Zywave Inc., the Wauwatosa-based insurance software-as-a-service company, has been sold to another private investment firm in California.
Aurora Capital Partners in Los Angeles has sold the company to Santa Monica, California-based Clearlake Capital Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Zywave is the largest software company in the Milwaukee area when ranked by software engineers on staff, according to Business Journal research. Zywave will continue to be led by CEO Jason Liu and the current management team, who are investing alongside Clearlake in the transaction, according to a news release about the deal.
Aurora acquired Zywave from Texas-based Vista Equity Partners in November 2013.
Zywave sells its technology to 6,000 insurance brokerages across the globe, including the top 100 U.S. insurance firms. Zywave specializes in front office technology, which focuses on lead generation and the digital transformation of client delivery, and after its 2019 acquisition of miEdge, a New Hampshire-based data analytics and lead generation company, now also offers automation technology for the insurance quoting process.
Zywave sells its technology to both independent agents and insurance carriers and payroll and human capital management companies.
The company has just under 500 employees and prior to the miEdge acquisition deal this past December, was generating about $100 million in annual revenue.
“Clearlake’s investment in Zywave is a true game changer,” Liu said in a statement. “This move will enable us to both accelerate our growth organically and increase our pace of acquisitions moving forward. Zywave is already a proven insurtech leader, delivering end-to-end solutions to insurance professionals globally, and now we will have the opportunity to further expand upon our leadership position with even more impactful developments.”
Clearlake has $25 billion in assets under management.
“Zywave has a best-in-class software platform and an innovative portfolio of products that automate key revenue-generating activities at insurance brokerages," Clearlake's co-founder and managing partner Behdad Eghbali and partner Prashant Mehrotra said in a joint statement. “We are pleased to partner with Zywave and look forward to leveraging our proprietary (Operations, People, Strategy, or O.P.S.) framework to support the management team and its many talented and passionate employees to continue to grow the company.”
