Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has signed an agreement to acquire Ellie Mae, a cloud platform provider for mortgage industry, from its holding company Thoma Bravo in an $11bn deal.
The transaction is expected to strengthen the position of ICE as a provider of end-to-end electronic workflow solutions for the US residential mortgage industry.
The deal follows the acquisition of MERS in 2018 and Simplifile last year by ICE.
The acquisition price for Ellie Mae include 84% of cash and the remaining 16% in newly issued shares of ICE.
Established in 1997, Ellie Mae offers automation and digitisation services to the trillion-dollar residential mortgage industry.
The company’s digital lending platform offers technology services to the participants in the mortgage supply chain. The participants also include its 3,000 customers and thousands of partners and investors participating on their open network who provide liquidity to the market.
Ellie Mae’s technology helps lenders to securely manage and exchange data across the ecosystem, allowing the origination of mortgages.
The acquisition of Ellie Mae will support ICE in entering the origination space
After acquiring MERS and Simplifile, ICE automated the post-closing process and now by acquiring Ellie Mae, ICE is expected extend its reach to the origination space.
Ellie Mae also offers technology solutions that enable its clients to gain enhanced levels of consumer engagement and efficiencies through automation.
The company has also recently introduced machine learning and artificial intelligence for the modernisation of the loan manufacturing process.
Ellie Mae president and CEO Jonathan Corr said: “We are excited to be joining the Intercontinental Exchange family and having the opportunity to work closely with Simplifile and MERS in helping our industry to realize the true digital mortgage.
“We have been on a journey, as we have long said, ‘to automate everything automatable’ for the mortgage industry, and joining ICE, which has followed a parallel journey in global exchanges, will allow us to further accelerate realizing our vision.
“We also greatly appreciate, and have significantly benefited from, the operational and strategic support from Thoma Bravo. They were instrumental in helping us achieve this outcome, which is a great one for our customers and the industry in general.”
The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter or early fourth quarter of 2020, following the receipt of regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
