US financial market company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has wrapped up its previously announced $11bn acquisition of mortgage software provider Ellie Mae from private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
The deal, which was announced last month, is expected to establish Intercontinental Exchange as a major provider of end-to-end electronic workflow solutions to cater to the evolving residential mortgage industry in the US.
Based in Atlanta, Intercontinental Exchange is engaged in operating global exchanges and clearing houses besides providing mortgage technology, data, and listing services.
Intercontinental Exchange founder, chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher said: “We are excited to begin the next important chapter in our journey to digitize the residential mortgage industry.
“Ellie Mae’s industry leadership and best-of-breed technology will better enable us to further accelerate the automation of the mortgage origination workflow, which will benefit stakeholders across the production chain, including consumers.”
Established in 1997, Ellie Mae has developed a cloud-based digital lending platform, through which it offers technology services to all participants in the mortgage supply chain.
Lenders are said to depend on Ellie Mae to handle and facilitate the exchange of data securely across the ecosystem to enable the origination of mortgages, while strictly sticking to various local, state, and federal compliance needs.
Prior to this transaction, Intercontinental Exchange fully acquired Mortgage Electronic Registrations System (MERS) in 2018 and the following year bought Simplifile. Both the acquisitions are said to have furthered its focus on digitising the closing and post-closing process for mortgages in the US.
MERS, Simplifile, and Ellie Mae will now work together as part of ICE Mortgage Technology, which will bring together all of the key stakeholders from origination to final settlement in a single digital mortgage ecosystem.
Ellie Mae was acquired for $3.7bn in 2019 by Thoma Bravo
Ellie Mae was acquired by Thoma Bravo at $99.00 per share or about $3.7bn in February 2019.
During the ownership of Thoma Bravo, the mortgage software provider signed a deal in October 2019 to acquire Capsilon, which is a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) powered mortgage automation software for mortgage lenders, investors, and servicers.
The acquisition is said to have helped the company to accelerate its vision of providing a fully digital mortgage by combining its Encompass Digital Lending Platform with Capsilon’s AI-powered solutions to create an end-to-end SaaS solution for firms in the mortgage industry.
