Frontier Capital makes majority investment in Agreement Express

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By Ted Liu

Frontier Capital has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Agreement Express, a Vancouver based SaaS-based digital onboarding platform provider focused on streamlining and enhancing the client experience for wealth management, payments, and insurance providers.

Richard Maclean and Dave Pandullo, Frontier’s Managing Partner and Vice President, respectively, will be joining the Agreement Express board.

Frontier Capital is a Charlotte-based growth equity firm focused exclusively on software and tech-enabled business services companies.

Agreement Express is Frontier’s third investment in Canada within the past twelve months and its fifth investment in a SaaS-based company over the past eight months. The investment was made by Frontier’s US $700 million Frontier Fund V, which closed in 2017.

photo credit: Agreement Express

News Release

FRONTIER CAPITAL ANNOUNCES MAJORITY GROWTH EQUITY INVESTMENT IN VANCOUVER-BASED AGREEMENT EXPRESS

CHARLOTTE, NC and VANCOUVER, BC– (April 12, 2018) – Frontier Capital (“Frontier”), announced today it has signed a definitive agreement for a majority growth equity investment in Agreement Express, a SaaS-based digital onboarding platform provider focused on streamlining and enhancing the client experience for wealth management, payments, and insurance providers. Frontier Capital is a Charlotte-based growth equity firm focused exclusively on software and tech-enabled business services companies.

The Agreement Express end-to-end digital onboarding platform has revolutionized financial services client onboarding experiences, taking the complexity out of the first crucial touchpoint of the customer lifecycle. Unlike point solutions, Agreement Express extends beyond digital forms and signatures, delivering a unified onboarding solution that acts as a hub where data, processes, augmented intelligence, risk scoring, compliance, and business analytics connect. The result is practically invisible onboarding that delivers business velocity, enhanced profitability, and the foundation to power new business models and accelerate revenue growth opportunities.

The investment is intended to support Agreement Express as it seeks to accelerate growth through expansion of sales and marketing operations, furthering technology innovation, and extending its talent base to assist the company in reaching its long-term vision of becoming the leading provider of client onboarding automation solutions for the financial services industry.

“As an early innovator in digital onboarding solutions, we believe our growth in recent years is a direct outcome of our focus on replacing complexity with simplicity at every juncture of client onboarding to deliver lasting business value for technology-first financial services institutions,” said Mike Gardner, Agreement Express CEO. “We feel the optimal time has come to take Agreement Express to the next level, and are excited to work with the talented and well-respected team at Frontier as our partner in the next phase of our journey as a growth company. We believe their experience helping transition SaaS businesses such as ours into market leaders will help us propel our innovation and enhance value to our customers in their race to digital sustainability, differentiation, and enhanced profitability.”

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Mike and the Agreement Express team, helping Agreement Express continue to bring digital transformation to financial services firms. We believe Agreement Express is well positioned to capitalize on the industry shift away from legacy systems and manual processes. Its end-to-end client onboarding platform enables wealth management, payments, and insurance companies to increase new customer acquisition and improve retention by delivering streamlined client onboarding experiences powered by seamless, rich workflows,” said Richard Maclean, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Frontier.

Both Richard Maclean and Dave Pandullo, Frontier’s Managing Partner and Vice President, respectively, will be joining the Agreement Express board.

The growth equity partnership with Agreement Express represents Frontier’s third investment in Canada within the past twelve months and its fifth investment in a SaaS-based company over the past eight months. This investment comes from the firm’s $700 million Frontier Fund V, which closed in 2017.

Raymond James Ltd. acted as exclusive financial advisor and Fasken Martineau LLP as exclusive legal advisor to Agreement Express in connection with the Arrangement.

Additional Resources:
Blog Post: Frontier Capital Announces Majority Growth Equity Investment in Vancouver-based Agreement Express
Blog Post: Agreement Express Partners With Frontier Capital to Accelerate Vision for Digital Onboarding

About Agreement Express
Agreement Express Inc. is a leading client onboarding platform for financial services. The Agreement Express platform allows financial institutions to design and execute consistent automated onboarding experiences across their product offerings and channels while providing deep analytics that enables proactive and personalized client advice. The platform is the first of its kind to help top-performing firms gather, use, and reuse client data to improve and evolve rich customer experiences. Agreement Express enables Fortune 500 financial institutions around the world to provide best-in-class digital onboarding to their clients and grow their business. For more information, please visit www.agreementexpress.com.

About Frontier Capital
Frontier Capital is a Charlotte-based growth equity firm focused exclusively on software and technology-enabled business services companies. Founded in 1999, Frontier partners with management teams that can benefit from capital to accelerate growth, fund acquisitions or generate shareholder liquidity. The firm makes minority and majority equity investments in high-growth companies. For more information, please visit www.frontiercapital.com.