Cognizant to acquire Australian insurance consulting firm

The acquisition of Adaptra will expand Cognizant's capabilities in serving insurance clients better

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Cognizant Technology Solutions has entered into an agreement to acquire Adaptra, a Sydney-based consulting, business transformation and IT services provider with the focus on insurance consulting, for an undisclosed amount. 

With the acquisition, around 100 professionals from Adaptra will join Cognizant.

Adpatra is currently working with five of the top 10 insurers in Australia and New Zealand, helping them define their target business and operating models and providing platform advisory and implementation services. The acquisition would strengthen Cognizant's insurance, business transformation and platform capabilities to offer its clients better services in a technology and data-intensive world. The company did not divulge the terms of the transaction.

Insurers are looking at simplifying critical processes relating to policies, claims and billing, expects the company.

"Adaptra's high-end business transformation and Guidewire expertise will complement our deep digital business, operations and systems capabilities, and further enhance our integrated solutions spanning the insurance life cycle," said Jayajyoti Sengupta, Head of Asia Pacific, Cognizant.

This is the fourth acquisition for Cognizant this year, especially focusing on adding capabilities in the digital business segments. In January, the company said that is acquiring KBACE Technologies, a global consulting and technology services company specialising in cloud strategy, implementation and integration and a leading Oracle Cloud partner.

In July, it announced the acquisition of Idea Couture, a Toronto-based digital innovation, strategy, design and technology services company. In November, it announced the acquisition of Netherlands-based digital marketing and consumer experience agency Mirabeau BV to expand its digital business capabilities in the country and across Europe. However, the value of any of these acquisitions was not revealed.

While it has also acquired a 49 per cent stake in ReD Associates, a leading strategic consulting firm specialising in the use of human sciences to help business leaders better understand customer behaviour, in April, the company said that it does not consider it as an acquisition and called it an exclusive strategic partnership.

Cognizant currently has over 100 development and delivery centres worldwide and approximately 255,800 employees as of September 30, 2016.

Founded in 1998, Adaptra specialises in consulting, programme management, and implementation of core platforms such as Guidewire to enable insurance companies to drive improvements across key functional areas such as underwriting, policy administration, claims management and billing. This helps insurers to increase speed-to-market, transform core processing to improve customer experience, drive competitiveness and product differentiation, and empower agents to digitally engage with customers.

Including Adaptra, Cognizant has acquired 16 companies in the past six years. While in 2010, 2011 and 2013 it acquired two companies in a year, and one company in 2011, during 2014 and 2016 it announced acquisition of four companies each. The acquisition have been in various segments including medical management, enterprise application, testing, mortgage processing KPO, digital video solutions, healthcare IT software and solution, digital marketing agencies, digital solutions companies, among others.