The Financial Services Exchange, trading as Astute, has acquired the Stride Switch from Stride South Africa RF.
Astute is the financial services exchange company owned by the industry to deliver switching and data exchange services to the financial services industry. With Astute’s 15-year track record in the life insurance, risk and investment space positioned us as an ideal technology partner for Stride, the company delivering the Stride Switch to the short term insurance industry for binder/holder data exchange.
“It makes a lot of sense to have the short term insurance switch in the Astute portfolio of industry owned switches,” says Jacques Rossouw, MD of Astute.
“We have embarked on a journey to empower the financial services industry through our technology platforms, executing our strategy of ‘single view of the person’. The acquisition of the Stride switch now allows us to expand the industry value propositions for a consolidated short term insurance switch, with many more role players expressing a keen interest in having a part in this journey,” Rossouw adds.
With the acquisition of the Stride Switch, Astute established a subsidiary company, Astute Short Term Exchange, that will hold the short term insurance switches within the group. Astute, through its industry proprietorship holds the majority of the ownership in the subsidiary, with shares having been allocated to insurance companies Santam, Hollard and Mutual & Federal to advance the industry owned, non-competitive platform that Astute so successfully applies in the life insurance space.
“The Stride Switch will continue to function and operate as it did prior the acquisition,” Rossouw says.
