Sagewind Capital (Sagewind), a New York-based private equity firm, and Berenson Holdings have led the acquisition of The Athene Group, a software and services company serving the wealth management industry.
As part of the transaction, Insight Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures are participating as investors. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Athene provides a cloud-based product, Skience, to the wealth management industry, including broker-dealers and registered investment advisors. Skience’s clients rely on its agile and intuitive enterprise class platform to power and streamline mission critical business processes including client on-boarding with straight through processing, data aggregation, compliance and analytics. Skience is a leading wealth management product in the Salesforce ecosystem, and it utilises its partnership with Salesforce to provide its clientele with expert implementation and integration of the Salesforce Platform.
“We are excited to partner with Athene, which is well positioned to capitalise on the enormous opportunities for technology providers in the wealth management industry,” says Steven Lefkowitz, Managing Partner of Sagewind. “Athene has developed industry-leading technology that creates significant time and resource savings for wealth advisors. We look forward to supporting the Athene team as they execute on their growth strategy, including investment in sales and marketing and the addition of new technological capabilities.”
Sanjeev Kumar, Founder and CEO of Athene, and Kripa Shetty, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, will continue in their current roles.
“I am enormously proud of the Athene team, its history and accomplishments, and the successes we have consistently delivered to our clients via Skience and our other services,” adds Kumar. “Sagewind, Berenson and Athene’s other new investors have track records of working closely and constructively with management teams to build the value of businesses, and I am excited to partner with them in this next chapter of Athene’s history.”
Michael Crawford, formerly a Principal at The Hackett Group, has joined the Athene team as Executive Chairman and will focus on Athene’s market expansion and growth plans. Crawford says: “It is an honour to join Athene at such an exciting time. I look forward to working with the team to build on the company’s position and momentum within the Salesforce ecosystem by enhancing awareness of Athene’s unique value proposition within the wealth management industry.”
“Sanjeev, co-founder Kripa Shetty and the talented team at Athene have built Skience, the industry’s preeminent wealth advisor desktop, using subject matter expertise and relationships built over decades,” says Mohammed Ansari, Managing Director of Berenson. “Mike brings a strong track record of building client service and go-to-market teams to deliver transformative results for enterprise clients. We are delighted to be a part of the next chapter of Athene’s growth.”
