THOMA BRAVO HAS ACQUIRED CRIF LENDING SOLUTIONS
Advisory Role: Krall & Co. Inc. advised Thoma Bravo in connection with this transaction.
Announcement Date: June 7, 2018.
Buyer: Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm based in San Francisco, targets control investments in strong businesses led by experienced executives. The firm has invested in many fragmented, consolidating industry sectors, but is particularly known for its history of successful investments in application software, infrastructure software and technology-enable services. Thoma Bravo currently manages a series of private equity funds representing more than $20 billion in equity commitments.
Target: CRIF Lending Solutions’ ACTion, Synergy, and Achieve divisions provide technology for lending and credit processing. ACTion is a suite of products for consumer and business lending and deposit account opening. Synergy is a suite of technology components (such as data engines, scoring characteristic development tools and credit decisioning engines) that enable financial institutions to develop or enhance end-to-end credit management systems with a high degree of configurability. Achieve is an analytic decision management solution for measuring portfolio quality and profitability. Customers are primarily financial institutions, including large banks, community banks, credit unions, finance companies and credit card companies in the U.S. The Company is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Seller: CRIF S.p.A. (1988) provides credit bureau services, business and commercial information systems, analytics and decision support, business process optimization, consultancy, marketing management, and software solutions to banks, financial institutions, utilities, insurance companies and businesses in Italy and more than 50 countries. The Company supports clients in every phases of the customer relationship cycle ranging from strategic planning to fraud prevention to acquisition, portfolio management, and debt collection. CRIF, which is based in Bologna, Italy, provides credit reporting systems in more over 20 countries and operates across Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia. CRIF is included in the prestigious FinTech 100 ranking.
Deal Rationale: Thoma Bravo acquired CRIF Lending Solutions contemporaneously with its acquisition of MeridianLink and, in a second step, merged it with Meridianlink.
Terms: Thoma Bravo has acquired CRIF Lending Solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction did not include CRIF Select, which offers business process outsourcing solutions for direct lending, indirect lending and leasing, merchant lending, and auto dealer services. CRIF Lending Solutions spunoff this business prior to the transaction and retained ownership thereof. As part of the transaction, CRIF S.p.A. will become a shareholder in Meridianlink.