AnaCap in exclusivity talks to acquire Cleva, a leading insurance software solutions provider from Inetum

AnaCap, a market-leading private equity investor specialised in partnering with founders and entrepreneurial management teams across services, technology and software within the European financial ecosystem, today announces that it has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire insurance software provider Cleva from Inetum Group.

This latest development will represent AnaCap’s second platform investment in 2024 following the acquisition of a majority stake in Yard Reaas, a leading investment services and property management platform in April 2024.

Cleva is a leading provider of core life, health and non-life insurance software solutions. The company is headquartered in Paris, operating predominantly in France and Portugal and serving more than 60 insurance carriers and brokers. Cleva employs approximately 550 people with offices in Paris, Lyon, Porto and Lisbon. Prior to AnaCap’s exclusive negotiations, the business was part of Inetum Group, an information technology service provider that was acquired by Bain Capital in 2022.

Cleva is led by CEO Rodolphe Peim, alongside a very experienced management team based in France and Portugal. Working collaboratively, they will continue to drive the growth and development of the company under AnaCap’s ownership.

Cleva is well positioned to benefit from the continued outsourcing trends within the insurance industry which is experiencing accelerated penetration of third-party software solutions. With the support of AnaCap and its unique and unrivalled track record across both insurance and software, Cleva aims to accelerate its growth plans and expand its geographic footprint, especially in the Iberia region.

The transaction is subject to the information and consultation of Inetum Group’s employee representative bodies and to the usual closing conditions (including antitrust approval) and is expected to close second half of 2024. AnaCap received financial advice from Cambon Partners and legal advice from Proskauer Rose LLP.

Nassim Cherchali, Managing Partner at AnaCap, commented:
“We are delighted to announce our investment in Cleva. We look forward to partnering with the management team and supporting the company during its next stage of growth. We believe that Cleva is well positioned to grow its offering as a leading insurance software provider across Europe but also to expand its business reach into new geographies. We were particularly impressed by the efforts made by the management team over the last 3 years in developing a modern tech stack across both life and non-life solutions and we are very excited to begin the next phase of growth with Cleva.”

Steven Gringoire, Investment Director at AnaCap, added:
“We are very pleased to announce our latest investment in France and within the insurance sector in which AnaCap demonstrates a truly unique track record across Europe over the past decade. AnaCap’s acquisition of Cleva is yet another example of how we partner with ambitious management teams to support and accelerate their growth ambitions. We look forward to working closely with all the team at Cleva and are very excited for them to join the AnaCap platform.”

Rodolphe Peim, CEO at Cleva, concluded:
“Over the past years, Cleva has been recognised for the quality of our solutions and its ability to carry out large-scale, transformative projects for our clients. This success represents a great source of pride for all Cleva employees. From our first discussions, AnaCap showed a total commitment to pursue and support our growth strategy and thus demonstrated a true alignment with our fundamentals. I am delighted to partner with AnaCap, and we look forward to this new chapter together.”

In the context of insurance companies, the digitalisation of information systems is a fundamental step. The need to adapt to market changes, the clients’ expectations and the demand for flexibility require a permanent commitment to exploring and experiencing new approaches, while aiming at contributing to an increase in productivity, an improvement in operational efficiency and the customisation of the clients’ experience.

The fields of opportunity are broad. We would like to particularly highlight the transformation in the software engineering field, in which assistants provide suggestions and code reviews, contributing to an increase in productivity and improving the quality, performance and security of the applications. Other relevant field is that of assistants capable of interacting with companies’ local information, fostering a consistent and centralised knowledge base, which allows accelerating the staff’s learning curve and increasing the productivity.

An emerging field for AI implementation is claims management, in which we observe various use cases, as well as a potential to increase the automation level of the assessment process, manage the complaint process more efficiently and automatically generate customised letters according to the context.

Despite the promising opportunities, we cannot ignore the challenges and risks associated with adopting AI. Training models with companies’ specific data, complying with the regulation, ensuring the security and privacy of the data, and mitigating potential biases are just some of the issues to tackle. We would also like to highlight the challenge of dealing with the quality and integrity of the used data, since the accuracy and reliability of the information is vital to the successful use of AI.

As we explore this path, we believe we are ready to face these challenges and explore different opportunities. We are determined to integrate the power of artificial intelligence to boost the innovation and incorporate improvements from AI, while ensuring they address real business challenges.