Lloyd’s of London’s software provider Sequel sold for £250m by private equity backer HgCapital to US-listed Verisk
Sequel, an insurance software and services provider which serves Lloyd’s of London, has been sold for £250m to US data analytics business Verisk.
The sale will have generated a strong return for private equity firm HgCapital, which bought a stake in the business three years ago through its technology-focused Mercury I fund. Mercury I has now sold three of the 12 investments it made, and has already returned 83 per cent the amount committed to those 12 investments (understood to be the majority of the fund’s £380m total).
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Verisk hopes to use the EC2-based business to expand its global complex commercial and speciality insurance offering. Verisk, which is listed on the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index, currently operates in 29 countries.
Mark Anquillare, chief operating officer of Verisk, said:
Sequel’s strong position in the London insurance market will allow Verisk to build on our footprint in the UK, reinforce our deep long-term commitment to a strategic market, and expand our customer sets in global insurance markets.
“This supports our vision to deeply integrate into our customers’ workflows and adds to our unique data assets, deep domain expertise, and steady stream of first-to-market innovations.”
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During the time HgCapital has held Sequel, the company has broadened its product set to support all the complex risk activities of insurers and brokers including risk aggregation, claims management and re-insurance. Led by chief executive Mario Garcia, customer numbers have tripled and Sequel has adapted its business model to generate recurring revenue.
“We are proud to have been associated with Mario and his team in driving the growth of Sequel in the past three years, and believe that the business is very well positioned to be successful within the property and casualty insurance markets,” said Sebastien Briens, partner at HgCapital.
Sequel’s compound revenue growth has reached 14 per cent over the past three years, with revenues for the year ending June 2017 totalling £26m.
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