Maven Capital Partners (Maven), one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has led a GBP1.8 million investment into Curo Compensation Limited (Curo) to support the continued growth of the business. Maven is providing GBP1.2 million of development capital alongside further investment from Curo’s existing investors Downing and Scottish Investment Bank.
Curo has developed a highly configurable and scalable compensation management software solution called CuroComp, which enables customers to manage their pay review cycle quickly and securely, in accordance with agreed, and often complex, compensation plans. The company has an impressive client list and CuroComp is currently used to manage compensation reviews for over 180,000 employees, in 130 currencies, across 140 countries.
Curo recently launched its latest version (V4) of CuroComp providing customers with a host of additional benefits and new functionality including a powerful business intelligence and analytics component. The company has a highly experienced management team led by CEO Gerry O’Neill, who co-founded Vebnet, a SaaS-based employee benefits solution, which was sold to Standard Life in 2008.
Curo is well positioned to exploit the shift from in-house, spreadsheet-based solutions to third-party software vendors which is expected to accelerate as customers demand more sophisticated capabilities that allow them to leverage value from their compensation data and understand the impact of effectively rewarding performance.
Maven’s investment will enable the company to increase its sales and marketing resource, with a focus on expanding its US operations and adding additional channel partners to complement Curo’s direct sales effort. Curo will launch additional products during 2018 starting with a reporting system aimed at meeting new legislation around Gender Pay Gap and minority pay reporting in various territories including the UK.
David Milroy, Investment Director at Maven, says: “Curo has achieved consistent revenue growth and now is an opportune time for Maven’s clients to invest following the recent launch of CuroComp V4, and with the imminent launch of new products, most notably Curo’s Gender Pay Gap reporting system. Maven also actively looks to support second-time entrepreneurs and we have been impressed by the team that Gerry has assembled.”
Gerry O’Neill, CEO of Curo, adds: “Curo has been working with many leading organisations over the past few years including EY, London Stock Exchange, BUPA and others to optimise their annual spend on salary and bonus awards. Our enterprise product is recognised as market leading.
I am delighted that Maven has chosen to invest in Curo. This investment round will provide us the capital to scale our sales and marketing resource as well as accelerate new product development including both a Gender Pay Gap Reporting solution and a product targeted at smaller employers with simpler compensation needs. These are new market opportunities for Curo which we are very excited about.”
