Four months after Jason Liu left his position as CEO of the Wauwatosa insurtech Zywave Inc., a successor has been named.
The company said Wednesday that Martin Simoncic has joined Zywave as CEO, along with Christian Kasper, who becomes executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Prashant Mehrotra, partner and managing director, and Erik Hansen, vice president, at Clearlake Capital Group LP describe both as experienced software executives who are expected to work with existing management to grow the business organically.
Clearlake Capital of Santa Monica, California, is an investor in Zywave, along with Aurora Capital Partners of Los Angeles.
Liu, who became Zywave's CEO in 2018, left the company in May and is now the CEO at Wood Mackenzie, a London-based data and analytics firm in the energy and sustainability industry.
Zywave is a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) insurance technology for sales management and client delivery enablement founded in 1995. After several years of fast growth driven by multiple acquisitions within a short timeframe, Zywave had faced recent headwinds.
In late 2022, it laid off employees as its growth began to slow, and last year it announced it was moving 100 U.S. jobs to the Philippines as part of a plan for "smarter spending."
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Zywave's owner expressed confidence in the new leaders' abilities to grow the company.
"Martin and Chris each have a track record of leading innovative SaaS companies, which is why we believe they are a natural fit to help Zywave achieve its potential," said Josh Klinefelter, partner at Aurora.
Before joining Zywave, Simoncic was the president of Pros Holdings Inc., a provider of AI-powered SaaS, configure, price, quote and revenue management solutions. At Pros, he also held the roles of chief customer officer and vice president of product management. Simoncic previously was the vice president of customer success and professional services at Vertafore, a provider of insurance technology and distribution solutions.
Kasper has more than three decades of financial and operational experience. He previously has served as CFO for six companies including three cloud-based software companies. Kasper's recent roles were with EnterpriseDB Corp., a software platform for managing database analytical and AI workloads, and Reflexis Systems Inc., which provides real-time store operations products for customers in the banking, retail and hospitality sectors.
Zywave has its headquarters in the Milwaukee County Research Park in Wauwatosa. Clearlake acquired the company in 2020.
