EXL recently announced its acquisition of US-based Overland Solutions, Inc. (OSI). OSI is a service provider of underwriting support capabilities including: premium audit, commercial and residential underwriting surveys and outsourced loss control services. We believe the acquisition fits well within EXL’s strategy of investing and growing its capabilities and client footprint in the insurance vertical.
Insurance is EXL’s largest vertical by revenue and by workforce. The company has made several strategic acquisitions in the last four years to further develop its insurance portfolio of offerings. The focus of EXL’s M&A investments has been to add platform enablement and analytics to add to the subject matter expertise it offers to clients. It is building a value proposition that goes beyond legacy BPO service delivery tied to labor-intensive work. In particular, its acquired technology assets – CareRadius, LifePRO and Subrosource are setting EXL up for future growth tied to modern business platforms around service areas where insurance carriers are more willing to outsource end-to-end services on the service provider’s technology platforms.
For areas where a platform play is not suitable (due to major legacy client investments, nature of processes, etc.), EXL is making a bid to go beyond basic BPO support by surrounding delivery with more analytics, growing standalone advanced analytics services, and investing in complex high-value services for the insurance middle office. The company’s acquisition of OSI continues this narrative, primarily adding specialized service support to US property & casualty (P&C) carriers, while also adding some analytics technology assets to the mix.