Equisoft | Looking Towards Global Development | Luis Romero

Romero founded Equisoft in 1994 along with a companion he’d worked with in the IT department of an actuarial consulting firm. They left the company together to follow a more entrepreneurial path. At the time, custom-built solutions were the trend, and — according to Romero — he and his friend had the chance to build an asset allocation software for a mutual fund company. That software formed the basis for Equisoft.

“The original software was produced on three floppy disks,” Romero said. “We made 1,000 copies of it and packaged it in fancy boxes to send to financial advisors. This product developed from floppy disk to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, and in the earlier 2000s, we added system integration into our offering. We then matured to focus on a core set of solutions where we knew we could be the most promising.”

Equisoft was a self-funded company for 24 years, up until 2018. In 2018, in order to “accelerate growth” (as Romero puts it), Equisoft opened up to investors, securing around $17 million in its first round of funding.

“Our reasoning back then was we wanted to invest in our core SaaS solutions and the specialized services encompassing them,” Romero said. “We believed that there was a powerful opportunity to continue to grow our customer base across the life insurance, wealth and asset management markets in the Americas and beyond.”

It was a visionary move. Today, Equisoft’s annual total revenue stands around $150 million; in 2022, total revenue and annual recurring revenue both grew by 45% year-over-year. With over 250 corporate clients, Equisoft’s solutions are now employed by more than 100,000 advisors in North America alone, Romero says.

Acquisitions bolstered Equisoft’s development. In 2021, the firm bought Altus, a U.K.-based financial services firm with a transaction platform for pension administrators and asset managers. In 2022, Equisoft purchased CompuOffice (Equisoft’s eighth acquisition to date), a developer of life insurance analysis and research software.

“In the past two years we have more than doubled our revenue and now have over 900 employees,” Romero said. “We are hoping to continue on our growth trajectory this year.”

So what, exactly, does Equisoft do? At a high level, the organization partners with customers to solve problems related to wealth management and insurance variety. Equisoft’s core offering is centered on back office and policy administration tools for life insurance customers, but the company also sells frontend solutions to complement its bread-and-butter software lineup.

“Our go-to-market strategy is focused on leveraging our digital products to win new customers and provide them with a solution for a faster, more cost-efficient transformation or with a component for incremental value added,” Romero said. “This strategy is supported by our policy administration system and data migration services.”

For example, Equisoft uses AI and machine learning to offer what it calls “data-driven predictions,” or “next best actions,” to promote efficiency and, ideally, reduce human error in insurance workflows. Think automatically extracting key info from insurance contracts or algorithmically processing customer onboarding documents.

“Equisoft’s offerings enable companies to undergo much-needed digital transformation,” Romero stated, citing a McKinsey study that predicts automation will influence 25% of the insurance sector by 2025. “AI can fill in the manual, repetitive and mundane labor gaps and allow insurance industry professionals to do other things that add the most value to policyholders.”

Equisoft positions its software and services as disruptive, but — despite the recent downtrend — insurtech has been a red-hot industry. According to a recent report from BCG, insurtech companies raised $14.4 billion across 644 deals in 2021, surpassing the total raised in 2020 by about 87% and reaching a cumulative 10-year total of $43.8 billion from 2012 to 2021.

Equisoft intends to ride the wave with a renewed focus on mergers and acquisitions, expanded service offerings, and geographic expansion, according to Romero; $138 million in the bank will certainly

“The life insurance, wealth and asset management industries are large, highly competitive and fragmented. These markets are subject to changing technology, shifting client needs and introductions of new products and services,” Romero continued. “We believe our global end-to-end platform and deep industry experience differentiate us from competitors who do not necessarily provide an integrated, scalable, configurable and highly efficient platform. Moreover, our global footprint and broad expertise allow us to be among the few players that operate across geographies and languages.”

TruStage, formerly known as the CUNA Mutual Group, has carved a niche as a principal provider of investment and insurance solutions tailored specifically for credit union members.

TruStage engaged Equisoft to implement and host Oracle’s OIPA policy administration system as a replacement for their legacy policy admin system. In order to give TruStage autonomy and greater control over OIPA, Equisoft implemented and trained internal TruStage team members on the Equisoft/design IDE. Today, TruStage acts as its configuration team, able to quickly and confidently configure OIPA to meet evolving business needs.

TruStage wanted to transition seamlessly from its legacy Policy Administration System (PAS) to the more advanced Oracle Insurance Policy Administration (OIPA) system. They engaged Equisoft to implement and host the new PAS, but, ultimately, they didn’t want to be beholden to a third-party vendor for all configurations and product modifications.

TruStage’s PAS modernization project could not be deemed complete until they had the in-house capability to create their configurations and master their product roadmap.

In order to gain independence over OIPA configuration for new products and product modifications, TruStage would need a configuration and release management software solution that would enable their internal IT and business staff to make OIPA changes driven by evolving business needs.

Not only is Equisoft the world’s leading implementer and integrator of OIPA, but in order to enhance its own configuration and release management activities, Equisoft created the Equisoft/design Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

This configuration solution is generations ahead of the legacy IDEs that were originally used to configure OIPA. It incorporates features and capabilities born from Equisoft’s more than ten years of OIPA implementation experience in a state-of-the-art software solution with an intuitive UI/UX.

Implementing and training TruStage team members on Equisoft/ design was seen as the best path to OIPA configuration and release management independence.

The transformation started with Equisoft transitioning TruStage from their legacy PAS to OIPA. TruStage’s strategy was clear—they acquired a direct OIPA license from Oracle, while Equisoft assumed the role of a strategic hosting partner. As part of the project, TruStage was equipped with the Equisoft/design configuration solution.

Equisoft experts trained TruStage teams on Equisoft/design and provided configuration expertise that could be drawn upon if TruStage needed extra resources beyond their in-house teams.

This strategic move provided TruStage with real autonomy but still provided contingency resources in cases where project demands exceeded internal availability. Whether it was about introducing new products, tweaking existing systems, or even comprehensive system overhauls, TruStage had the tools and knowledge to execute it in-house, as a result ofEquisoft’s tools and training.