Hello Friends! This week we are following Duck going Private, MGAs changing hands and insurtech fundraising and M&A, on a smaller scale. Here are the three things we learned: |
[1] |
Duck Creek Goes Private Not a total surprise, Monday morning we learned that Vista Equity Partners agreed to acquire insurance software provider Duck Creek for $19/share or approximately $2.6B in cash. There is a ‘go-shop’ period that expires on Feb 7 where other offers may emerge. Duck Creek was not enjoying life as a public company. They debuted in August 2020 at $40/share, peaked in Feb 2021 at $58/share and bottomed out recently at $10/share. Quite a wild ride in the public markets. They will join fellow insurance software companies Majesco, Sapiens and Insurity in the private world with capital to continue to acquire smaller operations to grow. Meanwhile Vista buys a company for less than half of their IPO price just two and half years ago. They have experience in insurance software having previously taken stakes in Vertafore and Applied Systems. |
[2] |
MGAs Assets Changing Owners Only 15 months after the acquisition, Coalition is already divesting MGA Attune to worker’s comp insurer Pinnacol. It appears to be the latest move by Coalition to pivot into new markets and different distribution channels. They claim the relationship was profitable while it lasted. Pinnacol’s strategy was clear that they wanted to provide their policy holders with insurance coverages out of state. Attune as part of Pinnacol will continue to market Coalition’s cyber and executive protection products. Fairfax and subsidiary Brit Insurance join with insurance broker / services company Amynta who will acquire Brit’s MGU Ambridge along with a multi-year agreement for $400M capacity. Amynta will add Ambridge to their existing MGA units and and will grow their geographic footprint product reach and market insurance coverages from Brit. In both cases the carriers are giving up control but will keep the distribution channel open |
[3] |
Insurtech Funding and Acquisitions Update The signs are clear that insurtech funding and M&A will be slowing down in 2023 from the pace over the past couple of years but there is still activity, just with some different characteristics than the ‘unicorn’ announcements we have seen. FT Partners released their January 2023 Insurtech report, always an interesting read, it provides a good high level overview and themes. It appears that early stage investments will be more common as opposed to middle stage. This week E&S insurtech Joyn announced the closure of a Series A round of $18M. They have many established insurance entities backing them and look to solve distribution issues in the E&S space that is growing with opportunity in the hard market. Vouch Insurance, made a somewhat quiet acquisition of lending startup technology provider Level. Vouch is trying to build a tech-driven insurer targeting startups and Web3 providers. The latter of those two groups certainly need insurance in this day and age of the ‘crypto collapse’. The acquisition will bolster their tech team and give them IP to enhance their underwriting capabilities. |
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