Partnership to Benefit Clients of Both Companies and Dramatically Enhance Offering for the Risk and Performance Needs of Front and Middle Office Clients
BOISE, Idaho and Santa Monica, Calif., April 2, 2024 – Clearwater Analytics (NYSE: CWAN), a leading provider of SaaS-based investment management, accounting, reporting, and analytics solutions, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire risk and performance analytics solutions from Wilshire Advisors LLC, a leading global financial services firm. Specifically, Clearwater will acquire Wilshire Axiom℠, Wilshire Atlas℠, Wilshire Abacus, and Wilshire iQComposite, which provide fixed income analytics, equity analytics and performance measurement, accounting, and GIPS® compliance support analytics, respectively, and will merge them with its own risk and performance analytics platform to create a powerful and compelling product for its customers.
The partnership, which will be co-branded as Clearwater Wilshire Analytics, will allow both companies to provide enhanced analytical capabilities for investment managers and institutional asset owners such as public pension plans, insurers, foundations, endowments and more. Partnering with Wilshire, Clearwater will be able to deepen and strengthen its position in the institutional asset owner market. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions.
The new Clearwater Wilshire Analytics platform will help clients calculate performance and risk attribution, assist with security-level portfolio construction, uncover new strategies, access high-quality portfolio models, and identify investment opportunities that maximize returns and mitigate risk. As a result, investment teams will be able to significantly improve client satisfaction and drive faster growth of assets under management compared to the market.
Wilshire’s industry-leading analytics have a long history of excellence and adoption from clients worldwide. These highly sophisticated, widely adopted and proven models have helped clients strengthen their portfolios across various market conditions and have stood the test of time. Clearwater expects to invest in building out a modern front-end, broaden coverage of asset classes, and enhance Wilshire’s current offerings with the capabilities of its own platform, helping to make Clearwater a leading provider of comprehensive and powerful risk and performance solutions, and benefiting clients of both organizations. Wilshire will continue to focus its strategic growth on its core retirement and wealth, alternatives, and institutional business lines. Following the close, Wilshire will continue to have access to the analytics software to support its clients.
“The strategic acquisition of Wilshire’s Axiom℠, Atlas℠, Abacus, and iQComposite products marks a significant milestone for Clearwater, positioning us to supercharge our clients’ risk and performance capabilities across their front and middle office functions, while perfectly aligning with the long-term needs of our clients across the entire investment lifecycle,” said Sandeep Sahai, CEO at Clearwater Analytics.
“Wilshire’s powerful IP in combination with Clearwater’s comprehensive, trusted foundational platform delivers tremendous benefits to our clients and sets a new standard in the industry. Together, we’re incredibly excited to expand into high-growth markets with a best-in-class investment management solution that will accelerate the way our clients grow their business.”
“Our team has built a robust, time-tested suite of solutions that delivers actionable insights and continues to represent the gold standard in the industry,” said Andy Stewart, CEO at Wilshire. “Clearwater is the ideal steward to expand the business, invest in these capabilities, and accelerate the growth of these analytic tools to serve a wide range of clients.”
“This collaboration was made possible by the contributions, expertise and passion of our analytics team,” said Jason Schwarz, Deputy CEO at Wilshire. “The combined Clearwater Wilshire Analytics platform will help improve investment outcomes for existing clients as well as reach potential new clients in markets that have historically not had access to our capabilities.”
Clearwater expects to pay roughly $40 million for Wilshire’s assets while adding approximately $7 million in annualized revenue.