organizations, Keeper is the leader for best-in-class password and passkey management, secrets management, privileged access, secure remote access and encrypted messaging.
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