NOIDA, INDIA: HCL Technologies, India's leading global IT services provider, announced signing of an agreement to fully acquire Liberata Financial Services (LFS), a leading UK-based BPO provider and wholly owned subsidiary of Liberata Limited.

LFS, regulated in the UK by The Financial Services Authority (FSA), provides comprehensive end-to-end administrative and customer services for the life and pensions industry. 

"HCL will be acquiring LFS for an undisclosed sum. HCL will be paying Liberata $2 million for fixed assets alone. This is in terms of the agreement entered into between Liberata and HCL where the terms regarding consideration have been kept confidential." 

Ranjit Narasimhan, president and CEO of HCL BPO, said, "This strategic acquisition of LFS enhances HCL's ability to become an end-to-end provider of business process outsourcing services in the financial services space. This acquisition will equip HCL with a ready capability across the value chain by providing access to an existing revenue stream of policy management, actuarial and analytics catapulting HCL to become a leading service provider in the UK market for the life and pensions industry. We are delighted to welcome the high quality staff of LFS into the HCL family."

Robert Gogel, CEO of Liberata Limited, said: "We are pleased to have found an appropriate buyer for this business, thereby assuring its long-term future development. We have made significant investments in people, platform and service line development, which has allowed our clients to benefit from high levels of service excellence. This sale will enable Liberata to focus on its core BPO business in the public sector."

HCL's insurance practice will be strengthened by LFS's core capability to manage complex transactions utilising competencies in case assessment and actuarial calculations. LFS is one of the few companies in UK which uses internally developed ALPS platform. LFS's technology has been a key differentiator that has demonstrated capability to support multiple books of business and multiple insurers on a common platform. LFS has multi-year contracts with its customers which include blue chip names.

Anil Chanana, executive vice president, Finance of HCL Technologies said, "In the past few years, HCL has focussed on creating customer value in select industry verticals by combining domain depth with innovative service offerings and business models. This philosophy is also reflected in HCL's acquisition strategy, which is proactive, selective and is in continuation of HCL's strategy to seek non-linear growth opportunity."