GB Group to Acquire Digital Identity Firm Acuant for £548m

Chester-based GB Group sets its sights on the US as "the largest and most strategic market for location, identity and fraud services".

Chester-based GB Group (GBG) has an American dream with plans to acquire Acuant, an identity verification and KYC/AML compliance provider, for $736 million (£548.3 million). 

Acuant is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in New Hampshire, Brussels and Israel.

GBG will get a boost in the digital identity market and says the acquisition creates a combined revenue of about £265 million. GBG will also be looking to build upon its existing presence in APAC and EMEA.

Chris Clark, Chief Executive Officer at GBG, says Acuant is “a business that we have worked with and admired for many years”.

He adds: “The US is the largest and most strategic market for location, identity and fraud services. The combination of GBG and Acuant provides a step-change in this market, increasing scale, growing our customer base and introducing us to new and exciting sectors.”

It seems jobs are safe as GBG points out that Acuant brings a team of over 200 digital IDV professionals. GBG has 1,097 employees listed on LinkedIn.

Acuant has over 1,000 customers, with nearly half of revenues powered by its channel partner network. Customers on Acuant’s website include Mastercard, PayPal, Fiserv, FIS, Experian and Equifax.

Acuant works in various industries – banking, fintech, crypto, healthcare, hospitality, entertainment, gaming & gambling, government and transportation.

GBG notes that Acuant is a long-time partner and has a product suite that is a “natural complement” to its existing US-based services from IDology.

Acuant has developed its Trusted Identity Platform with an orchestration layer. This platform offers a combination of data, documents, biometrics and analytics for consumption across the “entire customer lifecycle”: onboarding, step-up authentication, KYC/AML compliance, fraud and risk analysis, real-time monitoring and identity re-use.

GBG explains that the global identity verification market is projected to reach $15.8 billion (£11.7 billion) by 2025 and the identity fraud market is projected to be worth $9.6 billion (£7.1 billion) by 2025.

This transaction is expected to complete all necessary legal and regulatory steps by the end of this month.

In other digital identity news, last week Platform as a Service provider IDnow revealed its ambitions to recruit more people in the UK over the next 12 months.

The German identity verification firm already has offices in Manchester and London, and says it has grown eightfold year-over-year in the UK market. It launched here in 2019.

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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