Two of Vistara Growth’s portfolio companies Zafin and FinCAD have become one. In January 2022, Zafin (Vancouver, BC) announced that it has acquired FinCAD (Vancouver, BC).
In October 2016, Vistara initially made a growth debt investment in Zafin. After seeing the company’s sustained growth, Vistara continued its support of the company’s strategic plans leading another growth equity investment in Jan 2019. In addition to our financial support, Randy Garg, Vistara’s Managing Partner joined Zafin’s Board of Directors.
Vistara made a growth debt investment in FinCAD in 2019 to support its ongoing growth and launch of new product capabilities. By acquiring FINCAD (established in 1990), a global leader in pricing and risk analytics of financial derivatives and fixed income products, Zafin plans to expand its product portfolio and analytics capabilities to become one of Canada’s largest B2B fintech companies with significant global presence and a marquee customer base.
“We have had a longstanding relationship with both companies and very pleased to see a successful homegrown outcome for FinCAD, its employees, and its shareholders.” said Randy Garg, Founder and Managing Partner. “We are even more excited to now support the opportunity for further significant growth, building on Zafin’s growing leadership position for its software solutions across the broader financial services industry.”
“Randy has been a very helpful and collaborative investor and partner over a number of years, and has been an insightful contributor to the executive team and Board, said CEO & Founder, Al Karim Somji. Zafin has used capital provided by Vistara in order to accomplish goals at different points in our growth cycle. Their patient and creative investment structures have enabled us to fund our continued accelerated growth path, while creating the flexibility to raise traditional equity capital at more optimal junctures and limit overall dilution.”
Zafin Acquires FINCAD to Accelerate Growth and Offer Leading End-to-End Pricing and Analytics Solutions to Global Financial Institutions
Transaction underlines Zafin strategy to disrupt pricing in banking, diversify client base, broaden global footprint and enhance market position as a leading B2B fintech provider. Complementary portfolio of technology solutions will address rapidly growing demand for digital transformation within financial services industry.
VANCOUVER, January 24, 2022 — Zafin, the world’s leading SaaS cloud-native product and pricing platform for banks and credit unions, today announced it has acquired FINCAD, a global leader in 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.
FINCAD is a leader in providing derivative and fixed-income pricing, modeling, and risk analytics to many of the world’s banks, asset management firms, insurance companies and hedge funds. The addition of FINCAD’s capital markets expertise, next-generation analytics, and extensive global client base will position the combined company for extraordinary growth.
For Zafin, the acquisition is a key milestone in the company’s history as they will now be able to offer 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 transaction, FINCAD will operate as the Capital Markets Group of Zafin under the established FINCAD brand.
Al Karim Somji, Founder and Group CEO of Zafin, said: “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. 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 become Interim President, Capital Markets at Zafin. FINCAD Analytics leader and current Head of Product Development, Russell Goyder will become Chief Analytics Officer of Zafin. Both Kahl and Goyder will report to Al Karim Somji, Founder and Group CEO of Zafin.
“This is an exciting opportunity to align two leading financial software providers to drive innovation and advancement across the industry,” said Kahl. “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.”
To remain competitive in today’s derivative markets, clients are seeking sophisticated risk and valuation capabilities embedded in trade decision, hedging and risk management. The acquisition offers a key 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.
“FINCAD’s patented analytics have for decades been recognized as part of the standard tool set for quantitative analysts. By coming together with Zafin and leaning on their deep expertise in unharnessing the power of cloud computing, I’m thrilled at the art of the possible as we look to further enhance our products to provide our clients with the next generation of valuations and risk analysis,” said Goyder.
Additional Updates on the Business
Also part of today’s announcement, Zafin announced it has launched a new Banking Group focused on delivering radical innovation of its award-winning product and pricing platform for banks and credit unions. Dubie Cunningham will step into the role of President, Banking at Zafin. Cunningham is an industry veteran in leveraging technology to drive digital transformation. Prior to Zafin, Cunningham served as Head of Innovation at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third largest bank. In her new role, Cunningham will have direct oversight of Zafin’s overall banking strategy, sales, client success, and industry engagement.
Additional Quotes
“As one of Zafin’s earliest clients, I believe this acquisition will transform the combined companies of Zafin and FINCAD into an analytical powerhouse, which is not only capable of providing services to all four corners of a bank, but also pushes the limits on cloud-native technology,” said Dave Revell, Former Global Chief Information Officer of CIBC, Zafin Board Member.
About Zafin
Zafin, the global leader in SaaS cloud-native product and pricing solutions, is a trusted partner to the world’s most customer-centric financial institutions. Zafin’s product and pricing platform empowers banks of all sizes to center their customers, grow relationships and drive revenues.
The Zafin platform separates product and pricing from core processing to accelerate progressive modernization, enable digital transformation and deliver personalization at the relationship level.
A typical Zafin installation integrates easily with most back-end systems and customer-facing channels to increase product and pricing efficiency and agility, drive interest and non-interest income, and deliver a positive ROI—often in one year or less. To learn more, please visit: https://zafin.com
About FINCAD
Backed by more than 30 years of experience, FINCAD is a pioneer in providing pricing, modeling and risk analytics to financial institutions such as banks, asset management firms, insurance companies, hedge funds as well as over 50 Alliance Partners. From the most basic to the bespoke, FINCAD has the financial engineering expertise to address any derivative challenge. FINCAD empowers global organizations to optimize risk and return through simplified and direct control over the valuation and analytics of derivatives. With the most precise, transparent and scalable technologies for pricing derivatives and fixed-income products, FINCAD’s highly dedicated customer support team goes above and beyond to help customers achieve their goals. FINCAD is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. To learn more, please visit https://fincad.com
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About Vistara Growth
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