SAS buys Hawaiian risk management firm specializing in financial services

CARY – SAS has made its first acquisition since January 2021, announcing today that the Cary-headquartered company purchased the Honolulu, Hawaii-based privately-held company, Kamakura Corporation.

The acquisition comes as SAS continues down its “path to IPO-readiness,” a spokesperson for SAS told WRAL TechWire in an interview.

SAS has staked its future on the cloud-native analytics platform, SAS® Viya®, the spokesperson said, adding that the most recent acquisition will “will fuel innovation in SAS’ financial services solutions portfolio.”

Kamakura provides specialized software, data, and consulting to financial organizations including banks, insurance companies, and more, according to a statement from SAS released today.

“This acquisition is an extension of tremendous investments already made in SAS’ cloud-ready risk management platform and integrated solutions,” said SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight in a company statement. “It signals our intent to advance market-changing risk solutions to solve the most pressing challenges our financial services customers face.”

The company statement noted that the acquisition comes as the economy of the United States and the global economy are facing turbulence with rising inflation and the possibility of a recession emerging as “dark clouds.” And companies are incorporating that vision of stormy times ahead into how they think about and manage risk, SAS noted.

That’s part of the rationale for the acquisition, the company said. “On occasion, SAS will make a strategic acquisition to augment our organic R&D efforts,” said the company spokesperson. “In this case, the acquisition of Kamakura will give SAS entry into new facets of the financial services sector, including asset managers, hedge funds and central banks.”

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SAS wasn’t the only suitor

According to the company’s statement, Kamakura had other interested parties when it came to the possibility of acquisition.

But the company chose SAS. Kamakura’s founder, chairman and CEO, Don van Deventer, said in the statement that the two company cultures will “produce synergies that fuel customer and marketplace innovation.”

SAS will retain van Deventer and Research Director Robert Jarrow, along with Kamakura COO Martin Zorn, according to the statement, in order “to help facilitate the transition and lead the development of future-forward ALM and integrated balance sheet offerings and other risk solution advances.”

“We foresee that the resulting strength of SAS technology, paired with Kamakura’s risk analytics and credit models, will prove far greater than the sum of its parts,” said Goodnight in the statement.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.