A Toronto firm is adding about 100 new employees to its roster after acquiring one of B.C.’s oldest financial technology companies.
Zafin Labs Americas Inc. revealed Monday its acquisition of Surrey-based FinancialCAD Corp. (Fincad).
Zafin, a product and pricing platform for banks and credit unions, is paying US$32.7 million in the deal for the B.C. firm best known for risk analytics, according to a report from The Globe and Mail.
The fintech consolidation will see Zafin’s headcount grow to more than 500 workers and add four more offices, including in New York, the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland.
Fincad is retaining its own name and branding but it will operate as the capital markets group of Zafin.
Christian Hahl, Fincad's head of product strategy and client service, is taking on the role of interim president of capital markets at Zafin. Meanwhile, Fincad’s head of product development, Russell Goyder, will take on the role of chief analytics officer at Zafin.
Zafin said the acquisition allows it to offer pricing and advanced analytics tools to institutions across all segments of banking, including retail, corporate and commercial, and capital markets.
Fincad was mainly offering desktop tools designed for financial professionals when it launched in the early 90s. In 2006, the company began looking to math whizzes with Wall Street experience to collaborate with software developers designing more complex enterprise-valuation and risk-analytics platforms.
“The risk-management tools and techniques that were being used before the financial crisis were not up to the task,” co-founder Bob Park told BIV in 2014.
Software sales ground to halt in the months after the meltdown but by the spring of 2009, the market opened up to the more complex risk-analysis software that Fincad had been developing since before the crisis.
“Someone once said to me, ‘You know, being in Surrey isn't a very fashionable part of the Lower Mainland,'” Park said during a call from his office in Whalley's Central City Tower.
“My answer to that was, ‘Given our business and the nature of our clients in New York and London and Zurich and many other places, Vancouver isn't a particularly fashionable place for a financial technology company.’”
