After 35 years in operation, Swiss-based digital banking solution provider Avaloq has agreed to be acquired by Japan’s NEC Corporation. The deal, in which NEC will buy 100% of the company’s shares from existing shareholders, valued the Swiss firm at more than $2.2 billion (CHF 2.05 billion), is billed at enabling Avaloq to “accelerate” its “growth, global expansion, and value creation strategy.”
“With NEC, Avaloq found a perfect new home to continue our success story of serving our clients with solutions that make their lives simpler in an ever more complex world,” Avaloq CEO Jürg Hunziker said. Company founder and chairman Francisco Fernandez added that acquisition would help the company continue to “invest heavily in R&D,” and highlighted the two firms’ shared emphasis on the “caring about customers and people.”
The transaction is expected to be completed in April 2021. The company will continue to operate as its own entity, based in Zurich.
First introduced to our audiences at our developers conference, FinDEVr London, in 2017, Avaloq made its Finovate debut a year later at FinovateEurope with a demonstration of its goal-based, wealth management solution. The cloud-based microservice enables wealth managers to provide risk-optimized investment objectives for their clients, which helps ensure that the client and their investment preferences, concerns, and risk tolerance are at the center of the investment advisory experience.
With more than 150 clients in 30 countries and nearly $5 trillion (4.5 trillion CHF) in client assets managed using its software, Avaloq recently announced partnerships with Belgium’s Banque Degroof Petercam in October and integrated with Enterprise Bot, an conversational AI and automation solution provider, in September. Also that month, FintechNews Switzerland featured Avaloq Group Chief Product Officer Martin Greweldinger, author of a report on the need for wealth managers to “democratize” their offerings to a wider audience in order to survive and grow.
“This democratization requires wealth managers to deliver personalized advice at scale while addressing the specific needs of this new affluent clientele through a balance of industrialization, innovation, and individualization,” Greweldinger noted. Read more about Avaloq’s report.