Rubik Financial (Rubik) has completed its partial purchase of Macquarie Group’s financial planning software business, Coin Software, with all key staff moving across under the new owner.
“We ended up with all of the key staff coming across to us,” Rubik chief executive Brent Jackson told InvestorDaily.
“We only had one person leave during the transition but we’ve pretty much [retained] the whole group.”
Rubik paid $23.75 million for the acquisition and is expecting to expand Coin’s team slightly, Jackson said.
“We’re looking at the needs of the different customers and some of the skill sets they’re after will probably mean that we’ll be bringing in extra people,” he said.
“We’ve had general advertising out through Rubik for a number of roles where we think we’re likely to want to expand the functionality from what we’ve got today.”
The software provider will be announcing the appointment of its new head of wealth shortly, he said.
As Coin offered good capability, Rubik was aware of others interested in buying the business, Jackson said, adding that it specifically sought consent from Coin customers.
“There was noise that IRESS would try, but our main intent was to make sure customers were going to be happy with the service they were going to get from us,” he said.
“The time period between the announcement and now has had a fairly large number of discussions between Rubik and the different customers, trying to give them insights into what we’re thinking so that they were comfortable.
“To a degree, it doesn’t matter what competitor wants to have the capability, it’s whether or not the customers wants that group to be the provider of that service.”
As part of the agreement, Macquarie will continue to service the majority of Coin’s boutique independent financial advice clients, under a licence from Coin.
Coin will become one of the product lines of Rubik.
More than 15 of Australia’s largest banks and financial institutions use Coin as part of their financial planning systems.
On 14 June, Rubik informed the market it had entered into confidential discussions with an unknown entity regarding a potential acquisition of a financial services software business.
