The Hartford buys tech firm

The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. based in Simsbury, Conn. announced its plans today to acquire TopNoggin, a technology firm based in Powell, Ohio. TopNoggin’s proprietary web-based pension administration system will be provided to The Hartford’s defined benefit plan sponsors, better equipping them in the areas of data management, administration and benefit calculations tools. Hartford officials noted in their announcement that this was intended to help grow that portion of their business and had been requested and was “needed” by those administering benefit plans. TopNoggin is a privately held company with 50 clients that have holdings of more than $4 billion in defined benefit plan assets and 375,000 plan participants. The announcement reported that Hartford’s Retirement Plans Group is one of the company’s fastest growing business segments with 2006 deposits of $5.5 billion; total Hartford revenues for 2006 were $26.5 billion. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed in the release, but the transaction expected to be closed within 90 days.