Sword Group Acquires AgencyPort

Property/casualty industry distribution solutions vendor Sword Group (New York) has acquired the full share capital of privately-held insurance distribution technology provider AgencyPort (Boston). A Sword Group press release characterizes the acquisition as evidence of the company's commitment to the global insurance marketplace and to expand its presence in the North American market.

The acquisition coincides with the announcement that Steve Hauck, co-founder of AgencyPort, will lead Sword's insurance division as CEO in the Americas and AgencyPort co-founder Eric Harnden will take on the Global role of CTO for Sword in insurance. 'They will lead the newly-combined division consisting of 350 staff, pro-forma revenues of more than $77 million in 2009 and forecasted revenue of $100 million in 2010.'

With the acquisition, Sword characterizes its insurance proposition as bringing a unique combination of products that span policy administration (Sword Intech) and multi-channel CRM (Sword Ciboodle) with AgencyPort's distribution technology (the renamed Sword AgencyPort). 'Each of these three components will retain its own product development strategy to remain best-in-class, and additional resources will be allocated to realize product integration, the Sword press release claims. '

"Bringing together AgencyPort's strong front-end solutions and loyal client base with Sword's core processing and CRM capabilities creates a very interesting option for US P&C insurers," comments Matthew Josefowicz, head of New York-based Novarica's insurance practice.

Heath Davies, CEO, Sword Group comments that, "The acquisition of AgencyPort is a strategic step for the Group and our customers. We are moving towards our goal of providing an impressive a-la-carte portfolio of leading software solutions encompassing policy administration, CRM and distribution technology to the global insurance marketplace.'AgencyPort's customer base in the Americas, ACORD-based product suite and over 100 professionals trained in insurance IT delivery will be a strong addition to our existing operations and key ingredients as we grow our US and global market footprint."'

"We are very pleased that AgencyPort has joined Sword Group," comments Steve Hauck. "Sword is a rapidly growing and global software business with a proven acquisition strategy which allows us to immediately extend our market presence and offer even greater value to both the Sword and AgencyPort client bases. 'The best reflection of our strategic synergy is the fact that already numerous customers and prospects are engaged in evaluating the combination of our respective offerings."

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio