A firm with a strong presence in the US brokerage and self-directed investor markets has taken a major step in its 30-year history with a change of owners.
Fincentric provides digital experiences, curation of financial data distribution and other solutions. It was previously Markit on Demand and became part of S&P Global when its parent IHS Markit was acquired in 2020 and was then carved out.
S&P Global has now completed the sale of Fincentric to private equity company Stellex Capital and Communify, led by former InvestCloud founder and CEO John Wise who left that firm in 2023. Communify provides client communication, automation, and management services for the global wealth and asset management industries.
As Communify Fincentric the combined firm is planning expansion both in the US and international markets and aims to “address the industry’s long-standing challenge of disjointed data sources and subpar digital user experiences,” through its suite of SaaS based products, Markets Apps, Client Apps, and Advisor Apps.
Communify is part of Just Build It, a technology firm which has designed and built solutions for some of the biggest names in financial services. It is also led by John Wise.
“We’ve followed Wall Street on Demand to Markit Digital/Markit on Demand to Fincentric over the years for their outstanding ability to create compelling user experiences with complex data sets to investors,” said Wise. “Their numbers speak for themselves – their product gets 165 million logins per month, accessing over 563 million page views per day whilst leveraging 4,000 unique data feeds. Unifying Fincentric's market data capabilities with Communify's expertise in client data creates a strong digital partner for the financial markets.”
Along with geographic expansion, the merged firm is eyeing a broader market within the wealth and asset management industries.
“Combining our market data excellence with Communify’s leading client data solutions creates a compelling proposition for the market,” said Renee Spampinato, global head of Fincentric. “The Communify team is well-known for their excellence in design innovation, go-to-market and value creation. Unifying teams that believe in design and innovation is very exciting.”
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