EXL Acquires Trumbull Services From Hartford

Business process outsourcing company ExlService Holdings, Inc. (EXL) has acquired Trumbull Services, a specialised service provider to the insurance industry, for an undisclosed amount.

The NASDAQ-listed EXL has bought Trumbull from its client, The Hartford Financial Services Group, which offers insurance and wealth management services. However, EXL will continue to provide services to The Hartford. Trumbull, which has offices in Hartford and Columbia, offers subrogation services for property and casualty insurers. All Trumbull employees have been retained and its president Brad Burdick will take up a leadership role at EXL.

EXL now plans to invest in data analytics to grow and enhance the existing capabilities of Trumbull's SubroSource platform, offered through the Cloud or via a platform BPO offering. This is the second acquisition by EXL this year. In May, it bought Outsource Partners International (OPI), a finance and accounting outsourcing services provider, for an enterprise valuation of $91 million (Rs 400 crore). Last year, EXL paid $14.1 million in cash to acquire PDMA Inc., which offers an insurance policy administration platform.

Gary Thompson, executive vice-president and chief underwriting officer for commercial markets at The Hartford, said, "While Trumbull has built strong capabilities as a subrogation services provider, the sale of this business to EXL is consistent with The Hartford's strategy to focus resources on its core insurance and wealth management businesses."

Outsourcing services relating to insurance industry account for 54 per cent of EXL's revenues and the company is intent on growing this business. EXL's president and CEO, Rohit Kapoor, has recently said that the company is pursuing an inorganic growth strategy with plans to invest up to $130 million to scale up its capabilities in insurance, banking and financial services.

"Trumbull enhances our domain expertise in P&C insurance with subrogation outsourcing and brings along a number of valuable relationships with insurance companies which are new to EXL," said Kapoor. "The acquisition furthers our effort to infuse our service offerings with technology and drive toward greater business model scalability."