Innovations in customer onboarding may be one of the less glamorous niches in financial technology. But there’s no denying the value of meeting your customers on the channel of their choice.
This is the thinking that helps explain Bottomline Technologies’ purchase of financial software-as-a-service specialist Andera.
In a deal valued at $48 million ($44.5 million in cash and just over 100,000 shares of stock valued at just over $35 per share), Bottomline sees its acquisition as a way of helping its digital banking clients “grow revenues and compete and win” in the words of Norm DeLuca, General Manager of Banking and Financial Services for Bottomline.
Of Andera’s virtues, none is more vivid than its oFlows platform, which the company purchased in 2011. The Best of Show winning technology (FinovateSpring 2010) makes customer onboarding and account opening easier for banks and credit unions whether customers are accessing their financial institution online, in-person, or through a mobile device. Most recently, the company made headlines with a software upgrade enabling mobile photo capture of data on driver’s licenses.
Andera was founded in 2000, and is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. The company has helped its more than 500 banking and credit union clients process more than 4.5 million online account applications. American Banker called Andera one of its “Top 10 Tech Companies to Watch” in 2012. Charlie Kroll is founder, president, and CEO.