Nasdaq is to acquire anti-financial crime group Verafin for $2.75 billion, accelerating the US exchange's evolution into a Saas technology provider.
Based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador and founded in 2003, Verafin provides to more than 2,000 financial institutions in North America a cloud-based platform to help detect, investigate, and report money laundering and financial fraud.
Verafin’s capabilities will be available to the global network of nearly 250 banks, exchanges, broker-dealers and buy-side organizations, and regulatory authorities that already rely on Nasdaq’s technology to detect market manipulation and abuse.
“Verafin’s innovative fraud and AML detection platform, combined with Nasdaq’s leading trade and market surveillance solution, will empower Nasdaq to play an increasingly important role in building stronger economies around the world,” says Adena Friedman, Nasdaq president and CEO. “In addition to Verafin’s significant contribution to Nasdaq’s strategic ambitions, the acquisition also furthers our goal to be a premier provider of cloud-based SaaS solutions to the global capital markets and beyond. This combination meaningfully accelerates the evolution of our business mix toward highly scalable, subscription revenue.”
Verafin is benefiting from strong regulatory tailwinds which are forcing financial institutions to investing significant capital and resources into combating financial crime. The company has delivered a compound annual revenue growth rate of approximately 30% over the last three years and expects to deliver in excess of $140 million in revenue in 2021.