POMPANO BEACH, Fla. and WESTPORT, Conn., July 14, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Blue Frog Solutions, a leading provider of Life & Annuity Order Management and Compliance Solutions for the insurance industry, today announced that Bluff Point Associates, a private equity firm headquartered in Westport, Conn., has purchased a controlling share in Blue Frog.
Blue Frog Chairman and Founder Brad Levine believes the investment by Bluff Point and the partnership with its affiliate companies will strengthen Blue Frog's market positioning.
"This investment will enable us to become a stronger enterprise and will allow us to broaden our carrier and distributor relationships," Levine says. "The investment will also enable us to expand our flagship AFFIRM platform to include life insurance and to continue our focus on providing optimal delivery, support and services."
Bluff Point CEO Tom McInerney expressed his enthusiasm over the Blue Frog investment. "Blue Frog has a leading technology platform that enables broker dealers and advisor networks to assure compliance and improve efficiencies. The company's focus on insurance and annuity products is very similar to what Matrix has done in providing an open architecture platform for the clearing of mutual funds," McInerney says. "Many of Blue Frog's current clients and prospects are also clients of other Bluff Point portfolio companies. We see a tremendous amount of synergy in streamlining the order entry, compliance and clearing functions across the broad array of investment and insurance products for our financial services clients."
AFFIRM is Blue Frog's compliance and order management system designed to seamlessly integrate an insurance Carrier's complex product rules with a Distributor's compliance processing system in order to generate transactions that are in-good-order.
Bluff Point Associates focuses on financial services companies that have gained efficiency through proprietary technology solutions. Its other affiliated companies include:
* Matrix Financial Solutions, Inc. is one of the nation's largest providers of back-office, trust, custody, trading and mutual fund settlement services for financial institutions, including banks, trust companies, registered investment advisors and record-keepers/third-party administrators (TPAs);
* Matrix Communications Technologies, a subsidiary of Matrix Financial Solutions, specializing in design and production of materials and systems for the Retirement Plan market;
* InvestLink Technologies provides complete administration, recordkeeping, compliance and trading functionality on one seamless platform for the Defined Contribution pension market;
* Innovest Systems provides technology-driven accounting and reporting solutions to trust and wealth management companies;
* Wealth Management Systems Inc. (WMSI) is the leading provider of technology-based rollover products and services within the financial services.
About Blue Frog Solutions:
Blue Frog Solutions (www.bluefrogsolutions.com), based in Pompano Beach, Florida, is a leading technology solutions provider and business processing outsourcing (BPO) firm that focuses on the life, annuities and long-term care market. Blue Frog automates both front and back end business processes between carriers and distributors with a focus on compliance to create automated business process efficiencies. Blue Frog's solutions are based on the firm's flagship ADMServer Framework software suite. As one of the largest providers of ACORD-based transactions and DTCC solutions, Blue Frog currently provides ADMServer solutions to more than 60 percent of the top 40 life and annuity companies and many of the largest distributors in the U.S.
About Bluff Point Associates:
Bluff Point Associates is a private equity firm based in Westport, Conn. The firm focuses on investments in information services companies supporting the banking, trust, securities, wealth management and retirement sectors of the financial services industry. Bluff Point is currently the major investor in Matrix Financial Solutions, which is the owner of Matrix Settlement & Clearing Services, MG Trust, and a major investor in Prima Capital. Bluff Point and its affiliates also hold direct investments in InvestLink Technologies, Innovest Systems and Wealth Management Systems.