The Insurance Industry’s Data ‘Revolution’: Analyzing The M&A Activity Of Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics CEO Scott Stephenson has previously called the trend of insurers relying more on data a “quiet revolution.” Since going public in 2009, the Jersey City, NJ-based data analytics and risk assessment giant in the property and casualty insurance industry has used M&A to expand significantly and today has a market cap of over $13.7B.

Here’s a look at how Verisk’s M&A activity has trended since 2012.

Overall trend

Since 2012, Verisk has made more than 15 acquisitions (including Arium in Q1’17). That includes the 2015 $2.8B buyout of Wood Mackenzie, which provides data analytics and commercial intelligence for the energy, chemicals, metals, and mining verticals. In 2014, Verisk attempted to buy aerial and roof measurement technology provider EagleView Technologies for $650M, but scrapped those plans after the Federal Trade Commission said it would file a lawsuit to block the deal. (Note: The visualizations and data below are all taken directly from the CB Insights platform’s Acquirer Analytics tool.)

Geographic trend

Geographically, Verisk has mostly acquired US and UK-based companies, as highlighted in the chart below. Within the US, Verisk has made acquisitions for companies in a range of states from Massachusetts, where it acquired GreenTech Media, to Minnesota, where it bought Aspect Loss Prevention, to Tennessee, where it acquired Inovatus.

Industry-level trend

Most of Verisk’s acquisitions over the last five years have gone to consulting and advisory services including UK-based geopolitical risk analysis firm Maplecroft and financial services benchmarking and advisory provider Dart Consulting, both acquired in 2014. It will be interesting to monitor whether Verisk’s recent acquisition of AnalyzeRe will be part of a shift in acquisition appetite for smaller and more recently established tech startups across the data and risk analytics space.

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