Risk management and compliance provider Wolters Kluwer Financial Services acquired Ghent, Belgium-based FinArch in a move that will enhance its ability to provide global financial institutions with compliance services.
The deal, which will bring 200 FinArch employees under the Wolters Kluwer umbrella, adds a complementary platform to ensure financial institutions worldwide have a single source for financial data, risk management and compliance initiatives.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, for 2011, the Wolters Kluwer Financial Services division of Wolters Kluwer recorded revenue of 333 million euros, or about $407.47 million today.
Brian Longe, CEO of the Wolters Kluwer’s financial and compliance services, said the acquisition meets several needs.
“It gives you a better view of the risk that you have across your enterprise,” he said. “Post financial crisis the regulatory pressures on financial institutions have never been greater.”
Longe told HousingWire the deal brings FinArch’s Financial Studio product under its umbrella. The tool allows financial firms to measure, analyze and report on all financial activities, including accounting, risk and capital management, information oversight and compliance.
“Together with our risk and regulatory reporting solutions, we’ll be able to offer our customers more options and greater flexibility to meet the needs specific to their organization and the changing marketplace,” he said. “We will continue to build out our global capabilities, providing regulatory reporting for 50 countries.”
Longe suggested that rapid changes in the global marketplace make it imperative that risk management and compliance solution providers integrate or add to their product bases to ensure financial firms dealing with international accounting and regulatory standards have the tools they need to measure these data points from a single source.
“You have to have the compliance, analysts and regulatory understanding to be able to deal with all of those different nuances,” Longe said. “This acquisition adds to our strengths today. We will have offices in over 20-plus countries and products used in over 113 countries. We are not all things to all people. We are a very specialized firm with deep domain expertise around compliance, finance and risk.”
